“I can help you quit your job”
It might be hard to find a white lady vegetarian in her 40s who’s done a lot of rock climbing, meditation and yoga who doesn’t want to pat herself on the back for “being of service.” Not all have the gall to make it a job.
But I did!
So today I’m going to share one of my qualifications.
My qualifications for me helping you quit your job.
What makes me, Saint Nightmare, uniquely qualified to help you, reader of this email, quit your job if that’s something you think might help? Help you be more in your skin, which isn’t just for your own pleasure and sanity but when you wake up each day more peaceful, you’ll be able to show up better for Life. And what is Life? Life is a linked chain of pearls and gemstones that can feel opulent and noble or tie you down somewhere dirty you hate. Some of those gems are radiant and pleasing. Some are buckets of grief. Some are heavy with responsibility and commitment, pride and resentment. For our Families, our Ancestors, our Planet. Some of the gems are apology and regret. Some of the gems are forgiveness alternating with hatred alternating with time alternating with space.
Quitting your job will press you deep into the Arms of Creation and force you to answer hard questions about control and identity. Those arms could hurt like hell, or they could warm you like the refuge you’ve been seeking, depending on how much your sense of safety has been built on the foundation of Work.
But back to the best qualification for me helping you quit your job:
I’ve done it a lot.
The only grandfather I knew died in 2017 and it’s taken the last eight years for my uncle to surface a very important part of my grandpa’s personal effects: the file folder he kept of letters from me.
My best quote, if I do say so, was from a letter I wrote him less than a year after graduating from college. I laughed out loud as I read it, remembering those adventurous days while admiring the prescience for my future career working with fear:
“Quitting at the aquarium was a really empowering thing to do. It taught me a lot about being brave.”
Empowering because it meant I’d stop wearing their ugly ass khaki and polo shirt uniform. Brave because I had about $700 to my name and rent at the ashram, where even though we karma yoga-ed the cooking, cleaning and gardening starting at 4am each morning, was still $800. I didn’t tell my conservative christian grandpa the yoga cult part, left the ashram, and took an overnight greyhound to Mexico for a climbing trip.
The aquarium wasn’t even the first job I’d quit, nor the last. I quit the bakery where the owner paid me less than minimum wage and had the nerve to call it training, all summer. I quit the environmental non profit where they didn’t pay me at all. Same goes for the Pullitzer prize-winning newspaper in beautiful Marin, California where I gloriously wrote about cheese. I quit nannying for the family where the dad liked how “tiny” my feet were (size 7) and the mom wore shoes two sizes too small. I quit teaching meditation. I quit the climbing gym and sometimes I miss it. I quit the drug and alcohol rehab center where my heart poured out to a roomful of the most wide-open people I’ve known.
And each time I quit, those Arms of Creation drew tighter around me, thanking me for being true to myself.
The only job I haven’t quit is this one, the job where I send you emails and offer this translation of what I’ve learned doing it.It’s hard enough, engaging enough, so very rewarding and intimate. Satisfaction at last for my insatiable soul.
So if you think quitting your job might help you and the world shine, and you want to find a job that feels more like mine (even if it’s a more socially acceptable job), my job is to help you.