This day would turn out to be different. The phone vibrated in his pocket. From the strength and length of the vibration, David knew it was an email notification. It was a hot summer night. He had just gone out for a walk to cleanse himself from a tiresome day at work. On weekdays, this was part of his daily routine.
Every morning he woke up at 7:30 am, stretched a bit, brushed his teeth, took a cold shower, stared at the bathroom mirror wondering what he was doing with his monotonous life, got dressed, prepared a strong cup of black coffee, sat down at the desk in his home office, let out a long and heavy sigh, opened the laptop, and greeted everyone with a dry Good morning on the company chat.
By 8 am he was already working, checking emails, calendar meetings, and internal messaging chat notifications. He went through each day as best as he could with a brief lunch break. He finished work by 5:30 pm, put on gym clothes and went to the gym next door where he spent around an hour.
He went back home, took another cold shower, went out for a long walk, got back home by 8 pm, prepared and ate dinner while watching a comedy series, read for an hour, and was in bed by 11:30 pm.
The email notification caught his attention immediately. The subject line was unusually vague: ‘Discussion with Lisa: Thursday 9 AM.’ It was just a calendar invitation, nothing more in there.
David looked at the calendar to double-check. He confirmed that the meeting was scheduled for the next morning. His stomach dropped. A mix of emotions hit him all at once, too many to untangle in the moment.
He recognized the pattern. The vague subject line, the early meeting slot, someone from HR instead of his manager. It wasn’t the first time he had received a similar email. He accepted the invitation as soon as he got back home and started mentally preparing for what seemed to be inevitable.
That night he had a quick salad for dinner. While chopping the vegetables, he went down memory lane to the last time he was laid off. It was in September 2015, almost five years after he had graduated with a master’s degree in computer science. Prior to that, he had, for reasons that were beyond his comprehension, completed a double-major in computer science and philosophy.
You could say that was a natural step for someone who grew up infatuated with Hegel’s thought. Of course, he didn’t understand a single thing he read about the German philosopher.
David’s first contact with philosophy was through the novel Sophie’s World. It served as a good introduction to philosophy for him, after which he decided he was a Hegelian. Subsequently, he read Hegel’s Wikipedia entry, then the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry. At one point he spent his monthly allowance buying Hegel’s books from the bookshop near his place. He could never go beyond the first twenty pages of any of the books that he stacked on the night stand next to his bed. Yet, something about Hegel and his philosophy made him want to learn more about it.
Although David spent a great deal of his time reading philosophy without really getting much of what he read, he kept his intellectual pursuits to himself. When he was with his friends, he preferred to discuss rap music and spy movies.
Something about philosophy captivated David, and he couldn’t really identify what that was. He wasn’t really the intellectual type growing up. He was never an avid reader, even though he did pick up a book every now and then. At school he was required to read some of the literary classics too. But he only ever managed to finish the novels that he found interesting.
The rest he would just skim through, enough to write a passing report. For better or worse he paid no attention in class, and preferred to learn by doing. He enjoyed the summers because he could spend his time camping in the mountains with his friends, or basking by the beach playing basketball and football all day long.
His love for building got him to study computer science, and his inexplicable interest in philosophy made him pursue it as a double-major.
After finishing his master’s degree in 2010, he moved to a new city to join a medium-sized company as an intern, and stayed there as a junior software engineer. The salary was decent. He could afford his own studio apartment, enjoy restaurant meals several times a month, buy books and any gadgets he needed, subscribe to streaming services, party out with his friends on the weekends, and have enough to save on the side.
After five years of learning the ropes and climbing up the corporate ladder with a promotion every two years, David was let go in a round of company-wide layoffs to cut costs. At the time, he received an email for a meeting the next morning in one of the company conference rooms. He wasn’t the only one who had gotten it, and because of the vagueness of the subject, and the 15-minute interval between him and a few of his other friends, they knew what was in store for them.
David had a year worth of savings, so he didn’t really worry about losing his job. On the day of the meeting, he was asked to clean up his desk, hand over the company laptop and access, and leave by 3 pm at the latest.
The uncertainty didn’t worry him. He was confident he’d find a new job in no time. All the Stoic philosophy books he had read taught him the importance of focusing on what he could control. What he couldn’t control could either be managed or hedged. A layoff was one of those things. There might come a time at a company where you either become redundant or obsolete, and there’s only so much you can actively do to prevent it from happening.
But you can be mentally and economically prepared for such a thing by keeping some money on the side, diversifying your income streams, and preparing an action plan for what comes next.
David was economically ready. But he didn’t have a plan b. He took a month off, bought a couple fiction and nonfiction books, and spent his day in his apartment, taking walks, at the gym, coffee shops, and bars. During that month he had enough time to reflect on his life, his future, and what he wanted to do.
He knew he wanted to start a business of his own, but he didn’t have enough money to sustain himself for a long time until it took off. So he decided he was going to find a good paying job, spend a few years there, save enough money, all while building something on the side that could become his full-time gig later on.
Three months after his first layoff, he managed to land a position at a big tech firm. The benefits package was more than he had even hoped for, he got to move to a big city where all the action happens, rub shoulders with VCs, entrepreneurs, and marketmakers, and work on projects that he was interested in alongside other brilliant developers. It was almost a dream come true.
Or half a dream come true. Year in and year out, the amount of work and long hours David had to put in rendered the other half of the dream almost impossible. While he kept growing the numbers in his bank, savings, and investment accounts, he simply didn’t have the time, or energy, to build anything on the side. By the fourth year at the company, the dream to start a business was long gone, at least consciously.
Unconsciously, frustration was slowly building up. On the surface, everything looked great. David’s life was all he could ask for despite the stress of his day job. He could work remotely if he wanted, spent a few days over at his parents three times a year at their new place which he bought for them, vacationed for a month every year during which time no one could reach him.
His dating life was not uneventful but none of his coffee, museum, cinema, and party outings materialized into anything serious. He was locked-in on his job to the extent that it became his identity. A monotonous one. In fact, that was all he could talk about even on a very first date with a woman he matched with on a dating app.
Often things didn’t extend to a second date. But sometimes he did manage to find someone who matched his vibe and interests, both would end up talking about their jobs, the cool stuff they’re building, and the problems they’re solving. They would then end up at his or her place, have sex, let off some steam, then go their separate ways.
Despite the latent and mounting frustration, David couldn’t get himself to take the plunge and start a business. The email notification felt like a powerful slap on the face, though. After the light dinner, he poured himself a neat glass of Laphroaig 18 and sat on the sofa in silence.
Part of him was relieved. Suddenly it was as though he was awoken from his darkest slumber. Was that what Kant felt when he read Hume? He thought to himself. Kant described the feeling he got upon reading the Scottish philosopher in those exact terms. Kant would then go on to write one of the most influential books in the history of philosophy.
Looking at the scotch glass half full, David thought this was the push he needed to go solo. Yet, part of him was angry. He couldn’t understand why he was angry rather than sad or frustrated. What could he be possibly angry at or about? The company? His boss? The lack of appreciation? The amount of hours he put into work that got him nowhere?
Halfway through his second glass things got clearer. He was angry at himself. He had forgotten his north star. He was supposed to be building a business on the side and diversifying his income streams. He took that job as a stepping stone to become an entrepreneur. Instead, the job became his identity. He lived and breathed for the job. A little over six years later, he was all alone, with no business, and almost no personal life. What have I become? I need to start taking action once and for all. He thought. This time, however, unlike the first layoff, he had saved enough cash to sustain himself for several years without even touching his investment portfolio.
A wave of calmness and serenity overtook him, as though he had found himself again. He poured a third glass of whiskey and, feeling a bit tipsy, decided to scroll through Twitter. The scrolling ritual, mixed with the tipsiness and the wave of conflicting emotions pulled him into a familiar trance. His thumb moved mechanically, hypnotizing him as the scrolling turned into a mind-numbing activity.
The feed unfolded its usual melting pot of chaos: articles with clickbait titles. Engagement farming masquerading as thoughtful takes. Bot-generated ‘wisdom’. Porn. A picture of someone’s dinner somewhere in the world. A stranger’s divorce announcement and what it taught him about B2B sales. Memes. Productivity evangelists preaching the 5 AM gospel. Political feuds. More memes. Podcast clips promising to unlock the secrets to becoming a billionaire by following 5 steps.
David’s eyes skimmed through the posts, his mind overstimulated and numb at the same time. In between the algorithmic noise, something caught his attention. He stopped scrolling, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, took another sip, and opened his eyes. An image appeared of what seemed to be a book cover he had never heard of, accompanied by a few lines that spoke directly to him. It must’ve been a quote from that book. He bookmarked the post and saved the book cover’s image. He read the quote several times.
“Don’t waste your time, do something worthwhile with it. But what can that mean: worthwhile? Finally to start realizing long-cherished wishes. To attack the error that there will always be time for it later….Take the long-dreamed-of trip, learn this language, read those books, buy yourself this jewelry, spend a night in that famous hotel. Don’t miss out on yourself. Bigger things are also part of that: to give up the loathed profession, break out of a hated milieu. Do what contributes to making you more genuine, moves you closer to yourself.”
It felt like a wakeup call. He fell into a deep sleep.