Rich advises Paul (who is pretending to be a guy who works in video editing) on whether to quit his job or not. Together, they look into THE VOID. The VOID looks back. Paul digresses on corporatist epistemology. In the end everything is okay.

So the reason I asked you today if you would get coffee with me is, is

um, I'm trying to figure out my next move.

I thought you just wanted to see me, but, okay.

Well, how's work I was about to ask,

uh, well work's okay.

I've been there for a while.

You know, you guys, you guys worked with us.

Yeah.

At one point, um, doing the video editing, so I'm still there.

I have like a, I'm okay.

I have like a team now.

Oh,

Oh, nice.

Congrats.

They're good.

You know, I've been.

Seven years now.

Okay.

So I'm just like, you were somebody who I always thought kind of got

what a next step should be, and I was like, Hey, maybe, maybe Rich

would have like, I don't know.

What do you think?

What, what's it look like to you?

So it leaves me to ask the question, what's wrong?

Are you enjoying

work?

I mean, it's okay.

I go to work every day, you know,

that's a good sign.

I get on the train and I'm like, I don't go some, we're in the

office about three days a week, and about in, uh, about two days a week I'm home.

So that's, that's our post pandemic.

I, so I don't know, like the work is okay.

I'm not learning a whole lot.

I'm not really like, so I, that's what I'm trying to figure out.

So, are you happy at work,

Richard?

What is happiness?

When you're in your forties and you're working and editing the videos and

putting them on YouTube, what does it all

let me ask different, ask it differently.

Do you like the social setting of being around the people

you work with in your team?

Like, do you look forward to seeing your team and your colleagues?

I like some of them.

Sure.

I don't love my, you know, the management team, but I, I do like

some of the people I work with.

I like my peers.

I, I love my group.

They're great.

I want them to succeed.

The

The work's not challenging you though.

No, the work is not challenging.

I can now do it not in my sleep.

It's a lot of clerical and a lot of like, just, just, you know, you're

just kind of batch processing hours and hours of video and putting the titles on

Is the pay grade?

No, of course not.

It's okay.

I, I mean, I'm fine.

My kids are okay.

They're in school and you know, it's, college is gonna suck, but I'm okay.

I can hear it in your voice though.

You're not happy and you're wondering if you should make a change.

I am not happy.

I'm wondering if I should make a change.

We're here having coffee now.

Yes.

Do you want me to tell you to quit your.

job?

Kinda, have you been putting feelers out?

Are you having other coffees

Of course not.

So, okay.

I will give you advice then.

Let me give you advice.

You're not happy.

No.

You feel like you're sleepwalking through your work days.

True.

That's kind of lame.

Yeah.

You're a talented guy.

Thanks.

Um, and, uh, you.

to leave, but you're scared because it's scary to leave.

It's scary.

The uncertainty ahead, the instability.

You've got a family, how are the kids, by the way?

They're great.

They're doing good.

I mean, up and down, typical kid stuff, but ultimately they're,

they're doing better than I am.

I'm gonna tell you something about advice, Paul.

Okay?

Let's break character for a minute here.

Break character.

15 years ago, I would've told you, quit that job.

Douse the place with gasoline.

Get on that motorcycle and there's like a wall of flames

behind you as you ride away.

Because I was giving advice to me.

Sure.

I was your business partner for years.

That sounds about right.

but what I've learned is that for most people, that kind

of chaos and uncertainty on the other side is hard to stomach.

Can I tell you what I, what I really think here, you and I, you.

In a very chaotic environment.

I did.

so did I.

Different, but, but ultimately, like I had, we had unstable relationships with

our fathers would be a good way to put it.

Um,

what we should name the, the podcast by the way, unstable Fathers.

Um, and that's right.

I'd never been in an office before I was 22.

Yeah, right.

I didn't know what, I didn't cubicles.

I didn't know what that was.

Yeah.

And you know, when I saw a movie like Office Space, I went,

well, that looks kind of nice

It's a comfortable setting.

Everybody hates their life.

But I'm like, well, the printer's broken.

That's kind of cool.

You can mess around with the printer.

If you ever worked in a New York, I worked in a New York

pizzeria when I was a teenager office.

Space looked

that's the thing.

Like there's, there's

of cheese.

When I went home, I was, it was just this grotesque setting.

It was like being in a

There is a great piece of advice I have to tell you about a job.

I had this one of the worst, but there's a great piece of advice, uh, which was

like, if you don't know what you want to do, go into the army and then you'll

know that you want to do something else.

Right.

Like that's the advice for 18 year olds who can't quite figure it out.

I once had a job, uh, in college.

I got a work, it wasn't work study.

It was like, it paid like $12 an hour.

It was great.

And the job was slowly lowering pieces of glass used for medical injections

into an 850 degree salt bath.

At which point boiling.

Would, would, would set your shirt on fire.

Oh God.

You either wear these big gloves and it was summer and

like no one lasted at this job.

I just kind of kept going cause I like $12 an hour.

It's money.

yeah,

you're a kid.

Short

catches, fire.

And, um, anyway, regardless.

I do think that most people approach work not as like, where am I?

What's going on?

Let's create a hurricane, or I'm going over the cliff.

Most people are like, I want a job and I want to do my work.

And I, I, I, I would prefer to be a classical composer, but I'm not.

Yeah.

And, uh, I want to have a good life that's respectful and I want to have a house.

Like, I think, like that's, that's most of the world.

And then we have injected this idea that that has to associate itself

with meaning and focus and life.

that's right.

And, and, and, but look, I can't fault the person in their thirties

and forties wondering, is this it?

Right?

And, and I,

well that's the advice here is very different, right?

Because if you're in your twenties, just quit.

Just stop.

Cause cuz you're actually driving every, you're driving everyone crazy anyway.

You don't think you are.

But they all know

No, but also take some risks.

You don't have kids yet.

I mean, assuming you don't have kids, you don't have a mortgage, you don't have

all the things that kind of weigh you down and make the equation a lot harder.

Go, go try stuff.

Go try stuff.

Tell me, I, I'll tell you, I'm saying this as someone,

lots of 20 year olds have quit on me.

Like it's not, it sucks, it's pain in the ass, but go.

But also when, when it happens as a boss, you're just like, okay.

The other thing I've learned is that when people come

to you for that advice, they actually don't want the advice.

They already have sort of a preconceived idea of what they should do.

Sometimes they actually, I've had examples where people did want

the advice and they actually took it, but usually, It took time.

90% of the

the , they had to kind of stew in it for a while.

Most of the time they just don't, they actually just want

permission to do what they

that's right.

This is funny cuz we're, we've started this podcast about being advisors, right?

Yeah.

But we really should call it, um, Zian Ford permission.

Like that's, that's what people want.

Yes.

And I honestly, I.

I'll give it to you right here in the podcast.

You have permission.

Whatever you need to do, just go do it.

Just go do it.

I, I wanna, I wanna also give a comforting sort of signal back out to

the person that just can't seem to do it.

I have friends, I know people who are just generally frustrated in kind of

this perpetual state of frustration.

Not unhappiness, but just feeling like, you know, they get to

vent with their friends about the job, but they never leave.

They never actually take the leap.

And what I wanna tell those people is that's okay if, if you don't have

it in you, like again, this is not.

The 20 years ago me, which would be like, you coward, you sad, sad coward.

Now I'm more like, I understand where you are, uh, and I understand

why you haven't made the move.

What I would, the advice I would give those people is

stop judging that as failure.

Like you're, you're doing okay.

You've made decisions.

You've actually made probably sacrifices cuz you're taking care of

either elders or kids or whatever.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Don't beat yourself up about it.

Yes, they dive into their hobbies and they wait for their vacations.

That's normal.

That's like most of the world.

I don't know why people look for joy at work and

look for comfort . It's work

that's a very out of fashion statement to

make, right?

Like you're supposed to find fulfillment and joy and happiness.

We are also in the most wealthy advanced society in history

where you can pretty much cherry pick what you want to do, right?

Um, but.

Try to find that good place where you are.

Like there, most people don't have the stomach to just jump into the void and

say, wee, let's go see what this is about.

And that's okay.

People

get real excited about that void.

I've been in the void a couple times.

It's not that great.

It's a void.

Sometimes you're able to, yeah.

I'll tell you what.

look,

So, you know, rich, look, this is Paul talking here.

Part of me would love to just go home and mess around with

computers and I have a little time, a little flexibility in my life.

I could do that, but I'm over here wearing a sweater and a shirt.

Mm-hmm.

talking to you in an office.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Because that's really good and healthy to have to set

some challenges, try some things and do things in a stable way.

Ideally,

you get to do, uh, you get to do stuff that makes you feel

fulfilled and good, and you also make lots of money to having both is the home.

Usually it's, I've been at this consulting firm for 11 years.

I'm unhappy, but they pay me lots of

money.

There is a lot of that.

There is, I'm, I'm building a wine cellar.

I, I can't ever get another job, right?

Or there is, I lease the studio in Gowans and I'm

an artist and I love painting.

But I'm not making any money.

There's a gallery, there's a gallery showing in six months,

like it, those are the two.

Now, if you can somehow get both of those to have, that's why people

are just enamored with athletes.

It's not their athletic ability, it's they get to kick a ball and make lots of money.

Yeah.

But you know, no one's ever happy.

No one.

Well that's, that's a separate podcast.

That's a separate series of

that's the thing.

So I, but this is back to the advice, right?

Like there is, it's as simple as the grass always being greener.

God, you do yourself a favor if you just cherish what you have.

And I don't know.

I don't know why.

My wiring is such, I'm an anxiety driven person, but I swear to God,

the minute I had $2,000 in checking, I was like, I'm gonna be all right.

Yes.

Know what I hate?

I hate that the job is the structure that is now supposed

to deliver meaning in society.

It used to be the.

It used to be the

And it could be the

which has its own set

No.

And it could be civic life.

Well, I know, but it, but it's, but you had like mainstream

pro Protestantism and so on.

You used to have these structures in life where it was like, and it was stuff

that we roll our eyes at now, like the Lions Club and the Rotary Club, and it

was very, and it had a lot of problems.

It was very male and so on and so forth, but, but there was this kind

of orderly life that you could get.

And your job was part of it, but not the only focus.

And so now we have this very corporatist view of reality in

which you have to be, the job has to deliver, meaning it has to make people

happy, it pays for your healthcare.

It's replaced.

It's the center of your life.

But I, I don't know if that is sustainable for society to

have the job be the unit of meaning.

I, I think we, that's, and that's, I wanna grab the person who I'm

pretending to be by the shoulders and say, what the hell's wrong with you?

You have a Keurig machine and people pay you to use a computer.

You're doing great.

Yeah.

And you've got those extra cycles to do stuff

that is meaningful to you.

Look, again, I don't wanna discourage that person from not chasing

the thing that could give them meaning, but also pay their bills.

I don't wanna discourage the that person because that was the person,

that's the person that is my makeup.

My makeup is, I gave myself, I, I took care of my family.

that's, you going to make your

Yeah.

I'm back to me.

Right?

next job.

Exactly.

The next job will not have more meaning than the old.

That's, that's the rub,

Unless there is, there are transitions.

I, someone that I love very much went from a corporate job to a not-for-profit

job and there it is, hands-on and they work with homeless people and they make

the world objectively better like people get fed because of the work they do.

and that they get paid less money, but their life has more

complexity and richness and meaning.

So there are, there are transitions, but you are not gonna go from video editing

gig one and say, Hey, I'm really good with YouTube over to video editing gig two

and find

joy all of a sudden.

the same shit.

you may do it for more.

Look, if it pays better and you can go get it, go get it.

Good for

money lets you go out and buy meaning

that's the best part of it.

Go for it.

Go for it.

Um, I do wanna use another podcast episode to talk about quitting

your job, to try the thing.

You've got some savings, you have an idea and you want to go.

And I'd love to explore that.

That's a, that's a different case.

A different example.

Um, The advice is nuanced here.

It's not quit or don't quit.

It's, you're looking in the wrong place for that ju that nugget of happiness.

are looking for a personal solution to a societally

structured weirdness, right?

Like you're looking for an answer that kind of isn't there.

It it take care of your friends and family, live your life, um, and, uh, don't

feel bad that you don't love your job.

Yeah, it's not, you didn't do anything.

wrong.

Um,

Look.

The do I quit my job or not is like the ultimate challenge of

living in a capitalist society.

Yes.

Yes.

That's right.

And, and there's another, there's another consequence of this capitalist society.

We've shit on social media a lot on this podcast for good reason, right?

And I wanna shit out, shit on it once more.

All the extra cycles outside of that job, um, goes into airing grievance.

complaining

and watching dumb videos.

There's a lot of tech out there where you can signal out in constructive,

creative, interesting ways, whether it be writing or if you're a

coder, putting some projects out.

There are other ways to express yourself and find fulfillment.

Uh, the problem is social, um, really eats up all the extra cycles.

You just sit on that toilet and just scroll.

I think we, we helped here.

I think we just wanna give people some perspective.

This isn't about clear cut advice, but rather perspective with those

extra cycles while you're not at work, you know what you should do.

Paul,

Check out ziti ford.com and send an email to hello ziti

ford.com if you need any advice.

We

love giving advice, we hope.

Uh, thanks for the coffee.

It was good seeing you, Jim Best of luck in your video editing job.

I

think I need to do it like special voices

when I'm playing a character.

Oh yes, of course.

Richard.

let's

Oh Damnit.

Nailed.

Have a lovely week everyone.