A Good Life

One of the biggest aspects of exiting extractive systems is hitting pause, even for just a few hours, and taking a deep look at the life you’ve built and are currently living. The activity of self-assessment requires a depth of self-analysis, truth, and vision— and will make the creation of a plan for your exit bridge a bit more tangible. 

I stumbled onto the book titled The Good Life Lab back in 2014-ish, a time where I was actively building my website business because I left the toxicity of television production work but well entrenched in my “Left Hand Path” of avoiding most of the adulting activities of my peers. I’d survived the housing collapse a few years earlier by the skin of my teeth— watched my fledgling production studio collapse in real time as my entire slate of clients in the tourism and real estate businesses in Myrtle Beach evaporated with Lehman Brothers. I’d rolled into a wild ass relationship and abandoned my vagabond ways to please a man. I chose that relationship over moving to Paris to be an expat navigating life as a blogger and artist. I chose poorly. So, while building my website business, I decided to always keep this offgrid, “living off” approach to whatever life I was building through this web business. 

Signals & Seeds is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Graphic From The Good Life Lab

The book leapt off the shelf with its beautiful cover art. The author is a graphic designer, so, well played. But the content hit home, fast. Small chapters dedicated to the author and her partner’s journey in leaving corporate jobs in NYC to build an off-grid, decommodified life in the waste stream in a tiny town in New Mexico.

From the stories of why, to the pathway of how, to the practical instructions of what— this book resonates on so many levels. And has been a compass of sorts when I stray from my own attempts at a decommodified life. Like now.

I’ve been unable to really engage with the book the past couple years, since graduating from Naropa with a yoga degree (the most decommodified degree ever) and entered corporate tech at the leadership leveled (the most commodified role ever). I knew I was far from my heart on this one, but I had chosen a path to walk for 5 years. That was my goal. Five years in corporate crypto tech to build communities for devs in the Global South to create impact (that’s the narrative I embraced to justify the sacrifice) and to make my nut. I needed to make some adult-ass money on a consistent basis for the adult things I’d ignored to that point in life: having health care (because hello mid-life), investing in crypto like a proper degen (because I like the drama of it all) and build a home that could be a simple little nest in a tornado of societal chaos. 

My assumption, which I now look back with embarrassment at my naïveté, was that if I did my job exceptionally well and became a linchpin in the workplace, I would be rewarded by remaining employed and well paid. How fucking wrong was I??? I was playing a game that didn’t exist. I assumed that there was some humanity in the corporate structure. I won internal awards and peer nominations. I was told my the csuite that the company loved my initiatives. I was told by the chief human resources demon to outlast my boss, who had quiet quit her way to an exit. I got this.

Spoiler alert, there was zero humanity. I chose poorly.

The system itself was designed to squeeze the humanity out of its workers until they are compliant little sycophants who do what the “fearless leader” (a leader usually harboring multiple degrees of narcissistic personality disorder and administering trauma to her employees like a Pez Dispenser) says no matter what. I’d read about this, knew it was the case and lied to myself just long enough to became one of the pawns in this game of inhumanity. 

And then I stayed in the game for 6 more months, at the next “job” which very quickly became a recreation of Lord of the Flies. FFS.

Now, ten months into my “fun employment” journey in a collapsed economy spiraling towards depression, I’m returning to several of the more beautiful aspects of my past to resurrect for my own exit bridge. I opened up The Good Life Lab this morning after a day of chatting with a dear old friend about finally going offgrid. I spent yesterday evaluating my current life, rebuilding my path to a decommodified lifestyle and what I can walk away from to go offgrid— and still be of service in the ways I am gifted and wish to help others. 

Graphic From The Good Life Lab

Writing about modernity and its impacts on us all. Producing a podcast about the intersections of emergent tech and society. Selling crystals and lapidary art through a tiny e-commerce store, just cause I love rocks and energy healing.

A flywheel of micro businesses that will allow me to no longer sacrifice the best parts of myself to participate in a system that is designed to squeeze the humanity out of me. And you.

I refuse to let that happen anymore. The price is too great, the sacrifices too many.

I believe with all of my heart that we, the ones who cross the threshold of the exit door, build bridges towards visions of a balanced existence and who choose the Left Hand Path with eyes wide open, will thrive in a time of accelerated collapse.

We will carve our own pathway through the chaos and we’ll lead our communities down the paths we create so whoever wishes to embrace a different, decommodified and simple life can do so— even during late stage capitalism. Especially so.