Open book mid-life crises is a wild phrase. I also am now curious about this Notion doc as a business nerd 👀
I felt a bit suffocated when you described the walls that close in when labels are attached - I almost on purpose stay away from labels (even though I want them and feel my ego ache) because I don't want to fool myself into thinking the labels are who I am. But this is a process
The “should you want an identity?” is a big question I’m thinking about writing about. They can be useful, and we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, but many times it can strip us of our humanness (eg identity capture, over-bundling, narrowing).
There’s a real cost to choosing the weird road, especially after you’ve built the résumé, the credibility, and the identity people know how to applaud. Walking away from the next “logical” move means losing the clean one-sentence answer to “what do you do?”
But maybe that’s the point. Some chapters aren’t supposed to make you more legible. They’re supposed to make you more honest.
The line that stuck with me is the refusal to fall in love with any version of yourself that stops you from choosing again. That feels like the real flex here: not reinvention as a new box, but reinvention as an ongoing refusal to be boxed at all.
Society demands the labels. If we aren’t retired or working a 40-plus hour work week, we can’t be categorized. I’m also an extreme introvert so it doesn’t bother me as much but if you are an extrovert who wants to be around other people the label is very important. We are taught to believe there are two things: work and leisure — you do one to get to enjoy the other. Really, there’s a whole spectrum of ways of being to explore.
That's absolutely right. I think the labels can be a double-edged sword. They are useful for sure. In another piece I wrote:
"Boxes can be good for you. They create a container for people to understand your value, “as someone in this position should accomplish these things.” And they create guardrails for you to operate within.
You are easier to understand when you have a box around you. You can be put on an org chart, sorted, and ranked based on what you do and your level."
The difficulty is accepting labels when useful and discarding them when not.
Open book mid-life crises is a wild phrase. I also am now curious about this Notion doc as a business nerd 👀
I felt a bit suffocated when you described the walls that close in when labels are attached - I almost on purpose stay away from labels (even though I want them and feel my ego ache) because I don't want to fool myself into thinking the labels are who I am. But this is a process
The “should you want an identity?” is a big question I’m thinking about writing about. They can be useful, and we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, but many times it can strip us of our humanness (eg identity capture, over-bundling, narrowing).
There’s a real cost to choosing the weird road, especially after you’ve built the résumé, the credibility, and the identity people know how to applaud. Walking away from the next “logical” move means losing the clean one-sentence answer to “what do you do?”
But maybe that’s the point. Some chapters aren’t supposed to make you more legible. They’re supposed to make you more honest.
The line that stuck with me is the refusal to fall in love with any version of yourself that stops you from choosing again. That feels like the real flex here: not reinvention as a new box, but reinvention as an ongoing refusal to be boxed at all.
I like the idea of some chapters requiring legibility and some requiring avoiding it. That's something I'll think on...
Your last line is killer, too: "not reinvention as a new box, but reinvention as an ongoing refusal to be boxed at all." 🤯
Here for the non-fungibilty of the weird.
here, here
I’m glad you’re keeping to the weird thing Rick. There lies … ah hell, you’ll have to tell us when you find it.
Haha, thanks Tom for supporting me on whatever this path is.
Haha, thanks Tom for supporting me on whatever this path is.
Society demands the labels. If we aren’t retired or working a 40-plus hour work week, we can’t be categorized. I’m also an extreme introvert so it doesn’t bother me as much but if you are an extrovert who wants to be around other people the label is very important. We are taught to believe there are two things: work and leisure — you do one to get to enjoy the other. Really, there’s a whole spectrum of ways of being to explore.
That's absolutely right. I think the labels can be a double-edged sword. They are useful for sure. In another piece I wrote:
"Boxes can be good for you. They create a container for people to understand your value, “as someone in this position should accomplish these things.” And they create guardrails for you to operate within.
You are easier to understand when you have a box around you. You can be put on an org chart, sorted, and ranked based on what you do and your level."
The difficulty is accepting labels when useful and discarding them when not.
Link to full piece: https://newsletter.thewayofwork.com/p/box