Breaking Up With Work

It's not me. It's you.

After 17 years, much prayer, thought and consideration, I’ve decided it’s time to leave the workplace as I know it. 

Although this may come as a shock to you,  please let me explain. This decision was not made lightly. 

I’ve loved it here. I’ve had some of the most incredible experiences in this place.  From starting as a 21 year-old intern on the world’s biggest and impactful talk show, to being a part of one the greatest and most historical political campaigns in 2008, to being on the team that transformed how the world watches TV and movies, to leading global marketing for one of the fastest growing startups in the world. My time at work has shaped me as much as any other part of my life, or more. It stretched my brain and my heart. It brought some of the greatest joys, adventures, memories and friendships in my life. It introduced me to the concept of always having 10+ bottles of kombucha in the refrigerator. I truly owe so much to the workplaces of my life. 

But in 2019 something started to change. This relationship started to feel different. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was you or me. Was I just too tired? Was I a living example of the Peter principle, finally promoted to the limit of my capabilities, doomed to tread water forever? And amidst all those deeply fear-infused, shame-ridden questions, my personal life was starting to take a nosedive – I knew my marriage wasn’t going to last. I was dealing with a heartbreaking chronic disease diagnosis in my family. But with you, things also started to take a turn. I wasn’t excited to get up and go to work like I used to. The days’ tasks started to feel dull and uninspiring. I thought maybe if I could grow and do more, things might feel different. But you — the concept of work, the place itself, and sometimes the people in it — consistently showed me through actions and words that I didn’t deserve growth, that I should be grateful for what I have, and stop asking for and even stop dreaming of more.  The leaders I used to look up to turned cold, cruel, and disrespectful. I stopped feeling seen, safe or supported, which was a new feeling, because I had so often been blessed to work in places and with leaders that filled the exact opposite role in my life. Work, old friend, I started to lose trust in you and, I believe, you also stopped trusting me. 

Work was becoming the primary relationship in my life. Maybe it always had been.  

Then it was March 2020, and very suddenly, all of that became less important as we both tried to survive this unprecedented, catastrophic global crisis. We both did our best to show up for each other and I’m so grateful for your effort. Even though it was a dark time, I found hope in the way we seemed to reach out towards one another and go beyond the limits of a transactional relationship. You were more understanding of the complexities of my life – you let me stay home, sign off when things felt too hard, prioritize my family and my relationships. Through it all, I think I still delivered, stayed creative, kept pushing boundaries, held my team together and did my part as a steward of a company. I met my deadlines and realized I can be really productive even when I’m not there with you, in person, under your watchful eye. Although the world felt like it was falling apart, I somehow felt more at ease and happy in our relationship. We started to agree that maybe this way of working could be something we could sink into. And honestly, you were becoming the primary relationship in my life. Maybe you always have been.  

That tenuous agreement, that fleeting moment of balance and wellbeing, didn’t last long.

When I started to feel it sour, I was desperate to find a way to keep the relationship intact, in its original form. To honor the history we have together. Please know I’ve done everything I can – I’ve been to therapy, conferences, wellness retreats. I’ve read books, taken courses (with my own money, because you wouldn’t invest in me). I’ve prayed to wake up with the devoted energy I used to feel for you. I even put you before my marriage, before my kid, before my own mental and physical health. Taking your calls at all hours of the day and night. Working through the night to show up as best I can. Spending hours in my car going back and forth to see you. I have sacrificed my health and my life to make this relationship work. 

I used to think you could love me back. I used to think you did. And what has really broken my heart is seeing one of the great loves of my life turn a cold shoulder to me when I was in the most pain. You once promised to support me in my growth, and maybe I was stupid to believe it, but I did. It turns out you’d rather see me stuck, stagnant and suffering.  You’d rather say “that’s your problem,” call me lazy, entitled. Instead of support and care, you box me back into a twisted version of what we used to have — more OKRs, more quotas, more days in office, monitoring badge swipes, tracking software, micromanaging me. You dismantle the systems you once put in place to protect me.  

As I shrunk myself down, dimmed my light, and engaged in what has been called “quiet quitting”, the darkest parts in me went back to the spiral of questions: if I wasn’t Black, a woman or a mother, could things be different? If I was disengaged, if I pulled away, it was as much a symptom as it was a survival tactic. 

Unfortunately, you taught me too well. You taught me to think critically, to analyze the root cause. To strike a deal that’s advantageous to the company at all costs. You gave me the tools to realize I’m on the bad end of a deeply unfair transaction. Around the time that I started to realize this, someone gave me the book “4,000 weeks: Time Management for Mortals.”  It rocked my world. The premise is the average person has 4,000 weeks in their lifetime, approximately 77 years. For whatever reason, 4,000 weeks doesn’t feel like a lot of time.  I did what most people do, did some back of the napkin math to see how much time I have left, if things go the average way. 

The answer woke me up. And it wasn’t just a more concrete realization of just how short life is. I realized that in my adult life, I have spent the majority of my time, my precious weeks, with you. At work. 70%, to be exact. I  have spent more time with you than with anyone else in my life. I was disgusted. My time is too precious and my life is too sacred. It’s not a fair exchange for me. 

I’m not retiring. I have a lot more left to offer this world. But I’m ending things with you, old friend, I’m not letting you loom over my life. I’m going to find a kind of work that serves me, that honors me, that works for me and not the other way around. I know this is hard to hear, because so many others are feeling the same way. 

The truth is, it’s not really your fault.

We created you to make things we wanted and needed, and people like Henry Ford, Fredrick Taylor Winslow and Max Weber came up with some principles to get things done quickly, at scale, cheaply. Those principles worked well at first, and things started happening fast. Throw in a couple centuries of industry, a few wars, a booming population and a good bit of corruption, and our experience of work has become something that we never intended. We let you eat and eat and eat, we let you grow too big to control, we let the prize you seemed to promise rot away at our hearts and minds until we thought you were a god, inevitable, insatiable, to be served at all costs. And now we are just starting to wake up blinking in the sunlight and ask, “what was the point?” 

"Not everything that is faced can be changed but. nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin

The thing about suffering is you think it’s just you. But once I started talking about my own experience, so many others have shared they feel the same way – people who are thinking more deeply about what work means to them for the first time, because they’ve been laid off, quit, or are simply in desperate need of change. 

I’m thinking a lot lately about a James Baldwin quote: "Not everything that is faced can be changed but. nothing can be changed until it is faced." Those of you who know me know that I’m in the midst of building a new company called Manual, with my co-founders Chris and Lexi. All of us are people who feel the same way about work as I’ve described in this letter. We’ve gone through the break up, we’ve faced the thing that needs changing. Now we’re ready to make change happen.

Our goal is to build a platform that lets everyone figure out and publicly, boldly articulate the kind of work experience they want. 

That means having a vision of your career and life instead of just taking another job. It means knowing the conditions required for your own thriving, and telling your boss about those conditions. It means expressing your unique way of working, your goals and your needs, as part of your resume. That’s what I want for myself, and that’s what I want for all of us working people. We hope we can also play a part in companies and leaders starting to reckon with their role in the toxic relationship we have developed with work, and actively tearing down and rebuilding their culture to change it. We’ve already started to dig in with a few great companies who believe in the mission. And as we start to build our own team culture (hi to Cody, our first official hire!) we’re determined to be living proof that successful companies can also be places that actually care about their employees as human beings, who live that care with actions and accountability and have a meaningful mission and profit.

So, to work, to the old version, the one I’ve known my whole adult life: It’s officially over. I want to thank you again for everything you’ve done for me. Like any great relationship, you never enter it thinking it’s going to end. But not everything is meant to last forever. Change is hard, but it can also be so good. When I think about great moments of transition in my life, there was always a better life on the other side. 

I’m so proud of all we accomplished and I truly wish you nothing but the best. 

Onwards,

m