I Quit My Job 1 Month Ago to Chase Joy: Here is How it is Going...

One month ago I left my job at a coffee shop in rural northern Minnesota. It was a pleasant job but it took more of me than it provided. I decided that I had enough and needed to move forward. I was one of the head baristas and their Social Media & Marketing Manager. The job itself offered me a little creative outlet and some social interaction that was hard to come by during this current pandemic. It paid me minimum wage, which in Minnesota is $10 an hour, which for me allowed me to scrape by if I was working full time. Though this sounds like a job that people dream about, and it was enjoyable in its best moments, it was damaging towards my being both in living and creating. I am a type of person who must follow what lights them up. I must follow joy. When joy is absent I burn out. I take this as a sign to move on and re-tap into my inner joy finder. The joy filled part of this job was interacting with the regulars and since the state had been locked down since thanksgiving I had lost my last bit of joy. In other words this job was draining me because it ceased to spark joy. This notion led me to feel like I was selling out my life to make a starvation wage and on top of that I was losing all the hours of my day. I had all the skills to excel at this job and then some. There was nothing about this job that challenged me. It was comfortable and pleasant but draining my soul. I decided to leave it behind and chase my joy. I decided to create my life and live as its protagonist rather than be an extra in the distance.

It has been a month since I left the little coffee shop. It has been one month filled with a new way of living. It has been one month of bravely chasing joy regardless of other's thoughts and/or opinions. I have set up my days based and ruled in a loose structure that allows my days to be spontaneously planned. One of the reasons that I wanted to leave the job was I had been dreaming for years about recording my music. Thanks to my friend, John Jesme, I had been able to record the first part of my anthology of music that I had written over the last decade. I got to put the first steps in making this dream come true. I knew that if I wanted to create this into my life I had to honor it and give it the space, time and resources that it needed. This was the time to dive into this work, produce it, and release it to the world. The leaving of the job gave me just that. Space. Time. Resources. I have released a single and one EP in the last month and have many more releases planned in the coming months. This is just an ice cube from the mammoth glacier of my work. I am continuing to write and gather ideas. I am purchasing MIDI keyboard so I can create further experiences in my music. I am investing in this craft and giving it the opportunity to blossom and birth. I am leaning into the destruction of creativity and the rebirth into the world. The uncomfortable phase of creation is so worth enduring. This is chasing joy.

I also gave myself the space and time to read and write. These are two things that are vital towards my inner work and my outer work, both of which have become my essentials to moving forward into this new era. I have known their importance for years but often, when I am working in places that drain me, I forget about the necessity that is and the blessings that come from developing a relationship with my creativity and craft. This last month I have been rebuilding these through practices and rituals that allow me to tap into myself. That allow me to be unadulterated in my ways. That allow me to hit flow and hit flow hard. Waking up hours later in a new place with new beliefs, ideas, and creations. When I was a kid I would plow through books as they took me around the world and transformed my psyche, I would create all the time getting lost in the moment constantly creating and believing. Now, I am allowing myself to dive into this practice again. I am slowly making it through a handful of books and I have a pile of books that are coming soon. I am letting myself get lost in the act of creation and belief. This is chasing joy.

My life has been blessed with many opportunities to live abundantly. Even so I have been addressing my relationship with wealth and success. I felt all fall, as we approached the one year mark of the pandemic, that my success and wealth were non-existent if not that then dwindling. Luckily, I have a secret ace up my sleeve when I start to get down. I have Coach who challenges me to shift perspective and angle so that I can see what I have been missing. I have been redefining success and wealth in my life. I am sitting here now to say. Fuck. I am wealthy and successful and have the space and resources to continue to grow these in abundance ad infinitum. Hold on one second. I am not saying that I am a multi-millionaire or that I have won a Tony, Oscar, and Grammy...yet. I am saying that having shifted my perspective just one degree, maybe ten degrees, I have been able to see my life in what it truly was, is, and shall be. I have given myself the space and resources to make this an easy transition. This is joy.

I am chasing joy and I am also chasing ease. This seems so anti-establishment in the best of ways. How often do you feel like you have to struggle to get what you want? You have to fight the battle to your death in order to deserve and be rewarded? This is such a false statement that has been burnt into our souls. A multi-generational wound that needs to be healed. Why must we live in a Win/Lose world? This is ridiculous. This is absurd. This is detrimental not only to your being but to all of ours. Choosing to live in joy. Choosing to live in ease. Choosing to be authentic in this world. These are RADICAL actions. RADICAL. I am choosing this because I am so sick of being sick of living. The only reason that I had this thought was because I was forcing myself to struggle. Who needs this? NOT A SOUL! This radical journey I have been on is continuing. It is expanding. It is rapidly changing my life on the daily.

Finally, I let myself be. My fiancé and I took a trip to Arizona to meet his mother. We then took a covid cautious road trip around the American South West. During this time I felt the wealth, I felt the success, I felt the abundance, and I felt the joy in my life. This is just the start.

I am chasing joy. I am doing it with ease. I am creating my life around the notion that my life and my livelihood are things to be celebrated. The good. The bad. The unexpected.

I am chasing joy.

The best part is that you can too. You have everything you need inside you to chase joy and create the life of your dreams! Are you tired of job that drains you? People that don't help you expand? Too many weeks pass by with out that burst of inspiration? Then you need to grab your life, clean out that vessel, and step forth into the sun and let it be filled with joy and with excitement. You have got this. I believe in you.

Keep living and Start living { The Good Life }

Ian Francis Lah

P.s. If you would like to follow my work that I am creating and the life I am creating follow me on my Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify as well. I would love to have you along on this journey. I would love to support you as you support me. We are stepping into this new era together. Take care. I love you.