Back in Business

After our online shop crashed and burned this afternoon, it seems to be back in action.

Let me know if you try to buy something and it explodes.

Fuss and Bother

Thanks to Reader M for sending us this meditation on “doing nothing.”

It’s significant because it was written by David Allen, someone who has devoted a career to encouraging productivity in others. He’s the guy behind Getting Things Done or GTD:

All this fuss and bother about personal organization and information management and knowledge work and AI and the increasing stress levels of our culture. It’s enough to… what?

How about pruning my Japanese maple this afternoon, with a fabulous bottle of Belgian ale to assist? How about some sweet schmoozing with our two little spaniels? An ad hoc hug with my wife in our kitchen, as she does what she does so well there? How about just taking time to take time for — nothing?

It’s a reminder that “activity” and getting your shit together should really be in service of something: our humanity. If we take our eye off this prize, work so easily takes over. And becomes pointless.

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Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

Are Weekends Obsolete?

“The weekend mindset is an invention overdue for radical reinvention,” writes freelancer and Zoom jockey Richard Morgan.

Most people’s Saturdays, it seems, are as busy as any weekday, while Sundays are no longer sacrosanct.

The weekend was once the week’s well-earned dessert but its ice-cream has long been melted by the burdensome breach of busyness. The slop we now have can perhaps be refrozen, but it will never again be the confection of yesteryear.

Besides, if we’re gradually learning to escape work, the weekend doesn’t make much sense anymore:

Weekends were built for factory labor, not Zoom meetings. The global rise of four-day workweeks show how arbitrary our current set-up is. Why not two-day workweeks if the work can still be done?

Sabbaths began as days of rest. That antiquated thinking dangerously frames such rest in service of labour. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I think God wants more for me than the life of a dishrag whose only peace is on the drying rack in between meals.

So what to do? One way or another:

Make time for yourself. For your loved ones. For your hobbies. For your ambitions. For your booty calls. For your bubble baths. For sushi. For tennis. For tattoos. For book club. For therapy. For karaoke. For leg day. For Lego. For mahjong. For your journal. For your marathon. For your second helping of cheesecake and your umpteenth viewing of The Golden Girls. For Final Fantasy Resonance or Grand Theft Auto VI – or both. For that trip to Japan. For that colonoscopy. For whatever you want whenever you want – because nobody, absolutely nobody, logs their achievements or fond memories in categorization by days of the week. We cannot list the top five Wednesdays of our lives.

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Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

So Help Me God

Reader H shares with us this letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his father, as seen in the 2021 documentary Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time.

Aged about 28 and working at General Electric, Vonnegut Jr. writes to Vonnegut Sr.:

I sold my first story to COLLIER’S. Received my check ($750 minus a 10% agent’s commission) yesterday noon. It now appears that two more of my works have a good chance of being sold in the near future.

I think I’m on my way. I’ve deposited my first check in a savings account, and, as and if I sell more, will continue to do so until I have the equivalent of one year’s pay at G.E. Four more stories will do it nicely, with cash to spare (something we never had before). I will then quit this goddamn nightmare of a job, and never take another one so long as I live, so help me God.

I don’t know when my first story will be published. It may take several months. I’ll keep you posted.

I’m happier than I’ve been for a good many years.

Come east soon.

Love,
K

And the rest is history.

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Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

Across the Divide

“Head of Female Worker Seen Over Office Cubicle, Standard Oil Company of California, 1976–77” by Chauncey Hare.

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Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

€40,000

A decade ago, we celebrated the story of a guy who sued his workplace for boring him half to death.

I found myself wondering what came of him. Did he win his case? Did he find another job? Did he take his winnings and live on a yacht?

The myth-busting website Snopes has part of the answer:

a court in Paris ruled that Frédéric Desnard’s employer had subjected him to “moral harassment” and bullying, including deliberately subjecting him to “bore-out” at work.

And:

Mere boredom was far from the only mistreatment suffered by Desnard, who argued he was deliberately marginalized and humiliated at work for four years, causing him to become withdrawn and clinically depressed.

But:

While Desnard had asked for hundreds of thousands of euros in damages and compensation, the court ultimately sanctioned just €40,000.

It’s a pretty good moral victory and 40k is certainly a healthy escape fund to get you on the road, but I’m worried about Desnard now because 40k probably wasn’t enough to retire on (though maybe it was?) and because all that comes up when you Google his name now is his kooky employment tribunal. This help him to get another job.

I decided to do some modern “journalism” and ask him. I found his LinkedIn page, which was plastered in profile updates about bore-out, which made me wonder if he’s become working some sort of anti bore-out consultant. But when I tried to befriend him, he deleted his page. Good!

We respect your right to disappear, Monsieur Desnard. Good luck wherever you are.

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Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

On the Lamm

August Lamm, the anti-tech artist we interviewed in the still-just-about-available Issue 18, has a new book out called You Don’t Need a Smartphone.

And you know what? You probably don’t need a smartphone. Personally, I’ve made peace with having one, but it repays to rethink these things. The considered life and all.

In August’s latest newsletter, she explains that publishers no longer send authors on book tours, so she’s decided to cross the USA on her own terms and at her own expense.

For a book like mine, addressing the decline of culture in the digital age, in-person events are crucial. Only by convening in a physical space can we escape algorithmic pre-determination and open ourselves up to the organic, unpredictable unfolding of Real Life.

This is great. Her position of integrity reminds me of my favourite Jaron Lanier quote, which I find genuinely empowering. I carry it in my heart:

You, you, you, have the affirmative responsibility to invent and demonstrate new ways to live without the crap that is destroying society. Quitting is the only way, for now, to learn what can replace our grand mistake.

If you happen to be America, please consider visiting August on tour and buying the book. It’s one in the eye for the supremacy of boring digital business practices that are wrecking the world and a vote for personal integrity.

Prison Break!

Friend Fabian writes to tell us about a German law allowing for a prisoner’s right to escape.

Sure enough, Wikipedia explains:

Escaping from prison isa criminal offense in countries such as the United States and Canada, and usually results in time being added to the inmate’s sentence … In Germany and a number of other countries, it is considered human nature to want to escape from a prison and it is considered as a violation of the right of freedom, so escape is not penalized in itself (in the absence of other factors such as threats of violence, actual violence, or property damage).

The countries who see the desire to escape as human nature include:

Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Iceland, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil

“Isn’t it interesting,” writes Fabien, “how they recognise our desire to be free from confinement as a natural given?”

It is. It’s something I’ve often wondered about because the alternative seems So disingenuous. Other illegalities I’ve wondered about are suicide and “resisting arrest.”

It’s unsporting if nothing else. Catching and retaining people the law sees as guilty is surely the law’s job, not that of the so-called criminal.

The only reason to obey these laws is the fear of legal consequence. There’s no moral reason for laws like these; they exist only to make rozzers’ jobs easier. I don’t think they should exist and I salute the legal systems who respect this.

The Wikipedia page for prison escapes, by the way, is great fun. It’s full of great stories about how people have busted out of prisons using spoons and helicopters.

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Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

Back to Nature

Friend Joe sends us this painting, “Back to Nature,” by Robert Storm Petersen or “Storm P.” Look at those anonymous grey trudgers!

Petersen was a pipe-smoking Danish humorist whose writings and cartoons regularly portrayed vagabonds as philosophers. Our kind of guy.

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Escape with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

Either Own It Or Leave

In the moment, not quitting in some ways feels heroic, like you’re martyring yourself to your own capacity or grit. In fact, you’re actually limiting yourself, because you’re not walking away from things that are failing.

A little bit of Escapology from Lindsay Crouse who quit her job this year and has published a book called The Case for Quitting:

Staying [as opposed to escaping] is a decision, too. I’ve heard people say: “I really want to quit, but I can’t.” I think you have to ask yourself: why can’t you? If you think you can’t quit your job because you need money, have you actually run those numbers? Maybe you have, and you don’t like them. That’s fine, but you need to own that choice to stay.

If you want to leave your relationship, but are afraid of starting over, own that. Maybe you just want to get married. Down the line, tell yourself that was a decision you made, and you knew what you were getting into. Otherwise, you can quit and do your future self a favour – your partner, too. Who wants to be in a relationship without investment?

Being only one foot in is a very passive and kind of cowardly way to live your life. You need to ask yourself: “Am I hoping that this doubt, or deliberation, is just going to abate?” That question helps you reframe the situation – and the answer is no. You have to act: either own it or leave, but don’t think that these problems will just disappear. Maybe you can put up with them, but is that the life you want?

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Quit with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.