💡 No more freedom porn, please

Today I am sharing the third and final essay in my series on portfolio careers.

This one is quite different from the other two. It’s more raw and unvarnished in ways I hadn't initially planned when I set out to write it. And I've held it’s contents close, knowing once released, the words can't be taken back.

Also, there are some tigers involved which is admittedly a bit… weird 😉 

Anyways, I digress…

What drove me to write this piece was a growing unease I've carried since January. As a portfolio career coach, I've watched the digital conversation about this model of work morph into what I can only describe as "freedom porn": seductive narratives that promise us that quitting our corporate jobs will somehow magically transform our lives and our relationship to work.

But that is simply not true! Not for my clients whose journeys I've witnessed up up close and personal for the past year. And most certainly not for me.

I wish it were that easy. I really, really do.

In actuality reshaping our careers to fit this model of work really needs to happen slowly if you are to truly make the changes we wish to. Those neat and tidy timelines we desperately crave our progress acquiesce to? Not nearly as easy to attain as it looks.

I say this because of what I see in my business. My clients don’t arrive at this professional crossroads from a place of triumph. They often end up at my digital door step because something has finally broken inside, spiritually and emotionally.

They are bone-tired.

With nervous systems primed for immediate ACTION.

And so the work of disentangling themselves from the belly of that corporate beast takes way more time than they wished it would.

The process can, at points, be super painful.

And liminal.

There are no quick fixes despite what some professionals are promising.

This essay inhabits that in between space between what work has been and what it might become. It chronicles my own slow, messy severance from the traditional employment model and the reclamation of my own discernment by bearing witness to the silly and, at times, tragic things I’ve experienced over the last twenty years of my adult working life.

Consider it a love letter to the afterward.

Perhaps it is finally time to let our bodies and spirits—not just our resumes and bank accounts—vote on what comes next even if we’re not quite sure what comes next.

Read Essay #3 of the series here → The Sovereign Builder

P.S. - If you need a release after reading, might I suggest dancing in your living room to some Doechi? Dancing and Doechi fix everything 😉