As almost everybody, I also felt lucky for finding a job in the first place, grateful actually, even if I couldn’t stand the routine it was coming with.
My life was alienating, but I couldn’t see it yet, mostly because my life was exactly as everyone expects it to be.
I longed for fullfillment, passion, enthusiasm and creativeness: essentially I wanted to be me for a longer time during the day, while what I was doing was to wake up everyday to go die in the office. I didn’t want to settle for a life like that (spent in the same place, doing the same thing), but I had no idea how to deal with the biggest taboo of our generation: to talk about self-realization at work and -even worse- outside work.
Family, friends and countless not-consulted people were very judgmental about my wish to gain some time back; not only because it would have obviously affected my monthly income, but because I was behaving “lazy” and “spoiled”: in their opinion I was just having a temper tantrum, or a 30something crisis. And they all stated the obvious (?): I was a privileged, I should have been grateful for having a job in the first place and do anything in my power to keep it.
It took me a while to realize that the real privilege is to live your own life as YOU want, not as you have been told to.
The real privilege is working to live, not living to work.
To own your own time -instead- is not a privilege: it’s a choice.
And I chose to take it back.
I downshifted.
It’s official: starting this month, each week I’m getting 12 additional hours of freedom, which I will spend here, with you, to make this blog grow and to create a community of passionate independent travellers around it.
Even if I still not “quitted my desk job to do this instead”, at least downshifting is a step forward to that goal.
And every journey –as we, travellers, all know- begins with a first step.
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