A few emails came in after my note went out last night. The general sentiment was this:
Make money to fund your life.
Sounds obvious.
But that’s not how a lot of us treat money. We treat it like this thing we use to acquire stuff, have status over others and one day it will fund the life of our dreams (retirement).
Working for retirement builds a culture that says it’s okay to burn out in your 20s 30s 40s because come retirement you will be able to just relax.
Sounds boring AF.
What if we slow down for a minute right now?
Maybe take our work a little less seriously. Don’t take it home with us, leave a little earlier, stress out less when our boss is having a bad day.
Create more brain space for the things we do want to do.
Hanging with friends
Spin class
Writing a book
Making food for loved ones
Painting, singing, piano playing
Reading teen novels
Netflix and chillin’ with your partner
You know, passions.
What if we could weave in the passion a little bit every day? It probably would take some of the pressure off of loving your job every single minute you’re there.
My friend Susan was one of those peeps that wrote me last night. She also posted on FB about a fundraiser she’s a part of in New York and why it means so much to her.
Here’s Susan:
I was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in my twenties, and I’m not going to sugar coat it… it really sucks. Being told that you’re going to go blind someday, that they don’t know exactly when, and that there is no treatment or no cure… that’s the kind of thing that can pretty much suck the life right out of you. I’m an artist, I’m a visual storyteller, and I’m just a human being who loves being able to see sunsets and nature and the faces of the people I care about.
Today is Rare Disease Day. It’s a day that was created because rare diseases like the one I have often get overlooked by policy makers, researchers, and the general public. But I’m really lucky that theFoundation Fighting Blindness is working with researchers across the nation and the world to help support the work needed to find treatments and cures. Just this year, the FDA approved the first-ever treatment for a retinal disease! That’s AMAZING and fills me with so much hope.
This is exactly the shit we’re talking about now.
Susan’s not waiting for retirement to kick in to live her life. She’s traveling, painting, going to school, cat momming and generally doing the damn thing.
Just go donate before her fundraiser fills up and it’s over then you have a terrible feeling that you missed out and you’ll live with this regret for the rest of your life.
Mostly this email was sent so I could brag about my friend.
But also another reminder that if we say yes to the things we don’t want to do (stressing over work) we are saying no to the things we do want to do (our life!).
Danielle
PS. Did you donate?
