So, what have you been doing with your time?

Or the joy of breaking, and fixing, my steering

I hadn’t even gotten out of bed on Friday, January 20, 2023 at 7:14 AM; my wife brought our 18 month old son into bed, the sun was just starting to trickle in.  I stopped tickling him for a few moments to check my phone and saw this text.  Confused, I soon found that (1) I no longer had access to my work email, and (2) at the top of my personal inbox, an email from Google People Operations with the subject “Notice regarding your employment”.

My pulse began to race.   

After 7.5 years at Google I was being canned via email.  I scrolled down to digest the details.

For security purposes, I (like the 6000+ others who simultaneously received this email) was locked out of my work email and Google Drive.  So my job responsibilities were effectively over.

I was being given nearly a year’s worth of severance.

My wife later reported that what slowly emerged was a “shit-eating grin”.

***

I had a great job at Google.  Everyone knows about the compensation, work-life balance, perks, etc.  Whenever I was asked about the best perk, my sincere-if-cheeseball response was that I worked with people who were, with very few exceptions, genuinely kind, smart, and values-driven. 

But I also felt stuck…for years.  Not long after covid hit, my product area’s strategy shifted, and by 2021 I found my work to be frequently low priority or irrelevant. I spent much of that time spinning my wheels, dealing with Google’s somewhat-infamous issues (at least among tech industry folks) with building internal consensus, bureaucracy, and getting things done.  

I also let that spinning turn into full-on stalling for a while. Even though I knew I was wasting my time, I was able to take advantage of parental leave benefits, and kept telling myself that my work-life balance afforded me the ability to invest time in extracurricular sources of meaning (since 2019, that source of meaning has primarily been intellectual, ritual, and communal engagement as a semi-observant Jew). 

When I eventually tried to pivot into areas at the company where I’d feel more productive, I met additional roadblocks that were largely out of my control. But leaving the company also didn’t feel like a viable option--not only did I lack a clear vision of what I wanted to do next, but nearly any other job would require more effort for less compensation. While I had made tactically sound choices over the years to get to this point, doing everything I was supposed to do to land well professionally, these choices apparently led me to strategic paralysis.

In short, I couldn’t get things done in my role, and didn’t see a clear path to making a change.

I had broken steering.

Sasha Chapin describes “broken steering” as:

[P]eople feeling, for a long period of time, that their efforts to exert control don’t do anything. They show up to work, click their mouse, make suggestions, and nothing happens, and it’s hard to tell if their work ultimately matters. There is a classic phrase for this—being a “cog in the machine.” But there are even worse feelings than being a cog—at the very least, that role involves the transfer of mechanical energy. What’s worse is just feeling like a banana lying in the dust.

In an instant back in January, I was liberated from feeling stuck, and suddenly anything seemed possible. Hence, the “shit-eating grin”.

***

As I began to tell my friends and family about what I had regarded as my incredibly good fortune, I’d hear “so what are you going to do with your time?” And 9 months later, I’m still getting some version of “so what are you doing with your time?”

I’m fixing my steering.

Fixing my steering means interacting with time more intentionally and meaningfully, rebuilding that feeling of agency that I let atrophy over my years at Google. 

Time is precious, of course, and prevailing wisdom is that we need to “use” our time wisely--to be productive (“time is money!”), to serve others, and of course to enjoy! Under this logic, time becomes this currency that we exchange for our ability to survive, to justify our existence, and to have pleasure and/or meaning.  Life is short! 4000 weeks! (should I actually read this?)

Part of me resists this approach to time as transactional, stifling, profaning the sheer magnitude, majesty, and holiness of time. Every Saturday, I try to observe Shabbat as an opportunity to enter what Abraham Joshua Heschel describes as a “cathedral in time”. My phone is off, I’m present with my family, I’m learning Torah, napping, reading the New Yorker…luxuriating in time like a warm bath.  

Another part of me concedes that for the other six days of the week, I’m meant to leave this “cathedral”-slash-bathtub, towel off, and show up differently. I’ve turned 38 this year and have a lot more to give and experience in this life. I need to feed my family.

Time, I think (I am neither a physicist nor competent mystic) is more like wind; you can close your eyes and feel it on your skin on a hot day, or you can hoist a sail to harness its energy for exploration, commerce, or fun.  Time can be gentle, and time can be powerful.

I want to find a new way to make a living that doesn’t leave me feeling like a “banana lying in the dust” (to borrow Sasha’s phrase) and fixing my steering--my faith in my agency and relationship to time-- is going to be a prerequisite for navigating those waters. 

I’ve cared for my family during the birth of my daughter in March; I’ve organized a Jewish men’s spiritual retreat; I’ve spent countless hours working through the Artist’s Way, playing ukulele, mountain biking, meeting up with new friends, showing up for my community, informational interviews, writing and speaking; I’ve cooked countless meals and have been at my son’s preschool nearly every day.  

I’m also trying to secure enough consulting gigs to cover my family’s expenses while giving myself the bandwidth to keep exploring.

But most importantly, instead of doing what I’m “supposed” to be doing and seeking validation--my old steering mechanism and feedback loop--I’m more often trying to do what I feel like doing, creating a new feedback loop of putting myself out there creatively in ways that I wasn’t able or allowing myself to before, and seeing what comes back to me.  Writing in public is a part of that process.

Some days I feel like I’m hoisting the sail; other days I’m trying to enjoy the breeze. 

***

A Chassidic story tells of Reb Zusha (a student of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement) lying on his deathbed surrounded by his loved ones. Reb Zusha was crying and seemed anxious. One of his students asked, "Rebbe, why are you crying? You were almost as great as Moses and as generous as Abraham. What are you afraid of?"

Reb Zusha answered, "When I pass from this world and stand before the heavenly court, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Moses, why weren't you Abraham?' Rather, I am afraid they will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Zusha?"