Stepping Off, To Step Up

For the first time since graduating from college over 30 years ago, I’m not working full-time. I want to tell you it feels great, liberating, joyous. But I would be lying. Achievement and productivity have been my central organizing principle as far back as I can remember. Without the structure of full-time work, I am having to find my way back to myself, a self that had long been buried in busy-ness.

I keep reading and hearing that Americans are in an existential crisis post-lockdown, quitting jobs to find more purposeful ones. I know that work is not the answer.

I have spent decades in jobs that had meaning, that connected me to a cause broader than myself. I chose to work in youth development, immigrant rights, democracy reform, and I am grateful I could do so.

However, I believed in the inherent purposefulness and mission-driven nature of nonprofit work, and that blinded me to the flaws in the movement. We naively believe we are somehow purer, better, more dedicated than those who choose corporate life. In fact, there is a movement ladder all too similar to the corporate ladder.

Movement leaders like me are subjected to, and subject themselves to, standards prescribed by a context around us. In our world, it may not be as much about a promotion and higher salary, although those are milestones that exist in all sectors…