Angie and I joked that in just a few months, we had already spent more time together than career-focused couples do in a whole year. This felt important: she took quality time seriously and was willing to sacrifice things like money in return for connection, adventure, and love.

I was leaving behind my home and my identity as an achiever, a safe refuge which had gotten me to this point but was no longer serving me.

So many professionals accept this type of work arrangement as the best they can hope for, convincing themselves that work is not meant to be enjoyed. In fields like consulting, finance, and law, this situation is even normalized and many people enter these careers expecting to make sacrifices in their lives before they start.

“Good work and good education are achieved by visitation and then absence, appearance and disappearance. Most people who exhibit a mastery in a work or a subject have often left it completely for a long period in their lives only to return for another look. Constant busyness has no absence in it, no openness to the arrival of any new season, no bir

“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t write a book for the money. I wrote it because it was hard and it was a way to do something that mattered to me. You always claim you want to find something to commit to, but you always give up. A book is a long journey. Maybe writing a book will help you finally understand how to commit to something.”

“Finding good work and doing good work is one of the ultimate ways of making a break for freedom.”⁠3 DAVID WHYTE

I was starting to see that my real journey had never been about escaping work; instead, it was about searching for a deeper kind of work that I could commit to.

Now, with writing, I happily embrace the challenge of getting stuck and feeling frustrated about how to move forward and I don’t seem to tire of it. This is because there is no “should” in my relationship to writing. I care about it. If writing required extreme effort and constant mental contortions, it wouldn't be my good work.

again. Yet the ongoing quest becomes easier over time because the more times you lose your way and then come back to center, the more confidence and determination you’ll have to keep going. And that type of determination is one of the most powerful forces in the world.