Hair is a good start.
Photo by Martin Kingsley via flickr Creative Commons
Corporate Dropouts, my new interview series, launches with a story a week. They're ordinary locals like us, who left mainstream life to make a paying career of their passions, creative lives and deepest interests. You'll meet a career counselor, a MD turned acupuncturist, a farmer and food artisan, a humanitarian, rogue techie, freelance blogger/travel writer, entrepreneur, musician, yoga instructor and life coach.
Don't blame “The Man”
He is simply “the management,” the sometimes benevolent if inescapable puppeteers and check signers who anonymously control our lives from a conference room on Mount Olympus. In this series, it 
refers to any highly structured hierarchy, often white collar with an office culture, regardless of size or business entity. If it belongs in a Dilbert cartoon, it's corporate. The Man makes life easy and stable for many, but sometimes breeds lives of quiet desperation. As Martha Beck writes in "Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, "It's not "the wrong job that makes one feel so aimless and uninspired; it's the loss of one's life's purpose."
Good news, bad news, good news
We who dream of jumping into the fires of our own untried talent – and getting paid doing it – sometimes actually jump. So are these folks starving and insuranceless? More importantly, how did they get the courage to change? Their stories consistently reveal certain points:
- Self first, money second. Self – not the Jones’, mom and dad, kids nor culture – finally wins. These people learned to see such emotional obstacles, money included, for what they are: cover-ups for deep fear. In their new lives, success isn’t measured by money first. Waking joyful, touching lives, being part of the good guys and doing what turns them on are the new benchmarks. Not to say that it never rains money. Just check out this article on dropouts from Fast Company. Especially the last part on exiting with honor.
- Dream-making is no cakewalk. Insecurity, brutal hours, hard work, isolation, debt and total accountability may be life at first. Yet one’s chosen labor of love motivates the slaving. The tradeoff is not a sugary happiness, but a daily fulfillment felt deep in the bones. When you are doing what you were put here to do, you operate from your best and highest self. Each case describes a feeling of arriving instead of escaping, an ease of the soul’s burden from feeling fraudulent, unfit or poseur.
- Good omens come. When right decisions meet perfect timing, life has a near-magical way of supporting the cause with opportunities, dough and human resources. But it’s no spiritual handout. Rather a gift bone that comes after a long struggle to maturity and self-understanding. Perhaps years of hard soul-searching, demon slaying (often disguised as family members) as well as the usual prep of networking, learning, planning and honing of vision – this before you even get started.
Next week, we kick off the series with Berkeley career counselor Dr. Elayne Chou's insights on career transitions, creative types and what you get for $500.
For more Health and Happiness, contact Sho Sho Smith at whimsicaltaxidermy@gmail.com.
Comments
Thanks for this article; as a recent college graduate I feel as though I am thwarting the good life by refusing opportunities to become a corporate big head or high-paid intern. Instead, I do what I love, and hope that no matter how poor and under appreciated I may be, I can rest easy knowing that I am happy and true to myself and potentials.
Great article, Sho Sho! So true :)
Oh, here we go. This will be a series of articles that encourages people to tune in, turn on and drop out. Isn't it? Another of those "life-affirming" pieces of pseudo-journalism that explains "hey, its OK to not be motivated and become a professional bongo player" because any job where white collars are involved means you're a sell-out bourgeois pig. Good luck, drop outs! I'll be enjoying my 401(k) at retirement while you'll be hocking your acupuncture needles to buy your next edition of High Times.
--Mr. Angry
Mr. Angry: Like Sho Sho said "The Man makes life easy and stable for many," myself included. It's not for everybody, though.
Penned from the bowels of my corporate HQ, inspiring indeed!
Sean, if you're part of the corporate machine, then why are you reading this hippy-dippy column? Soon you'll be brainwashed, and before you know it, you'll end up in a new "career" where its encouraged to burn incense all day. Can't you people be happy just doing your yoga and bongo drumming on the weekends? Do you really want to "find yourself" and quit your job during a recession? Just what the homeless in San Francisco need, a bunch of failed 30-something dropouts crowding their shelters.
--Mr. Angry
Mr. Angry. Use your good health benefits to get some Xanax and then re-read the article. I do not think it says what you think it says.
Right on, Sho Sho! I "got the courage" to be a corporate dropout when my company relocated to the east coast. What a gift it has been to experience a personal creative renaissance, to free myself of the mainstream mentality that dictates how so many people spend their lives. My time away has allowed me not only to immerse myself in one of my passions (writing)--it has given me the space to try it out as a career and to decide whether it's something I want to do full time.
After nine months, I have decided to re-enter the corporate world (indeed, business remains a passion), but from a place of being well-rested, creatively fulfilled, and clear on what I need to be happy. I have also relieved myself of a life of what-ifs. By virtue of having tried, I will never have to wonder whether I could've been a writer.
The best news? I succeeded. I now have blog, a column, and several other outlets where I will continue to write.
We should all drop out every once in awhile.
Mr. Angry doesn't need Xanax, Mr. Angry needs full on Shock Therapy after reading Kim's post. Kim, it must be nice to "drop out" with your unemployment checks and a big Wall Street severance paying the bills. How brave of you! But, when the money runs out on your little corporate/state-funded romantic writing sojourn, look how quickly you scamper back into the real world.
I'm all for this hippy-dippy columnist talking about career change, but I hope this series is done in a practical way. Maybe keep your day jobs and do your dream job on the side so that I don't have to pay for your healthcare and unemployment checks? Just a thought.
--Mr. Angry
Mr. Angry doesn't need Xanax, Mr. Angry needs full on Shock Therapy after reading Kim's post. Kim, it must be nice to "drop out" with your unemployment checks and a big Wall Street severance paying the bills. How brave of you! But, when the money runs out on your little corporate/state-funded romantic writing sojourn, look how quickly you scamper back into the real world.
I'm all for this hippy-dippy columnist talking about career change, but I hope this series is done in a practical way. Maybe keep your day jobs and do your dream job on the side so that I don't have to pay for your healthcare and unemployment checks? Just a thought.
--Mr. Angry
Mr. Angry doesn't need Xanax, Mr. Angry needs full on Shock Therapy after reading Kim's post. Kim, it must be nice to "drop out" with your unemployment checks and a big Wall Street severance paying the bills. How brave of you! But, when the money runs out on your little corporate/state-funded romantic writing sojourn, look how quickly you scamper back into the real world.
I'm all for this hippy-dippy columnist talking about career change, but I hope this series is done in a practical way. Maybe keep your day jobs and do your dream job on the side so that I don't have to pay for your healthcare and unemployment checks? Just a thought.
--Mr. Angry
Mr. Angry. Use your good health benefits to get some Xanax and then re-read the article. I do not think it says what you think it says.
Been a corporate dropout going on 2 years now. From that time, started an open source software project, became active in wireless community, started active forum, started non profit hackerspcae in Tokyo, getting thousands of visitors on site, starting up webshop, and designing things that amuse me or provide social good.
I'm far from being a hippy-dippy, bongo-drumming, failed 30-something. Being a corporate dropout has been the best thing to happen to me in my life next to getting married and buying my dog.
Going indie, you'll always need to face haters that can't challenge their own beliefs. That's the first test to see if you're cut out for it.
Akiba
FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project
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