The Friday Roundup - 4/5/2024 Edition

Why Young People Are Opting Out of the Rat Race for the "Soft Life"; An Intersectional Meltdown at a Liberal School; Why Emerson Green is an Atheist

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Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to another edition of The Friday Roundup!

The Soft Life: Why Millennials are Quitting the Rat Race - Leila Latif/The Guardian

There are few topics more controversial than work: how we do it, who should do it, how much we should be paid, how many hours we should be working, etc. & c.

This piece from Latif caught my attention because I recognize how demoralizing the rat race is, and how quickly time gets away from you as you keep chugging along, thinking that if you just make the right moves you’ll finally have some financial breathing room. Next thing you know, your kids are grown, you’re having a mid-life crisis about all the stuff you actually wanted to do but never did, and you realize you’ve missed out on a lot of stuff that’s actually important to you.

It’s not called “the rat race” for no reason.

As it turns out, this piece is not without its ideological baggage — it is by turns focused on feminist and racial issues that add nothing to its otherwise universal appeal — but it has value insofar as it shines a light on the growing recognition that the cyclical, thankless drudgery of being a wage slave steals many of the joys out of life, and a conscious decision to try to change that is probably laudable, if done for the right reasons.

The piece starts with the story of Rose Gardner, who, after a successful career and a mortgage that made her dependent on the job — a job that made no accommodations for her work style or personality, which diminished her performance and enjoyment of the job — she decided she’d had enough, sold her flat, and moved home to live with her parents at the age of 42. (No discussion on why she never married or have a family, but we’ll leave that aside for now.) From the piece:

Gardner is living what is increasingly becoming known online as the “soft life”. As a millennial, she is part of a generation brought up to take pride in hard work, who now find themselves in the midst of a cost of living crisis and the third recession of their lifetimes. As Gabrielle Judge, better known online as the Anti Work Girlboss, says: “You think your managers will take care of you? Your job will take care of you? That really crumbled for millennials, especially during the 2008 recession.”

For millennials and the younger generation Z and Alphas, who may never be able to afford to buy a home or retire at a reasonable age, there is a growing feeling online that hard work is fortifying a system that, at best, is giving them nothing back and, at worst, is actively screwing them over. And so the “soft life” revolution was born – where the priority is no longer about working yourself to the bone to be a #girlboss or “leaning in” to the corporate male world, as former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote, and pushing until you “have it all”. The goal of a softer life is more time and energy for what makes you happy and as little time as possible focusing on what doesn’t.

For her part, Gardner did what a lot of creatives do, and took the advice that the things she actually enjoyed doing and were good at were no way to make a living:

It was that idea – that a brilliant brain must be offered up on the sacrificial altar of capitalism – that made Gardner so miserable at work. As a child, “I was very much told art was a hobby and that I needed to go down the academic route, otherwise it would be a travesty … It felt as if choosing to do what I love was being lazy. I equated being successful with doing something I didn’t like.”

When I graduated college in 2001, with a double major in Communication Arts & Theology, I was interested in media production and web design and video and film, but I had recently come the realization that writing was the thing I was best at, so I looked for jobs that would let me write. To say that the opportunities were slim is an understatement. I applied for one in DC that required me to write an essay as part of the application process. They liked it so much they published it on their website, but when it came to the job offer, it was only paying about $19,000 a year. I don’t know if that would have done much more than cover the costs associated with getting to and from work, let alone pay for food and rent and utilities. I had to pass it up.