Everyone I know is worried about work

On finding a new source of security

Photo by Li Zhang on Unsplash

Almost everyone I know is worried about work: finding a job, keeping the one they have, or what will happen when the work they do no longer exists.

I am no stranger to this state of being. After all, I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was 18, which means I spent the first decade plus of my career relentlessly trying to outrun print and web journalism’s successive death marches. I thought maybe, if I worked really hard, I could get successful enough just in time to stake out a stable career. (Spoiler: That didn’t work.) Instability in my profession, and to a certain extent my life, has always been the norm. And I’ve proven good at riding it out.

But this time feels different. The people with the kinds of career paths that I have often chided myself for not taking also seem anxious about their jobs. Going on LinkedIn requires a serious form of mental preparation for the increasingly desperate posts you will find there. The creative person’s reassuring fallback option of getting a real (aka boring) job is no longer there because, as this viral piece about the career prospects of Gen-X creatives put it, even “the sellout move is in free-fall.” One Gen Z writer put it even more bluntly: “Why are there are no fucking jobs?”

The natural impulse in response to all this precariousness is what we have been trained for: double down on accumulation, stay employable at all costs, find the highest paying job you can, and cling on for dear life. Try to outrun it, as I did in my twenties.

I am sympathetic to this, but perhaps because I have been working for myself for the majority of my career, I can feel my willingness to stay ultra-competitive waning. In just a matter of a few months this year, it’s felt like the a lot of work that I do is suddenly less and less in demand, as people unquestioningly adopt shittier, less human, and more efficient AI to do it instead. I knew this was coming, of course, but the speed with which it's happened has startled me.

And then, in the midst of some other destabilizing news about my family’s finances recently, our childcare suddenly announced they were putting up their fees for the second time within six months. I had been counting down the weeks until September, when more of the UK government funding would become available to us, meaning we could afford four days a week of childcare, instead of three.

My son would be three and a half at that point, a year away from starting school, and I would finally have more time to get my “career” back on track — at least that’s what I was telling myself. Alas, that’s not going to happen as I’d planned.

None of this is a sob story, of course. But it helps explain why I've been feeling a particular kind of grief for a prior version of me who still believed if I was hard-working, creative, and resourceful, I would find a way to be financially successful and “stable” in the traditional sense, doing the thing I love. I thought I could still outrun it.

But I am starting to accept that maybe I can’t, and that maybe a different source of security has to emerge in its place.

‘The insulation equation’

What I hear in so many people’s anguished LinkedIn posts is a disconnect between the world they thought they were in versus the one they actually are. They sound aghast that the jobs, companies, and industries that were supposed to provide both meaning and security haven’t kept up their end of the bargain.

They thought they were working in companies with values, morals, and ethics. Turns out, the logic of the market prevails every single time. And as we reach the upper limits of this system, it’s all becoming more brazen, the bottom line less obscured. Welcome to collapse.

How I became 'collapse aware'

It reminds me of the “insulation equation” that

Douglas Rushkoff

writes about in his book, Survival of the Richest. This is the idea, held by many billionaire tech elites, that they can “earn enough money to insulate themselves from the reality they [are] creating by earning money in this way.” Put another way: Who cares if my fill-in-the-blank AI company wrecks the planet? It’s going to get me so fucking rich I can leave this planet before it does.

I’m not accusing the average knowledge worker on LinkedIn as having the same disregard for the societal and environmental commons as a broligarch. However, I detect a similar note in the careerism mindset that so many people in my socioeconomic strata have internalized while trying to succeed in the global digital economy.

We put all our stock in the idea that specializing in one field, industry, or competency — one that almost always occurs within the confines of a screen — in exchange for a steadily-increasing paycheck was the smart move to make. We accepted that we better get really, really good at it if we wanted to command the kinds of salaries that keep us afloat in this system, so we worked until the point of burnout to deliver to companies we thought would love us back. Or at the very least, not fire us the very moment there was a marginally cheaper way of doing things.

Meanwhile, as we did that, we became increasingly dependent on the kinds of supply chains, income brackets, and lifestyles that we know are deeply unsustainable. Because how else are you supposed to deliver what these kinds of jobs ask of you? The harder we work, the more we outsource, the fewer diverse skills we have, the farther removed we get from the reality that planet earth can’t sustain all this. We’re mostly too tired to think about it.

What don’t I do?

In the five years since 2020, when I quit my last full-time journalism job, my career has become more patchwork and less impressive looking. In the nearly three years since I had a baby in 2022, even more so. By the time my child is in school and I can theoretically work full-time again, it’s unlikely I’ll be competitive for the kind of full-time knowledge economy job that commands an impressive mid-career salary, even if I wanted one.

I could certainly shake my fist at the shitty social policies that leave so many women in this position, and trust me, I have. But I think it’s also worth looking at what else I’ve done in the years I’ve been frequenting playgrounds, handing out endless cheerios, and cleaning up infinite bodily fluids.

I went from someone who didn’t even know what caretaking was, to someone who now sees it everywhere I look, and thinks and writes about it alongside an amazing community of other writers on Substack. In the process, I realized that the idea that I should be able to do and provide everything for myself is a fiction entirely created by the economic system I grew up in. I’ve learned that asking for help (financial, practical, or otherwise) is not a sign of weakness, but a sign that I am a member of a fundamentally interdependent species. What a relief.

I went from someone who could just barely keep a few houseplants alive to someone who is responsible for cultivating a 50 square meter vegetable garden, another garden at home, two compost piles — and is surprisingly doing an okay job of it. This little hobby not only helps my mental health more than any app or medication, but it’s arguably the first time I’ve meaningfully invested in building off-screen skills in my entire adult life.

I went from someone who quit journalism because my nervous system couldn’t handle another week of the news cycle, to redirecting that creative energy into building this newsletter. As a result, I have created a readership of thousands that I have a direct relationship with — one that doesn't expect me to publish in a manner that leads to successive cycles of burn out.

It’s become a point of reverse pride for me that literally all of my freelance writing, editing, and consulting work comes from a network of relationships I’ve amassed over the last decade and a half. My CV and resume have never been impressive or pedigreed enough to get past a cold application portal, so I’ve been forced to create a career where I don’t need to apply for things in that way.

Operating this way creates a different kind of security, one that we can extrapolate out to something much bigger than a writing career. Unlike an impressive job, it’s very unlikely that all your professional and creative relationships will fire you on the same day. I’ve learned that if I am generous and collaborative with people — especially when things are going well for me — they’ll often do the same for me down the road.

I am not advocating for a freelance life or any kind of alternative, self-directed career path here. Nor am I advocating that people stop searching for jobs or quit the ones they have in some back-to-the-land fantasy. However, I do think my particular career trajectory over the last decade has made me see the freedom that comes from giving up on the cohesive, impressive-on-LinkedIn career path.

I’ve accepted that no job is coming to save me. That security does not come from a one-way, linear transaction with a for-profit corporation. But rather, a rhizomatic network, one that grows not just upwards, but outwards, downwards, and sideways — with gains and losses, ebbs and flows along the way.

It’s humbling, yes, and certainly an adjustment at first. But maybe it’s okay to not look impressive. As

Jonathan Small

wrote in response to that depressing Gen-X article, “Next time someone asks what you do, don’t panic. Don’t squirm. Just smile and say: What don’t I do?”

A different kind of currency

When you accept that the future’s security may not come only in the form of a steady ascent up a pay scale, something shifts. You may not quit your job, but you reorient your time and professional priorities around independent people and relationships, not prestigious companies or brands. You may adjust your lifestyle, outgoings, consumption patterns, and sources of meaning so that they aren’t so reliable on a certain compensation package. You see the value of expanding your abilities and skills beyond merely looking employable online.

At least some of the work here, I think, goes back to what I wrote in November: keeping a foot in both worlds, Here and There. If, like almost all of us, you still need a high-paying job to sustain your life, then think about the idea that it might not be there forever. What are you doing in preparation for that day? What skills are you building that will be useful to others? What lifestyle are you becoming accustomed to in the meantime? And what people are you helping and investing in until that day comes?

"Other people's people"

Not being able to afford full-time childcare — and yet still having to earn a full-time living — has been the bane of my life for nearly three years. But it’s taught me something important. All of this time I’ve spent doing things that don’t impress people on LinkedIn adds up to something else: social currency. It’s a currency you can’t spend in a one-way transaction, but rather give and receive in turns.

As this article about a woman who has lived without money for ten years put it, “I actually feel more secure than I did when I was earning money because all through human history, true security has always come from living in community and I have time now to build that ‘social currency’.”

After the news about nursery fees hit, I felt depressed for a couple of days. Then I realized I really needed to take my own advice. I know several people in the same boat as me, so instead of trying to earn even more money to afford the ever more expensive childcare, I should simply make a spreadsheet and ask said parents if we want to rotate Wednesday and/or Friday afternoons playdates so everyone gets a little more time to get stuff done.

There are much broader re-imaginings that may need to happen, and soon: how we live, and what we share, and what we consider a “successful” life for our kids. I think these shifts will be painful and joyful in equal measure.

But in my own life, just a few years ago, that small idea about the childcare would have felt radical, weird, and maybe a little utopian. Now, it feels totally feasible to me. And that, more than anything, is what I have to show for the last few years. No job or paycheck gave it to me, and that is why it’s worth so much.

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