TOW #21 - Quit Your Job

Barbara Hagerty, contributor to the Atlantic, wants you, a middle aged person, to quit your job. She backs up this claim with irrefutable scientific research and personal experience, giving her argument a great deal of clout. Hagerty's claim holds true - you should quit your job if you find it tiring and aimless, and move onto something new and exciting. This should be done for a variety of reasons. Firstly, those who change jobs or even find meaning or continue to learn new things in their work generally are mentally healthier, but are also physically healthier, dying at a later time in their lives and are less susceptible to heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimers. Furthermore, people who switch to new jobs are generally happier workers, and it gets them through the lull that many who are middle aged experience. Furthermore, hating one's job should cause the to change it, why stick with a career that you despise or makes you hate your entire life? People who work at jobs they do not like are more likely to come under the influence of depression, and again, they are generally unhealthier than those who do like their jobs. So quit your day job. Do what you love full time. You will be happier, live longer, and live better, all reasons to change your career and move unto something superior to it. Fears about being unsuccessful and failing, those are all possibilities. However, being unhappy versus seeking new opportunity and pursuing what you love should not be a question. The journey will be worth the outcome, and you will come out a more seasoned and better person because of it. So do it, quit that boring job, and pursue your wildest dreams, your body, mind, and soul will thank you for it.

TOW #20 - IRB

One Man's Wilderness, a book compiled by Sam Keith who used the journal entries of Richard Proenneke, is an intriguing story about a man living in the Alaskan wilderness with very little contact to outside groups. He shares his stories about how he builds a log cabin from scratch, and lives off the land and explores it. His journals provide excellent insights of his time spent by being terse yet descriptive, and also showing overall patterns of change in order for the reader to see things growing from week to week, month to month, instead of a slower day to day process. The author starts out being dropped off at twin lakes, having nothing but his backpack and a run down cabin which is not his own near him. Through a great deal of work, he is eventually able to build a home. After two months, he says "The cabin was complete now except for the fireplace and, maybe later on, a cache up on poles. It was a good feeling just sitting and reflecting... I don't think I have ever accomplished anything as satisfying in my entire life" (Keith 98). The author shares his thoughts with the readers in such a candid way that they feel as though they are in his mind, and it really gives the book a lovely and personal touch, without being overly descriptive to the point where the language that he uses is obnoxious and superfluous. As the author grows, and builds, and succeeds, and fails, the reader grows, and builds, and succeeds, and fails, too. The reader is rooting for this man to succeed, and wish him the best; he is an example of human ingenuity surviving on his own in not the most ideal conditions. This beautiful book deserves to be read by many, as it is a truly intriguing personal and physical journey.