- “...the myth of meritocracy teaches you that if you do say no — in or out of freelance life — you are closing off roads to your potential excellence...Of course, much of this ethos can be traced back to Calvinist understandings of a desire to work all the time as evidence of one’s status as Elect, aka pre-destined for eternal salvation. That’s the moral component. It just happens to intersect with the capitalist imperative to recognize and reward continual, preferably exponential, growth... The manager’s crisis refrain of “feel free to take some time, if you need it” is fundamentally a sorting question: are you someone who needs it or are you someone who can ignore that you do?“”
- “If you work for yourself in whatever capacity, you get the same question, only it’s coming from inside your brain. Are you a person who needs it, or are you a hustler who prides themselves on getting things done? Are you a person who needs it, or do you recognize times as crisis as a moment to distinguish yourself? Are you a person who needs rest and reprieve, or are have you wholly internalized the worst manager in the world and allowed them to shade every hour of your day?”
- “In hindsight, what excited me about the second vaccine shot was the permission structure that accompanied it. There wasn’t a productive choice I could make within that structure.”