You Gave It

There's a post going around right now from a 21-year-old in his first corporate job saying corporate Australia took his soul.

He's right about the feeling. He's wrong about who took it.

I was 21 once. I was also 40 last year sitting at the head of engineering table, blue light on my face at 8pm, wondering why the version of me that walked out of the office every night wasn't the one I recognised from twenty years ago. Same feeling. Just two decades of compounding.

Here's what I didn't understand until recently. Your soul isn't sitting in a vault at work. They don't have a key. You weren't robbed. You handed it over, one meeting at a time, one ignored message at a time, one "yeah nah it's fine" a day, because the alternative felt bigger than you could lift.

And I know how that sounds. I know it sounds like I'm blaming you. I'm not. I'm telling you the good news.

The good news is: if you gave it, you can take it back. You don't need a resignation letter, a runway, or permission from your partner. You need to stop pretending you don't know what you traded it for.

You are not the person in the suit. You never were. The person in the suit was the version you were renting out to pay for the life of the person you actually are. Somewhere along the way the rent stopped covering the cost.

They didn't take your soul. You were just leasing it out for too cheap.

Raise the rent.