I feel this so hard, especially with regard to deciding on the “purpose” of my career. There are so many directions I could go with it that I’m paralyzed for choice. I’m ten years into a career in tech as a software developer and am now being forced to confront this fork in the road: do I continue trying to proverbially bash my head against the wall that is software developer interviews for a job that I know my heart won’t be aligned with, or do I take the scary leap of faith into trying to forge a path in a new domain that I’m heart-aligned with that I know very little about. Some people are much better at tolerating work that does not align with their heart, but I’ve realized that I am decidedly not such a person.
Have you heard about the degrowth movement? The topic of abundance and intentionally moving backwards towards a world with more intentionally scarcity is very much aligned with the philosophy of degrowth. Indeed, I think all of your content is in some way or another related to the degrowth philosophy.
I like the degrowth approach. I think there’s a lot of value there. The problem (I guess) is that folks read that and think we want to make the world smaller. But I don’t think that’s the case at all.
I have been where you are, but back when writing software was a brotherhood of folks curious about where it would all go. I worked eight or ten companies and always went with the post that would encourage me to learn something new.
I moved to a related field when it stopped being fun.
I would bet that you know which direction you need to go. Here’s a trick I have used: assign one path to ‘heads’, another to ‘tails.’ Flip a coin, but as you do, listen for the little voice that says ‘I hope it’s xxx!’. Then ignore the toss outcome and do what the little voice hoped for.
As a man once said: Easy choices: hard life. Hard choices: easy life.
Good luck @seanchen1991.
Decreasing GDP is what degrowth would result in, yes, but it’s also not the point. Degrowth asks how we might reshape and redefine the economy such that everyone has their needs met. That would entail scaling down industries like the military industrial complex, fast fashion, etc. and putting those resources towards socially beneficial programs like education, care work, jobs programs, etc.
It’s about breaking the exploitative patterns of extraction that power the entire growth-based economy. There’s so much natural excess and abundance that exists all around us if only we’d care to dig out heads out of the sand and ask the important questions about how to utilize it with a spirit of reciprocity and respect for the natural world.
Our productivity and attention are also things that are being extracted for profit. For a while I couldn’t quite put on finger on the throughline of your work, Joan. I couldn’t articulate a cohesive underlying theme that runs through all of your writing until I started getting more into degrowth. Now, I see that your writings speak to breaking free from the extractive patterns that the growth-at-all-costs capitalist ideology holds on our time, our talents, and our treasures. At least that’s my interpretation. Correct me if I’m wrong 
This is it. But this is part of the problem with the word Degrowth. People think it means an all or nothing contraction, when it’s a lot more complicated than that.
I don’t know what other word we use, though.
The brain’s dopamine-driven novelty seeking was designed for an environment of scarcity, not abundance (Berridge & Robinson, 2016). So we are fighting a design adaptation handicap here.
On an engagement front, I’ve found that cultivating your own (not society’s) sense of taste is an intuitive filter that helps to cut out a lot of options.
However, the ultimate acceptance is that most of us have more than enough, so applying the ‘do I need’ question can at least slow down the reflex.
At a societal level, it all feels like a forest fire whipped by powerful winds.
The struggle is not letting society’s sense of taste subtly intrude / influence.
We’re constantly bombarded with messages, ideologies etc.
Which is why I keep social media apps permanently off my phone. I just don’t need that extra exposure.