Personal Resources

Ambition

Articles/Essays/Op-eds

  • The Age of Anti-Ambition (behind paywall), Noreen Malone, The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2022.

    EXCERPTS:

    When 25 million people leave their jobs, it’s about more than just burnout…

    The act of working has been stripped bare. You don’t have little outfits to put on, and lunches to go to, and coffee breaks to linger over and clients to schmooze. The office is where it shouldn’t be — at home, in our intimate spaces — and all that’s left now is the job itself, naked and alone. And a lot of people don’t like what they see... (read more)

  • VLOG'S A JOB Children turn backs on traditional careers in favour of internet fame, study finds, Jacob Dirnhuber. “A survey of a thousand children has revealed nearly three-quarters of young people are considering career in online videos... The biggest attractions are creativity, fame and the opportunity for self-expression, with money trailing in fourth place.”

  • #Vanlife, the Bohemian Social-Media Movement, Rachel Monroe. “What began as an attempt at a simpler life quickly became a life-style brand… Vanlife is an aesthetic and a mentality and, people kept telling me, a ‘movement.’ S. Lucas Valdes, the owner of the California-based company GoWesty, a prominent seller of Volkswagen-van parts, compared vanlife today to surfing a couple of decades ago. ‘So many people identify with the culture, the attire, the mind-set of surfers, but probably only about ten per cent of them surf,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to tap into…’”

  • Zen and the Art of #VanLife Influencing, Jay Caspian Kang. “…For the past decade or so, I’ve been anticipating some dropout movement in which thousands of young people went off to live in communes, formed splinter societies or, at the very least, built their own little punk-style communities. The reasons seem obvious enough to me: These kids will certainly have fewer opportunities than their parents, and many have a relatively sophisticated understanding of everything that’s in their way. For the most part, though, some great departure hasn’t taken place, at least not in the way I had envisioned…”