on quitting my job at 29

There is a way, I have only glimpsed, of living a life free from the artificial boundaries of time and bank accounts. Free from the critical gaze of my own self-loathing. 

In this life, an afternoon stretches on and on into a lazy sunset, the hot rays of light on my face, the dusting of sand and sea mist in the breeze. 

I want to follow the sunset into an evening of woolly jumpers, cups of camomile tea and jazz playlists, and then put it to bed with quiet whispers from lips hidden under layers of blankets.

This is the life I saw when I was 22, or 17, or maybe as a child, before the world became a place where finally I slumped down into bed, exhausted from a day in which I had careened through the maze of everyone else's expectations. 

Do you remember joy like I do? With maybe the wind whipping your hair into your face as you swing higher and higher and laughing hysterically at nothing and slowing finally down to lean back and squint into the sun? Nothing special, just another day at the park, with maybe a sweet friend, or just a couple of squirrels chattering and chasing each other up trees.

By the time I was 29 I had decided, implicitly or explicitly, to agree that life is built on agendas and institutions that define a life worth living. The definition of success equating more or less to the idea of being "responsible." Responsibility, hard work, concern for setting up the structure of my life to support acquiring the things and people that would validate my own precarious existence. 

But it wasn't precarious. All along, it turns out, I was worthy.

How could I put my heart and head on loan to another (or worse to a collective economic entity that isn't even human) for 8 hours a day and call that responsible? Just to do something because everyone else (it seemed) is doing it that way? 

At 30 I see my responsibility to myself, and my community of animals, plants, and humans differently. I have no business doing anything I can't do in joy and in alignment with my full being - physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.

I still work hard, but my work is to delight in noticing the beauty and spontaneity of the mundane, the everyday synchronicities, to delight in the colours of the blades of grass in the sun, and to watch the slow unfolding of a so-called miserable day, as it turns painfully beautiful with the soft murmur of the rain. 

I no longer want to chase after money or clients or to "build a business." I just want to talk with people and delight in the utter diversity of community. If I can help, I think I can help by remembering to play and to be child-like in my own activities, and maybe if I do this, you will do this too. And maybe if you do, you will be joyful and remember also who you are, even just for a moment.  

Maybe at 30 I was meant to grow young and not old. I was meant to sacrifice my sanity to the swing set and a few seconds of pure, unbounded laughter. Maybe I was meant to rediscover the passion and energy behind a curious mind, when learning is all about interest and discovery and has nothing to do with the reward of a certificate. 

Maybe it's just me, and that's fine. At the ripe old age of 30 I've had to lose my way so many times on the path to find myself that I can finally say that I trust it will be alright if I just let go and leap from the swing.