Screw You, I Quit! by Joshua Millburn Pay close attention, this story might be about you.

Once upon a
time, there was a guy. This guy had it made. He was in his late twenties, he had a six-figure corporate
job, he was well respected by his peers and subordinates and bosses at work, and he seemed passionate
and friendly and outgoing and successful. He was living the corporate dream. People saw his nice house
with too many bedrooms, his too-fancy car, his ridiculous gadgets, and his life of opulence and thought, I
want to be like that guy. They saw all of those things—all of that superfluous stuff—and they just knew
he was successful. But he wasn’t successful at all. Maybe he was ostensibly successful—displaying his
status symbols as if they were trophies—but he wasn’t actually successful. The people who envied his
life didn’t see the other side, they didn’t see the man behind the curtain. He did a good job of masking
his fear, his debt, his anxiety, his stress, his loneliness, his guilt, his depression. He displayed an
impressive facade, revealing only what he thought the world wanted him to reveal. Worst of all, he
wasn’t happy with his life. 86 Joshua Millburn | Ryan Nicodemus I know this story because I am that guy.
Or at least I was that guy: Joshua Fields Millburn, the unhappy young executive. And this is my story
about why I quit my job to pursue my passions and live a meaningful life, and I’m going to show you how
and why you should pursue your passions too, why you must live a meaningful life if you want to be
happy. This journey started because I was tired of not being happy, plain and simple. Yes, I had a “great”
job by cultural standards. But working 70 to 80 hours per week for a corporation was not cutting it for
me. Not that working for a company is inherently bad or evil or wrong, it’s not. In fact, I had a lot of
mixed emotions about leaving my job. I love a lot of the people there, and there were a ton of things I
enjoyed about the job itself: I enjoyed leading people, I enjoyed developing people and helping them
see their true potential, and I got used to the comforts the big salary afforded me. But I was empty
inside. I was not living a meaningful life, I was not fulfilled or satisfied, and I certainly was not free.
That’s because I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do. I wasn’t pursuing my passions. I wasn’t living
my mission. Instead, I made six figures per year but got further into debt every time I got a pay raise. I
was trying to buy happiness. I was trying to fill the void with things, attempting to give meaning to that
which has no meaning. And over the course of a year—in late 2009 and early 2010—my life came
crashing down in front of me. It was as if I had no power over my life as it collapsed before my eyes. In
2009 my mother fell victim to cancer and I watched her die slowly and painfully as she battled it. Shortly
thereafter, my marriage crumbled and it was completely my fault. During that time, my job became
mundane and what I once Screw You, I Quit! 87 Joshua Millburn | Ryan Nicodemus thought was my
mission in life became void of any meaning. And to top it off, my fiction writing—my true passion—
halted. It was around that time I stopped caring about life, and my mental and physical health
deteriorated. I was flying in ever-diminishing circles. It’s sad that it took that series of life-altering events
to wake me up, to make me take massive action to become more free, to find meaning in my life. In
2010 I stumbled across the concepts of minimalism and simplicity and unstoppable passion. More
specifically, I stumbled across a handful of blogs that opened a door in my mind and changed my life and
led me to today (N.B. prior to discovering these blogs, I never even read blogs and thought they were
generally a waste of time). I first discovered Everett Bogue’s, Colin Wright’s, Joshua Becker’s, and Leo
Babauta’s blogs via Twitter; I was intrigued by their stories, which lead me to other interesting sites. All
of these people had different stories and different perspectives on living a more meaningful life, and yet
their fundamental message was the same: the stuff in your life is not going to make you happy, and
there is another way to live your life, a way in which you can grow as a person and contribute to others
in a meaningful way, a way in which you can be happy and fulfilled and passionate and free. The life that
these people were living was the life that I wanted to live—not that I wanted their lives, but I wanted
the freedom that their lifestyles afforded them—so I adopted the principals of minimalism and applied
them to my life. I got rid of unnecessary things so I could focus on what’s important in my life, so I could
focus on relationships and pursuing my passions and living a meaningful life, so I could focus on growth
and contribution. Screw You, I Quit! 88 Joshua Millbur