Money is one of those things that makes otherwise thoughtful people act totally insane. And it’s not unwarranted: it’s one of the most fraught, loaded subjects in our culture!

Daemonic (how’s that for a cool moniker) helps people engage in what he calls financial shadow work: tracing the web of emotions and relationships underneath their money fears and aspirations, then integrating them as a way to flourish and grow.

Informed by Internal Family Systems and Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing, his premise is that our money behavior, even if it feels irrational on the surface, makes sense when looked at in a larger context. Accordingly, he helps people look at their financial attitudes with a little more curiosity and a lot less judgment.

(I actually did a Money mapping session with him a few years back, which we filmed, so you can get a sense of what they’re like. If you’d like to book your own session, you can see his availability here)

Aside from being a great Twitter follow (@daemonhugger), Daemonic has a YouTube channel where you can join him in diving into the research and phenomenology of finance.

In this very meaty conversation, we cover:

• The most common money hangups that bring people to Daemonic (and the especially thorny one around charging money)

• When money fears are “justified” vs when they’re problematic and self-sabotaging

• The relationship dynamics that complicate giving money and help

• What exactly we mean when we say that money gives us “security”

• His younger self’s assumption that “people who handle money know how the world works” and why that brought him to this type of work

• Money’s place as the “bridge” between our “emotional” and the “hyper-rational” parts, and why it may be the main driver of feeling shame around finances

These dispatches are part of a special BQE section, “Sirena’s Pages”: an installment of our slacker film script accompanied by an unrelated but interesting piece of antiwork- adjacent content.

If you’re not into these screenplay updates but want to keep getting the rest of Big Quit Energy, you can use the unsubscribe link to adjust your settings to opt out of “Sirena’s Pages” specifically while staying on the list for all other Big Quit Energy emails.

Previous scene

The Scene

INT. Zoe’s Dining Room. Night.

A dining room in a tastefully yet minimally decorated single-family home.

The family sits around the table. Zoe proudly serves a mole dish to Jaime and Matilde. Matilde wears a soccer jersey.

ZOE It is an honor to initiate you into mole night.

She scoops some on Sirena’s plate.

ZOE With ingredients from my garden.

Sirena has a bite while Grizzie serves herself.

SIRENA I think I get it now.

GRIZZIE Get what?

SIRENA Why people work so hard here. (beat) It’s to distract themselves from how bad the food is.

Grizzie snorts and coughs.

MATILDE (Spanish) Sirena! Behave!

Zoe freezes, her smile tightening into a grimace. She starts laughing, as if in on the joke, painfully forced.

Everyone looks at each other, uncomfortable.

ZOE Could you do better?

SIRENA (stands dramatically) Easy!

INT. Zoe’s Kitchen. Night.

Next to a glistening, stainless steel stove, Sirena’s faded and filthy plastic crockpot bubbles with rice and beans. Sirena hustles over it like a TV chef.

Grizzie watches her, eating chips straight from a bag.

SIRENA This is how my grandmother does it. Simple. When you love rice and beans, you don’t have to cater to the man!

Matilde sticks her head in the kitchen.

MATILDE That’s her philosophical way of saying she can’t cook anything else.

GRIZZIE It smells...aggressive.

SIRENA That’s flavor, which apparently you’ve never experienced.

She dramatically sprinkles more seasoning, then clangs against the pot, letting steam rise like she’s conjuring magic.

INT. Zoe’s Dining Room. Night.

Sirena slams the pot in the middle of the table, triumphant. Zoe serves herself cautiously, while tastes a small scoop.

MATILDE Exactly like your grandma’s. (beat) Which is to say...not great.

Zoe takes a bite and freezes. Sirena watches, ready for an insult.

ZOE This...is not bad!

Grizzie nods, her mouth full. Matilde looks stunned.

Even Sirena is a little puzzled.

MATILDE (Spanish, muttering) Maybe they really don’t have any taste in this country.

INT. Zoe’s Dining Room. Night.

The family placidly eats some churros for dessert. Zoe steeps a kettle of tea for herself.

ZOE So Sirena, you don’t want to hear my plan to put your talent to work?

SIRENA My what?

Zoe pours her tea into a mug.

ZOE Your way with words. Your wit. Your modern, effortless cool under pressure.

Sirena and Matilde both raise eyebrows as Zoe slides a pamphlet across the table to Sirena.

Sirena looks at the pamphlet--it has a cartoon rocket ship blasting into the sky. She reads the heading.

SIRENA “Migrant Achievers: Lifting Migrants to New Heights.” What is this? Are they launching me to Mars?

Sirena puts the pamphlet aside, tipping back in her chair self-satisfied. It wobbles and she has to save herself from falling.

Matilde looks at the pamphlet, intrigued.

MATILDE (English) Is there an age limit?

Zoe hesitates.

ZOE (Spanish) Legally, no...but...

She scans Matilde’s soccer jersey.

ZOE They aren’t really fans of that team.

Matilde looks down at her soccer jersey and awkwardly covers it with her hand.

Zoe slowly takes the pamphlet back from her.

ZOE (to Sirena, conciliatory, coaxing) You know, when I was your age, my mentor told me living your best life is just having the courage to say ‘yes.’ I’ve built my best life on that alone.

Sirena casually picks food from her teeth.

ZOE And under the right mentoring and leadership, you can blossom into an amazing asset for our community.

SIRENA Our community?

ZOE Latinos. We have to stick together in this country.

SIRENA And who’s the right mentor and leader for me? You, I’m guessing?

ZOE Well, yea. (upbeat, nervous) All you gotta do is say “yes.”

SIRENA Nah. I’m perfectly happy with my level of blossoming.

She wipes her fingers on a napkin.

SIRENA And, no offense, I know you all technically count as “Latinas,” but you really have no idea about it.

Zoe tenses, but her smile is unshaken.

ZOE Sirena, if you want to stay in this country, you’ll need to contribute.

SIRENA Send me back. Even better. (Points at Matilde) She’s living her dream here. That’s what matters.

Matilde pulls her chair out and stands.

MATILDE (Spanish) Sirena, a minute.

Ext. ZOE’S HOUSE BACK YARD. Dusk.

Matilde drags Sirena to a safe distance away from the door.

MATILDE (Spanish, low) Will you stop being impossible?

SIRENA Why are we whispering?

Matilde glares. Both are startled by an automatic sprinkler system and ambient lights that come by themselves.

Matilde can’t help but admire it all for a second.

MATILDE How about some gratitude for being here? We could be in the street selling candy.

Sirena groans.

MATILDE This woman is obsessed with you. I don’t get it, but she is.

SIRENA Good taste.

MATILDE Whatever. Use it.

SIRENA Use it? You make it sound like she’s a coupon.

Matilde pulls her closer.

MATILDE (Softly) Please, just for a while, put in a little effort. Once I get in with her, you can go home and rot if you want. I’ll buy your ticket myself.

Sirena looks away, watching through the patio door as Jaime happily plays with a living room light dimmer, at awe with it.

SIRENA Great, so I’m just here to be your wingman.

MATILDE I thought you want to go home.

SIRENA I do! But...

She kicks a pebble hard across the grass and groans.

MATILDE For your brother’s sake.

SIRENA (snorts) I don’t think he’ll like it here. Maybe I’ll do him a favor and get us all deported.

MATILDE (stern) Time in jail is a favor? You’d do that to him?

SIRENA I’m joking, Jesus Christ.

She turns back toward the house. Matilde follows.

MATILDE You think everything’s a joke.

SIRENA Only the funny stuff.

INT. Zoe’s Kitchen. Night.

Sirena barges in while Zoe loads the dishwasher.

SIRENA (English) Fine, I’ll pull my weight. But not with your corporate nonsense. Find me a job with real humans.

Zoe is amused at the insult. She calls out.

ZOE Grizzie! How’s your job?

GRIZZIE (offscreen) Eh, kinda sucks, but I learn a lot.

ZOE That’s right. And now you have someone to mentor at it.

Grizzie pops her head into the kitchen, seeing Sirena.

SIRENA Isn’t she like three years younger than me?

ZOE Mature beyond her years. Makes me very proud. And she’s eager to help you grow as well, isn’t that right?

GRIZZIE (apprehensive) Yea. Sounds great.

Matilde joins Zoe in loading dishes. Zoe gives her a reassuring look.

Sirena smiles at Grizzie, wearily. Grizzie looks a little embarrassed.

Scene Notes

In many ways, this is where we start cooking, emotionally speaking.

• The plot importance of this sequence is that it’s the first time Sirena directly insults Zoe, attacking her very sense of identity–the “inciting incident’” for her adversarial arc with Sirena. Until now, Zoe has never had anyone outright reject the types of opportunities she offers and that she herself took earlier in life. It must be throwing her for a loop, though she’s hiding that fact for now.

• It’s also the first time that we see Matilde and Sirena in a sincere confrontation that’s deeper than just passive-aggressive bickering, where gives importance to her mom’s opinion, even if she quickly tries to play it off.

• Finally, we’ve cast Grizzie and Sirena in an unwilling “mentor” relationship, almost like the start of an odd couple comedy, setting up possibilities for conflict between them.

That said, this scene also feels a bit labored to me.

• The cooking bit is something I find charming, but in every draft I write it’s felt like I forced it in there. Perhaps this will be a darling I have to kill in the end, but I want it in there for now.

• Like the pervious steps, I’m consolidating a lot of plot steps that had been scattered across scenes before. And again, I’m wondering if it’s too crammed.

Speaking of labored, I’m been having a hard time writing Zoe.

• She has to sound “corporate cringe,” but in the first draft she was way too caricatured. I’m trying to keep her a little ridiculous while humanizing her wherever I can.

• For example, in her and her daughter being (unfairly, I think, and also something that I’ve experienced directly) attacked as not Latina enough by Sirena. And more generally, showing how she clings to her own self-narrative, and possibly doubts it herself.

• One huge question is if it’s believable that she sees all this potential in Sirena, despite the latter giving her no willing indication of motivation or, really, skill. I think it’s her bias for youth (a condition that our society suffers from), but I don’t know if this reads true.

Finally, If you don’t remember Sirena’s crockpot, it’s not your fault. I forgot to include it in scene 1. The magic of the internet is that I can go back and change scenes after the fact. Which I did! The crockpot is now in scene 1. It will make other appearances.

Antiwork content of the week: Your inner boss talks through your money beliefs

Friend of the blog tries to tease out assumptions about money in this insightful, heartfelt essay. If you look at the money beliefs that end up bare, you can see an inner boss which isn’t dissimilar from the one that I’ll dare say most of us carry.

Are your stories about money keeping tied to workaholic behavior, despite your best efforts?

These dispatches are part of a special BQE section, “Sirena’s Pages”: an installment of our slacker film script accompanied by an unrelated but interesting piece of antiwork- adjacent content.

If you’re not into these screenplay updates but want to keep getting the rest of Big Quit Energy, you can use the unsubscribe link to adjust your settings to opt out of “Sirena’s Pages” specifically while staying on the list for all other Big Quit Energy emails.

Previous scene

The Scene

EXT. Downtown Chicago. Day.

The streets hum with energy. Honking horns, snippets of conversations, the low rumble of an L train in the distance.

Zoe walks ahead, her steps purposeful, as if she’s guiding a museum tour--all while occasionally glancing at her phone.

Matilde scurries after her, wide-eyed and giddy, wearing her “Nutrivance” cap while Jaime holds her hand and skips.

Sirena trudges behind, hands in her hoodie, scanning her surroundings with cautious curiosity. She grimaces at a pair of COMMUTERS power-walking and while they slurp down tall cups of coffee.

She glares at them as they walk by. Grizzie, who reads a book while shuffling alongside her, notices.

GRIZZIE Not a fan of coffee?

SIRENA Not when you drink it like that. What the hell is that?

GRIZZIE Sometimes you just need the caffeine boost. I’ve been there.

Sirena shakes her head.

Matilde suddenly skids to a stop at the base of a towering building. She slaps both palms against the glassy wall and leans back dramatically, staring straight up.

MATILDE (English) It goes so high! Look!

She waves frantically at her kids. Jaime, thrilled, joins her, pressing his nose on the glass.

Sirena slows, tilts her head, and mutters.

SIRENA (Spanish) Yes, very tall.

Matilde looks over at Grizzie and Zoe.

ZOE (Smiles, Spanish) It’s easy to forget how tall they are, living here.

Her phone beeps, and she looks down at it with an urgent expression,

MATILDE I’m never gonna forget.

She pulls back and glances down at her shirt, now streaked faintly with soot. She rubs at it, embarrassed.

A Migrant Vendor steps into frame, carrying a battered cardboard box. Her BABY is strapped to her back. She stops abruptly, directly in front of Matilde, stretching the box toward her.

MIGRANT VENDOR (Spanish) Chocolate, candy, caramels.

There’s a beat of silence. The group shuffles slightly, unsure of what to do.

Studying Matilde, the vendor shuffles in her box and pulls out some small packaged obleas.

MIGRANT VENDOR Obleas?

Sirena and Jaime’s eyes both light up.

JAIME Obleas!

Matilde, flustered, rummages through her pockets.

Zoe takes her eyes off her phone, brow furrowed.

Matilde pulls out a crumpled bill but, upon handing it to the mother, realizes it’s an old receipt. She rummages again as the vendor looks expectantly.

Sirena rolls her eyes and pulls out loose change from her pocket, giving it to the vendor.

Matilde grabs three small obleas and, after more rummaging, gives her some more coins as a tip. She smiles.

MATILDE Thank you.

JAIME Those aren’t dollars.

Matilde looks alarmed at a couple coins that are foreign currency.

MATILDE Oops.

She takes them back and chuckles nervously. The mother nods and goes on her way.

Zoe stands with her arms crossed, like a stern parent.

Matilde, apprehensive, offers her an oblea, but Zoe doesn’t even look at it.

ZOE (Spanish) You should be saving your money, not encouraging the scrounging that everyone already assumes our people do.

SIRENA Come on, she’s hustling hard out here.

ZOE (English) I thought that was for suckers.

SIRENA (stammers, thinking) Well, she’s not hustling any harder than she needs to be.

ZOE And that’s something admirable, in your book?

Matilde looks down at her oblea with shame.

Jaime pouts up at the skyline, spotting something.

JAIME Look, like your hat.

Matilde looks at a nondescript glass tower with “Nutrivance” in blocky, fluorescent letters. She slaps Sirena’s arm.

MATILDE (Spanish) No way! They’re here?

ZOE (bemused, proud) Funny enough, I work there.

Matilde gasps, dropping the oblea. Jaime immediately seizes on it.

MATILDE (Softly) You work at Nutrivance? We see them all over Ciudad Montes.

She grabs at her hat, in awe.

Zoe nods, walking over to Sirena.

ZOE Didn’t expect that, huh?

SIRENA (flat) Actually, it makes total sense.

MATILDE (excited) What do you do there?

ZOE Actually, I brought you all here on purpose, because I have a surprise--

SCREECH! She jumps as a livery car pulls up aggressively on them. Through the crack of a window, the rowdy, gruff voice of Roland booms.

ROLAND Extending your vacation, I see.

Zoe composes herself.

ZOE Hello, Roland. I’m doing field work. Everyone, this is Roland, CEO of Nutrivance.

Matilde enthusiastically goes up to the car and tries to look through the crack.

MATILDE It’s an honor.

ROLAND This is the hotshot you’re recruiting? Already got her a hat?

MATILDE (excited) You’re a recruiter?!

Zoe turns to the group.

ZOE I was gonna make it more of a surprise moment, but...

She pulls out a glossy pass from her bag.

MATILDE A work permit!

ZOE This one’s for you.

Zoe beams, handing it to Matilde. Matilde’s hopeful expression falters.

MATILDE Housecleaning. That’s...great.

SIRENA No gigs for engineers?

ZOE Degrees, certifications. They’re needed here.

Awkward silence.

ZOE But you already have your first customer!

She points at Roland’s window.

ROLAND Yea, my last one went remote. Like, back-home remote.

ZOE So, you’re up. Timing is everything!

Matilde nods and smiles.

MATILDE It’s wonderful. Thank you.

Zoe reaches in her bag again, more giddy.

ZOE As for you, Sirena.

SIRENA Don’t bother giving me one.

ZOE Oh, but it’s something very special. I pulled some strings for a special talent like you, and I think you’ll like...

Sirena is already walking away.

SIRENA I wasn’t joking. I’m not interested in working.

The group, not sure what to do, continues walking behind her. Matilde waves bye at Roland, smiling, and glances at the Nutrivance building one last time before she leaves, her steps once again energized.

Roland’s window comes down a crack, so we can faintly see him, as Zoe lingers.

ROLAND Not interested in working? That’s the kind of initiative you’re recruiting for?

ZOE She’ll be ready.

Scene Notes

I allowed some personal indulgences in this scene:

• The leaning up against the building and looking up is what I did all summer my first time in a big American city.

• The beef with how people drink coffee is also something I remember my mom complaining about when we first moved here.

Part of what I love about screenwriting is that, when you’re in a groove, all characters represent different parts of you.

This is the first scene that I extensively changed and rewrote, and now there’s a lot of plot business taken care of here:

• Most important, Matilde’s general desire to succeed in the US now has a concrete objective that can drive her actions in the story–getting in to Nutrivance via Zoe and Roland’s good graces.

• Also, though we don’t quite know exactly Zoe has planned, we know she has something planned for Sirena and that Sirena will most likely resist it, setting up the central conflict for the story.

• Finally, we introduce Roland, who will carry weight later in the story. In the previous draft, he didn’t show up until almost the end of act I, and it felt like we were just cramming him in there randomly because it was convenient. Seeding him earlier, I feel, adds more credence to his importance later in the story.

• But is the scene now a little too crammed with plot business? Kinda feels like I’m checking a lot of boxes here and forcing things to happen not quite organically. I tried to add some pacing to alleviate this feeling, but I’m not sure if it’s quite hitting.

• Either way, I’d rather have this problem for now, than the previous problem of dragging out all these plot points and character introductions over 3-4 scenes.

Finally, I’m not sure if it’s gimmicky to keep Roland behind a window for now, but it feels in line with his futurely oblivious microagressions. Also, I enjoy the little line about what happened to his previous housekeeper.

The best conversation about writing I’ve heard this year

This isn’t our usual anti-work content, but for any fiction writers out there, I couldn’t resist plugging a great conversation that my friend had with Lousville author .

There are great nuggets there on her process, on how to approach research for your stories, and about the process of getting an agent. Let alone that her novel sounds bad ass. In a platform full of writing geeks, this was the best conversation about writing I encountered in 2025.

People (OK, me) keep saying “It’S cAlLeD bIg QuIt EnErGy! WhAt ExAcTlY aRe YoU qUiTtInG?!?”

We continue a series of shit we should quit to enjoy a post-work, joyful existence.

Previous shit to quit

#3 Property Values

To see the market’s totalizing urge to flatten everything for mass consumption, one need not look further than American neighborhoods.

Courtesy of people’s obsession with treating their homes as financial instruments–instead of, you know, spaces to live–entire swaths of this country live in fear of a bad lawn. God forbid a dandelion shows up, or someone’s driveway houses a car that has seen better days.

A friend recently asked me why my landlord doesn’t cut the bushes out front, to which I answered maybe he likes seeing something alive when he looks out the window. When he asked if I considered my neighbor’s property value and I told him I don’t give a shit, he looked at me as if I’d just endorsed 9/11.

But honestly, why should I give a shit? Why is it my problem that our economy is so absurd that signs of life make a home less valuable? You mean to tell me we have to keep all of our lived spaces retail-ready, a permanent Zillow listing?

By the way, houses aren’t even necessarily that great as financial investments, historically speaking. As (great urbanism read, check him out) points out, housing prices were basically flat for a century and a half before WWII. The “property-generating-wealth” law may very well be a (historically speaking) short post-war fever dream.

But, either way, we suffer from terminal market brain. And every delusion needs an equally preposterous enforcement mechanism. Which brings me to…

#4 HOAs

Look, I’m reasonable. I’ll play along with private property (unlike a lot of my fully anarchist readers–love you all) and pretend it makes sense that someone can “own” a piece of Earth they didn’t create. Fine.

But explain this: how did the country that champions FREEDOM™ mass-adopt Homeowners Associations, these tiny unelected totalitarian politburos that police what color mailbox you buy and what you’re allowed to hang out your window? Under penalty of potentially LOSING YOUR HOME, no less!

You don’t trust the federal government, but you’re OK with letting your nosy neighbor all up in your business? Quit that shit. After ICE, abolish HOAs.

This has been today’s installment of “Shit to Quit.” If you have shit you think people should quit, shoot me a note and we’ll try to get everyone to quit that shit.

These dispatches are part of a special BQE section, “Sirena’s Pages”: an installment of our slacker film script accompanied by an unrelated but interesting piece of antiwork- adjacent content.

If you’re not into these screenplay updates but want to keep getting the rest of Big Quit Energy, you can use the unsubscribe link to adjust your settings to opt out of “Sirena’s Pages” specifically while staying on the list for all other Big Quit Energy emails.

Previous scene

Next Scene

The Scene

INT. Immigrant processing center. Day.

Shivering and wrapped in a towel, Jaime sits on a bench inside a crowded center that looks like a DMV.

With envy, he watches a girl happily clutch a teddy bear.

Sirena and Matilde, also in towels, sit beside him. Sirena shivers.

MATILDE (Spanish) Don’t ask for sympathy. You’re the one who got us put in this freezer.

She quickly straightens up and smiles politely as...

Zoe glides through with a stopwatch, stopping in front a MIGRANT who she engages in a silent eye-contact test. He looks away. She clicks her stopwatch and writes a note, unimpressed.

She drops a snack in his hand.

ZOE (Spanish) Welcome, good luck.

She moves on. Sirena watches her, bewildered.

A number bell DINGS. Matilde hurries to a counter with two GUARDS half-working, half-playing chess.

MATILDE (English) Hello.

Guard 1 puts his hand up, telling her to wait.

GUARD 1 (to phone) Does your embassy claim this man? … You do? Great. Few weeks to a few months.

He points a SOUTH ASIAN MIGRANT toward a packed holding room.

GUARD 1 (slow, pointing) Over there.

He turns to Matilde...

GUARD 1 (Spanish) Hands please.

...and starts taking her fingerprints, taking a quick break between fingers to make a move on the chess board.

GUARD 2 taps lazily at a computer while studying the board, raising his eyebrows.

Then, as if remembering he has a job, he turns to Matilde.

GUARD 2 (Spanish) Your hearing will take a few weeks.

He turns to the board, makes a move, and continues.

GUARD 2 Make yourself at home.

Matilde surveys the crowded center. A bunch of people, dead-eyed watch a corner TV that plays Marley and Me. A sneeze echoes under the film’s cheerful score.

Across the room, Zoe slips a sudoku sheet onto a bench, in front of another group of migrants. She steps back. No one bites. She sighs, notes it.

At a jug, Sirena pours Gatorade. Grizzie does math homework beside it.

SIRENA (English) What is she doing?

GRIZZIE No clue. She says it’s our way of “volunteering” on vacation.

SIRENA This is your vacation?

Back at the counter...

MATILDE (English) While I wait...can I work? I know engineering.

Guard 1 looks at her skeptically.

GUARD 1 (Spanish) Do you have a degree?

Matilde’s eyes drop.

MATILDE I learned by doing.

GUARD 1 (dry) Another engineer, fresh off the river.

Sirena catches this and perks up, frowning.

GUARD 2 (Struggling) You’re from...Seeuuu

Matilde opens her mouth to answer but Sirena steps in.

SIRENA Ciudad Montes.

Guard 2 nods.

Matilde gives her a look like “what are you doing?”

SIRENA (English) Never heard of it? It’s a paradise only an idiot would leave to come here.

Matilde’s look is now a glare.

Zoe also perks up.

GUARD 2 (English, to Guard 1) Doesn’t wanna be here. That’s a new one.

GUARD 1 (English) Wish more thought that way, instead of hustling for our work.

SIRENA Work? I won’t be doing that.

She casually grabs a piece from Guard 1…

SIRENA Don’t let him take your lunch, rookie.

…and makes a move for him.

SIRENA Hustling is for suckers.

Guard 2 looks at her, stunned.

GUARD 2 (English) Your English ain’t bad.

Zoe drifts closer, locked on Sirena.

MATILDE (English, proud) We taught ourselves. Discovery channel.

A few quick moves—click-clack. Sirena keeps reaching in, not letting Guard 1 get his moves in.

GUARD 1 (annoyed, to Sirena) Most people are grateful we don’t ship them straight back. Would you prefer that? Can’t cut it here?

Sirena looks at him, betraying offense, but brushes it off.

SIRENA I’d totally cut it here.

Matilde snorts.

SIRENA I just don’t feel like it.

Matilde is now worried and tries to pull Sirena away.

MATILDE (To guards, nervous) Maybe we should have separate applications.

(Nervous laughter)

Kidding.

Sirena gives a fake, boisterous laugh.

SIRENA Great, then mine won’t say “vibes engineer with no degree.”

Matilde shoots her an offended look.

GUARD 1 (dead serious) Happy to serve. Head to the waiting cell. We’ll arrange a bus home. Only takes a few months.

Sirena glances at the holding area: shivering families, a single exposed toilet.

GUARD 1 What, were you thinking a first class flight?

He starts typing. Zoe swoops, gently closing the laptop.

ZOE That won’t be necessary. I’ll sponsor them.

Everyone stares—even Grizzie looks up from her homework.

Zoe hands a letter. Guard 2 skims, shrugs, stamps.

GUARD 2 Whatever. Good luck.

Sirena flicks one last move on the board, cocky.

SIRENA Sorry we couldn’t finish.

GUARD 2 We could.

(moves a piece, beat)

Checkmate.

Guard 1 facepalms. Sirena’s swagger drains as Matilde steers her off.

EXT. Processing Center Parking Lot. Day.

The family loads into Zoe’s immaculate SUV: Matilde corrals bags and barks orders at Sirena. Grizzie fusses with floor mats. Jaime bounces up and down from the back door.

Sirena peeks into the SUV.

SIRENA This is huge! You could live in here!

She folds one of the seats down and lays down, as if shopping for a mattress. Grizzie chuckles.

GRIZZIE Live here? It’s a car.

Sirena sits up.

SIRENA It’s a van.

GRIZZIE Technically... SUV

SIRENA Whatever. Don’t Americans live in these all the time and travel the world?

MATILDE Don’t mind her. She’s new to the country.

She shoos an offended Sirena away and folds the chair back up.

At a distance, out of earshot, Zoe dials her phone.

ZOE (into phone, low) Roland? I’ve got the perfect candidate. A natural.

Scene Notes

• The center itself reflects descriptions from a Youtuber who spent some time in a Texas processing and detention center during the Biden administration. Of course, America’s already-previously-grim immigration situation has become even more of a horror show since. I considered working in some of those changes, but decided not to. When it’s all said and done, I’d like this story to make an argument for what I see as the unapologetic dignity (not justified by “hard work”) that immigrants deserve even when the system treats them relatively “well,” and the court of public opinion doesn’t feel the need to grant them sympathy because they’re facing down the gestapo.

• You may notice quite a few tags denoting language, as characters switch between Spanish and English. I don’t think it comes across much when you read it, but I’m trying to have language use convey power dynamics and assumptions that characters make about each other. Namely, notice that Matilde speaks to every American in English, but they insist on speaking Spanish to her. While Zoe, for example, readily speaks to Sirena in English, a way in which she holds her in higher regard.

• This scene has passages of verbal sparring, which I always enjoy, but in the back of my mind I’m always wondering if I’m slowing the scene down just to fit some zingers.

• The above is where re-reading, and doing it out loud, sometimes helps. You don’t listen for the content necessarily, but for whether the pacing sounds pleasing.

• Like the previous scene, the plot of this one didn’t change very dramatically from draft 1. The only large difference is Zoe’s strange evaluation of migrants at the center. Since on this draft she has a stronger reason to be down there (not just a wacky “vacation,” as she has her daughter believe), it feels appropriate to seed that a bit and in the process take the opportunity for some offbeat humor.

• 1/14/2026 edit: Because I realized later that Sirena’s pursuit of a van feels a bit out of nowhere, I’ve seeded in this scene through a bit of dialogue.

Berlin: the slacker capital?

I’ve never been to Berlin, so I don’t know how accurate this is. But there are interesting observations in here about it as an outlier capital where people are laid back and disheveled. If Sirena had to leave Ciudad Montes, maybe she would’ve liked Berlin instead of America.

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These dispatches are part of a special BQE section, “Sirena’s Pages.” If you’re not into these screenplay updates but want to keep getting the rest of Big Quit Energy, you can use the unsubscribe link to adjust your settings to opt out of “Sirena’s Pages” specifically while staying on the list for all other Big Quit Energy emails.

Next scene

Friends, we’re finally on our way!

Took long enough, but I’m ready to start publicly publishing scenes from the re-written draft of Sirena: A Drag on America, for the first time since embarking on this project two years ago. Honestly, it’s a little bit of a milestone moment, and I’m a little proud.

I’ve slowly been able to rewrite three scenes already, so hopefully “staying ahead” of a weekly publishing cadence on here will be a good incentive to keep at it.

As I said before, with each installment of these you’ll get:

• Today’s scene

• Miscellaneous notes on the thought process behind it

• An unrelated piece of antiwork content from someone else that I think is worth sharing. Feel free to jump straight down to that.

The Scene

EXT. The Rio Grande, Mexican side. DAY.

A free-range cow munches lazily on a scrubby bush. SIRENA—20, hoodie up, carrying a faded crockpot—scowls at it from a walking path.

SIRENA (Spanish): I should’ve been a cow.

JAIME, 12, sprawled in the dirt with a knock-off Game Boy, doesn’t look up.

JAIME (Spanish): Why would you wish that?

SIRENA: You just get to stand there and chew. No one bothers you.

Jaime grunts, goes back to his game.

MATILDE, 42, faded jeans and an old NASA T, approaches, wiping sweat from her brow.

MATILDE (Spanish): It’s ready.

She notices a teddy bear—sloppily painted white—dangling from a tree branch.

MATILDE: That’s cute. Jaime, you want it?

Jaime glances up, unimpressed.

JAIME: No thanks, I’m a bit old for that.

Matilde shrugs and heads for the water, waving at her kids to follow.

She leads them to a makeshift raft: kiddie pool floats, milk jugs, a camping tarp.

She gives one float a final pump of air.

SIRENA: This is the plan?

MATILDE: It’ll float. All you need.

She helps Jaime climb in. The raft shakes, but holds.

She climbs in after him, patting it like a trusty old car.

MATILDE: See? Solid.

Sirena eyes the American bank, reluctant.

SIRENA: I could just stay here.

MATILDE: Not that again. Get in.

Sirena sighs, wades in, and perches uneasily.

EXT. The Rio Grande, American side. DAY.

ZOE, 41, outdoors gear overkill, arranges water bottles with calm precision.

GRIZZIE, 18, in oversized sunhat and pristine sneakers, hovers nearby.

ZOE (English): You only set out water? Diversify.

Grizzie blinks, then hurriedly produces granola bars from a bag and lays them out.

Zoe nods, satisfied, scanning the river.

EXT. The Rio Grande, on the water. DAY.

Matilde pushes the raft forward with a stick.

MATILDE (bright): Easy, easy. See? We’re moving.

Sirena opens her crockpot to reveal a bunch of clothes and knick-knacks. She pulls out a bag of obleas--small, caramelized wafers.

Matilde glances at them, bemused.

MATILDE: A little taste from home?

SIRENA: Goodbye gift from Tita.

She chews on one.

SIRENA: You think they have these in America?

MATILDE: I doubt they waste their time with obleas. We’ll be enjoying bigger snacks in no time.

Sirena looks back at the Mexican shore shrinking behind them. She shuts the crockpot.

SIRENA: I like my snacks humble.

She leans forward to get off, but Matilde yanks her hoodie.

SIRENA: Let go!

In the commotion, Jaime’s Game Boy slips from his shirt pocket and into the water.

He lunges for it, and the raft flips--all three go tumbling into the river.

EXT. Rio Grande, American Side. DAY.

Zoe squints, hearing splashing.

She spots the chaos: arms, legs, floats, a hand propping up a crockpot.

ZOE: Grizzie. There.

She sprints off, while Grizzie strolls after her, concerned and confused.

Zoe dives into the river with a flourish, and swims expertly toward the flailing family.

Scene Notes

• The opening’s still lifted straight from Boudu Saved From Drowning (thanks again for that rec!). I’m usually wary of homages, but starting in the Rio Grande just feels too symbolically right to resist. The real challenge will be pulling it off on a small budget… but that’s tomorrow’s problem!

• What does still make me nervous is the tone of this as an unserious slacker take on something as serious as undocumented migration. I’ve never crossed the border myself, and no amount of research — memoirs, YouTube videos, you name it — will change that. So while the story begins with a crossing, it’s really about immigration at large, which is closer to my own experience.

• But if I can park my anxiety about depicting the crossing too lightly, I like that this tone our film as the total opposite of the tragic, workhumping, “poverty porn” immigration stories we usually see. I don’t know of a story that tackles immigration this way before. (if you know of any, please flag them in the comments!)

• While the plot events of this scene has remained unchanged from the first rewrite, I’ve made some adjustments:

  • Grizzie’s less of a snark and more compliant now, which fits her new arc.

  • Added a prelude with the cow and teddy bear — inspired by real Rio Grande crossing footage. It adds some bloat but also a nice slacker texture.

  • Also, as with every scene rewrite, I have polished down dialogue to be less on the nose and substituted actions for dialogue wherever I could. I’m not gonna note it in every scene, so just take that as a given step. Example: Sirena asking about obleas instead of outright saying “I can’t do this.”

All in all, this is a scene I’ve consistently felt good about since the first draft. It’s not always easy to start a story with an engaging episode, but I think this scene does that. (Watch me end up killing it later, as is often the case with my dearest “darlings”)

Consumerism as the Perfection of Slavery [EDIT]

(EDIT 3/25/26: The creator who made the video that I previously referenced here has since gone a bit viral for his Iran War analysis and, as part of his newfound fame, has unfortunately exposed himself as a holocaust denier so I no longer want to platform him. That said, while not linking to his videos anymore, the sentiment below holds and I still agree with it, so I’m keeping that part.)

This particular one gives simple and clear words to something that I’ve always felt instinctually: consumerism is a competition for prestige that drives people into debt and makes them wage slaves that hate each other.

It also made me reflect on how much I (and those around me, as far as I can tell) make our decisions (including romantic ones) primarily through economic logic.

Maybe Sirena felt this icky aura as she crossed the river, and that’s why she panicked and tried to turn back.

As always, any feedback, criticism, reaction, whatever is encouraged and appreciated and may work its way into future versions of the film. See you at the next scene!

I was laid off a couple weeks back, days before welcoming my first child into the world (and hours after the water broke). The timing looks terrible, but the company truly is in a bad financial spot, so it’s hard to be mad.

Everyone who hears this says “I’m really sorry.” And sure, it wasn’t fun. But short-term? It’s been kind of great. Blessed with some savings, I’ve been able to forget the market’s demands and lock into the rhythms of my newborn. In fact, I’m shocked to find that these first weeks, which everyone describes as the most exhausting gauntlet of your life, have felt…dare I say, restful.1

This would all feel a lot harder if I had to hit milestones in time to show back up at a desk. A friend of mine insists that sleep training is a capitalist conspiracy to rush women back to work. I can’t speak to that, but I do sense most parents don’t have a choice but to treat their child like a work project, knowing they’ll have to integrate the kid into the larger logic of their work life.

Freed from that logic, however, the whole texture of care changes. Three AM wake-ups are still exhausting, but they stop being a problem to be solved. You’re free to focus on the experience as tender, fleeting and sacred.

The discerning BQE reader knows that caregiving and emotional nourishment are complex skills that should be valued on par with any other. The market’s refusal to do so only reflects the shortcomings of the market, not of the skills themselves.2

But here’s a paradox I can’t shake: care is work that should be paid, yes. But it’s only truly effective and healing when it’s not treated like work, ie. when we don’t submit it to the logic and calendar of a job.

This is also why I’ve never seen a workplace wellness program that didn’t feel like a parody of itself. It’s a big knot I can’t quite untie.

* * * * * *

Back in November, we had a yoga teacher come to the office.

It was awkward at first, seeing coworkers bent over in all sorts of weird ways. But we were a tight-knit workplace, and after everyone stifled their laughter (or ran away completely) we all settled in and it was nice. Endorphins and a real sense of peace circulated around our usually frantic all-staff meeting room.

I let myself drift until shavasana, when dread pierced me with a vengeance. The next time we’d be in this room, we’d be laying people off. I’d be personally delivering the news to one of the people in class with me, because I was too chickenshit to stick with my own ideals of how a boss should operate.

The teacher closed with a final “om” and a dab of lavender. Everyone fresh and relaxed and ready to be shoved into the wilderness.

To make up for it, I made a quick video montage sharing my improvised analog process for thinking through and reshuffling the Sirena story outline. Maybe it’ll help in your projects!

(If you prefer the YouTube viewing experience, watch the video here)

Why so much online writing rubs you the wrong way

Also–while wrestling with this messy outline, I was reminded why so much online writing leaves me cold. I’ve been revisiting a fun piece by where he splits writing into two types: instrumental (writing to effect an external outcome) and metamorphic (writing for internal transformation).

When he said that 99% of the writing online is instrumental, it clicked. This is why internet rabbit holes are demoralizing must of the time–they’re extremely careerist and transactional! But the good stuff is usually metamorphic, messy, and slow.

Worth reading if you want help curating what’s worth your attention.

See you soon with actual scenes!

We tell ourselves to-do lists are to be productive, but be honest–don’t you really make them to feel less lost in this cold, hostile world? I know I do!

Friend of the blog sent me the above quote a few weeks back, saying “L Vago must have a hot take about this.” (most relevant part in the caption)

I don’t know if this is the heat Elspeth had in mind, but the quote helped me further understand what I was tryin to articulate back when I attempted a take-down of goals and dreams. In a flash, it yielded a galaxy-brain framework (apparently my favorite way of communicating) for the levels of to-do-listing. Let’s explore:

Tiny Brain: Completionism

You attach to doing all your items and any incomplete ones eat at your self-worth. Living at this level most of my life led me to irrationally swear off goals at one point. In hindsight, being able to contextualize this attitude into a brain-framework reflects how BQE writing has helped me see past and beyond it. Always good to celebrate little markers of growth!

Big Brain: “A” for Effort

Within the ridiculous parameters of our current workhumper world, I’d count this as a well-adapted lens of thought.

Radiating Brain: The List is merely a vehicle

This is where Carrie Brownstein, the quote’s author, is at. It’s probably where I’m also at on my best days, bouncing between this and the previous level. I’m proud that I’m no longer as much of a slave to my to-do lists, but a day with nothing “to do” feels dreadfully purposeless to me.

Galaxy Brain: No List, Just Flow

You may have intentions to guide you, sure, but you go with the amorphous flow of the universe, no map or list needed. Galaxy Brain, God-level shit. The (very few) people I’ve met like this both inspire and terrify me.

Find the framework in full below. It may be a helpful reminder when you’re beating yourself up–where are you on the scale? How can you “level-up” to give yourself more grace?

Or it may be totally off the mark for you. Weigh in either way!

What does it mean to choose disability as an identity, not just a condition?

Kate Levinstein wears many fascinating hats: musician, healer, dancer, community builder, and many more. In recent years one of these hats—manager of a health condition—has led her to embrace becoming someone who chooses to identify as disabled.

This is the first time Kate has spoken publicly about this identity shift, and I’m honored to share it with you.

I recorded this interview with her a year ago (this is why workhumpers say we need bosses), but it still sits with me in the best way as one of the most thought-provoking, challenging conversations I’ve had on this podcast.

In a bit over an hour, we discuss:

• Kate’s gradual journey to embracing disabled as an identity, and how it has enriched her life.

• The nuanced and varied definitions of a “person with a disability,” including its dimensions as a political identity.

• The trap of feeling the need to seem “impressive” and how it interplays with feeling happy and proud with the life you have.

• How disability advocacy mirrors the messiness of democracy more closely than arguably any other issue.

• Rethinking what we mean by “needs,” “demands,” and “desires”

• The power dynamics of negotiating how a group meets an individual’s needs.

• Disability justice as the antithesis of our societal obsession with convenience.

• The concept of “access intimacy” and communicating directly when you can’t (or simply don’t want to) meet someone else’s needs.

Some of the resources Kate mentions:

• Sins Invalid

• Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility Project

You can contact Kate for further discussion at KateWrenHealing@gmail.com

If you’ve ever wrestled with labels, expectations, or the politics of care, this one’s for you.

This is the third update on the progress of our film to broaden the slacker genre.

Last dispatch: #2

I haven’t been exactly prolific on BQE over the last year, but behind the scenes your neighborhood antiwork blog has been busy crafting our film. As of a few weeks ago, we finally have a completed first draft of the Sirena: A Drag on America (Working Title) screenplay!

What now? When do you get to see the story? Well, while I’m happy with it as a first draft, I’ve already gotten some great constructive feedback on it and have a fairly clear idea of how to vastly improve it. I want you to experience the improved version, but I also don’t want to wait too long to finally share something with you all.

So here’s the plan:

• I’ll do the second rewrite publicly, publishing scenes here as I finish them. Hopefully this rewards your patience if you’ve put up with these updates and all the slacker film analyses over the last two years. Selfishly, it may also get me some real-time feedback so that I can sharpen the story even more.

• I’ll start loading the scenes on here roughly weekly, about 1-2 scenes at a time. I’m hoping this lasts for about two or three months. (Second drafts tend to be a bit quicker for me). I’ll accompany them with notes on my thought process and what still may need improvement.

• Additionally, I’ll take advantage of the weekly format to link other people’s interesting antiwork content that I keep meaning to plug on BQE but never get around to.

• I have made a special mailing list for these dispatches called “Sirena’s Pages.” You are all automatically on it. If you ever want to keep getting Big Quit Energy but skip the screenplay updates, you can easily adjust your settings using the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of this or any of my emails and opting out of Sirena’s Pages specifically. (No hard feelings!)

Notes on the state of the project

In the spirit of becoming less rigid, I’ll ignore the format from previous entries as it seems like overkill at this point. Instead, find scattered notes on some of the biggest changes since we last talked.

The biggest shock: a first draft that was REALLY fun to write

This is the 11th script for which I’ve written at least one complete draft. For all previous ones, the first draft felt like crossing a desert of hot coals while whipping myself in self-loathing. Not only was this one fun to write, but as soon as I finished it I was already dying to do a rewrite (I’ve had to force myself to take a break). For previous scripts, I wanted the story out of my sight and often never got around to picking it up for a rewrite.

What has made this time different?

A less rigid process

The bulk of the credit goes to the new writing approach inspired by Robert Bosswell that I previously discussed.

Not worrying about knowing where I was going with the story before writing it, I didn’t put as much pressure on nailing everything in my outline. This allowed me a hybrid, non-linear process, where I would spice up rounds of outlining the story by vomiting out whatever scenes came to me, in random order (these often inspired new ideas in the outline itself).

Later, when I formally shifted from outlining to writing the script, I was able to alternate between rewriting scenes I already had with “improvising” new scenes further ahead in the story. This not only gave me variety and novelty, avoiding ruts, but it also added up to a first draft that in practice had been “rewritten” two or three times already.

Immediate feedback and ideation with Chat-GPT

And that was all BEFORE I experimented with chatGPT for feedback, which also added to the fun. If you’re an old fan of the blog, you may remember that our first podcast ever was about whether AI destroys or enhances the human creative spirit. Back then, I had never used AI tools to aid in projects, and used this opportunity to try it.

Setting environmental guilt aside for a second, I have been pleasantly surprised at how Chat-GPT helped make the process more creatively stimulating and efficient.

Immediate feedback: for starters, it alleviates what may be the most painful thing about screenwriting–how long it takes to get feedback. Ordinarily, I’d have to wait months while I finish a draft and finding someone qualified and willing to read a long script. With ChatGPT, I can get structural, dialogue, and tonal feedback on every scene, immediately. (it helps to prompt it to think like different screenwriting professors or film directors).

I worked this into the writing process of every scene: after doing my own rewrite, I’d do a round of feedback from ChatGPT and incorporate what I thought was reasonable. You have to retain your critical thinking when doing this, as GPT often gives very literal and conventional advice. But that’s a great perspective to get, while your human advisors can give a more ambitious, gut-driven perspective.

Also, not to be discounted, discussing your script everyday (even if with a machine) makes the process feel less lonely.

Fun brainstorming rewrite attempts: I say “attempts” because, in my opinion, ChatGPT is not a good overall writer, especially when it comes to long pieces like scenes (let alone a whole movie). If you’re hoping AI will take your outline and write a masterpiece (or worse, plot a story from scratch itself) prepare for an underwhelming, forgettable piece that’s basically the unoriginal average of everything ever written.

However! AI knows conventions well (both from specific genres and from Hollywood overall), which made it helpful to me in two ways:

• It helped me gauge ways to make my outline or my scenes truer to the slacker genre. I would have it rewrite a scene as an over-the-top slacker film and, while a lot of what it wrote was cringe, there were always one or two brilliant moments where it would use genre conventions to push the scene.

• I used it as a brainstorming tool by having it do other exercises with the scene: rewrite it in completely unrelated genres, or as an homage to a random film, or even from the perspective of someone who doesn’t even make films. Borrowing from other domains is great to inject freshness into the genre you’re focusing on, and with chat GPT I could do tons of these thought exercises in a short period without much mental fatigue.

More brevity, sooner: as you can probably tell, I’m not naturally concise as a writer or as a talker. One way in which GPT has me beat is its ability to take long globs of description or dialogue and shorten them without losing their essence. I took advantage of this, and as a result, the first draft (while still having its problems) is a much quicker and easier read than 137-page first drafts usually are. I’m sure my human feedback partners were glad for that.

My GPT conclusion: not good for generating original ideas, excellent to refine and improve your original ideas. I appreciated that if you give it something that’s out there, it doesn’t try to sand it down the way an idiot creative executive would. It rolls with it while helping you bring it home in a technically sound and genre-true way as possible.

The biggest pressing need: brevity

Yes, you heard right: the script is 137 pages long (each page usually equates to one minute of run-time). This is unacceptably long for a comedy–especially a slacker film. Draft two will need to chop off 27 pages, ideally 37, maybe even 47. No sweat, though: everything I write is usually double the length it should be at first.

What’s this movie about again?

While lost in writing the draft, I kind of lost track of its thematic north star.

In the process, its original incarnation (“American culture can’t stand for marginalized people who have been ‘given a chance’ to choose contentment and unproductiveness”) has been joined by a second theme, less focused on the societal antagonist force and more “personal.” Right now I can only clumsily articulate it as: “True freedom lies not in escaping societal expectations but in finding rest and solidarity amidst them.”

This follows Sirena’s character arc which, contrary to many slacker films, involves a change.

Still haven’t quiiite nailed our slacker protagonist

While Sirena’s character arc and personality feels more or less nuanced, I’ve been repeatedly told that her philosophy and relationship with work isn’t clear.

It doesn’t help that there are sequences where she willingly works hard and hustles, even if the reasons she does it aren’t exactly “aspirational” or satisfactory to those around her. I thought that nuance would be enough, but apparently not! I’ll have to work to clarify her motivation, hopefully without killing her mystery.

Even further away with our antagonist

While Sirena is almost there, Zoe presents a bigger problem. Tonally, she jumps around from humanized and empathetic to cartoonish to deeply evil. Given her monumental importance to the story, she’s the character I have to fix up the most.

In hand with her tonal shifts, Zoe doesn’t currently have a strong, explicit justification for being at the border when Sirena and her family try to cross or for and taking them into her home (a large commitment, after all). She has a reason, I swear. But in the story’s current state this reason is internally driven and not very clear.

Starting your story on a seemingly whimsical decision is not always condemning it to fail, but it’s not great. Fortunately, a fellow screenwriter had an amazing suggestion for how to fix this, which you’ll get to see in real-time during the second draft rewrite. Fixing this may also give me a stronger “inciting incident,” another crucial ingredient the story still lacks.

Matilde and Grizzie emerge as nice surprises

On a positive note, I’m very pleased with Sirena’s mom, Matilde. Previously a stock character, she now feels complex and drives a lot of the story. This is the most gratifying and unexpected change from the last time I checked in with you.

Alongside her, Grizzie–originally just a comic relief side-character–has also grown to be complex and central.

These changes are the conscious result of someone telling me that this seems like a story of the four women mentioned so far, each one representing a different reaction to American work expectations. Sirena is the most oppositional (to a fantastical extent) and Zoe the most zealous, while Matilde and Grizzie cope in more nuanced and contradictory ways. Elevating the latter two has enriched the story.

The dilemma of Paco

This leaves us with our final main-ish character. I originally gave Paco a prominent role in the story’s final act, but scaled it down to give Matilde more importance. Yet, I’ve kept depth and detail in his character that now feels outsized for his current screen-time.

I remain attached to the gender expectations dynamic that he brings as Sirena’s unrequited romantic suitor. Problem is, now he feels like one big loose end. I’ve got to figure out how to downplay him (or remove him, like I did Zoe’s husband) and make him a little less emotionally complex as he plays his role.

You may have noticed that in past dispatches I’ve linked a PDF with the latest outline or draft of the story. Since I’ll be sharing improvements real-time with you soon, I’m gonna skip that step today. Expect dispatches of scenes to begin in 2-3 weeks! I’m excited to share this next phase of the project with you with more regularity.

Thank you all for your continued readership and support of this project, and of Big Quit Energy as a whole. Appreciate you!

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I’m not the neatest person, but I’ll go through Marie Kondo kicks now and then.

She says something around how books can be a heavy reminder who you think you should be, who you keep pressuring yourself to become. Or worse, who you keep pressuring yourself to continue being.

Despite that, I’ve kept my school textbooks for years, both because I told myself I’d brush up on old subjects AND because they projected a serious, “deep” identity.

I’ve now put the bulk of those in a donation box. I didn’t plan it—it just felt right in the moment.

It’s a time of upheaval, both personally and societally. Those are never easy, but (maybe thanks to Marie) this time I’ve embraced shedding old identities and expectations—of myself, of society—that have been long dusty on my shelf. In the case of books, I like to think of not just shedding the identities but freeing them up for someone else to embody when they bump into them at the used book store.

In transitions there’s both grieving what you quit and celebrating the space it opens. There’s wistfulness for the paths not taken and renewed energy from locking into the path that’s here today.

It doesn’t makes the uncertainty less scary, but it does make it more exhilarating.

Today is “Boss Day” in America, a day where employees are supposed to kowtow to their supervisors, as if that expectation didn’t exist every single day.

To mark the occasion, I’m re-posting a piece from a little bit under two years ago where I, prompted by a post by Dr. Devon Price, explored whether it’s possible to ever be an “ethical” boss and spitballed a framework of different “levels” to guide anyone trying to be an ethical, antiwork-forward boss.

This was the first post on here to gain anything close to mass traction. By my estimate, however, more than half of you joined BQE after it came out. Back when I wrote it, I said I was squarely in level three, doing none of the “top level” actions suggested by Dr. Price. A couple years later, I’m happy to report that I’ve become comfortable with many of these practices, short of trying to form a union. Growth!

I hope you enjoy this (by internet standards, anyway) throwback.

Slacker Fest is back!  We only have a couple more films left in this series, but they’re good ones! Slacker Fest is where we document our research and analysis of mass media’s “slacker” archetype, part of our effort to broaden the genre with a slacker film of our own.  Find our master list of entries here. Previous entry: Funny Ha Ha

When I put out a call looking for slacker characters that weren’t White dudes, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was the most suggested film.  While this marks my first viewing of the film, I’ve long been aware of how children of immigrants—especially Asian immigrants—resonate with it.  So I wasn’t shocked to see it explore the pressure cooker of cultural expectations for bicultural Americans.  

What I was surprised to also find, however, was the first seeds of critique toward slacker films broadly.  With allusions to genre conventions and biases,  Harold and Kumar marked a bit of a shift in slacker films themselves1.

The basics

Release year:  2004

Premise:  Two Asian-American young professional roommates go on a late-night, munchies-driven quest to get White Castle, finding a series of absurd obstacles and detours along the way.  (An evolution of Cheech and Chong’s plot thirty years prior) 

Auteurs:  John Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg wrote this film (Danny Leiner directed it) with the express intention of representing high school friends that they never saw represented in teen movies.  I gotta hand it to them: their outstanding degree of insight when writing characters that don’t share their background is rare and gives me hope.  

Interesting side note: they also wrote Plan B fifteen years later, a very funny film about two girls who are also kids of immigrants.  Having just given the fellas their flowers, I must say they toned down the slacker when writing these analogues, instead making them overachievers who are dabbling with rebelliousness and sexual liberation.  Which is awesome, and they probably didn’t mean to make Plan B a  direct descendant to H&K.  But I mention this just to show how difficult it has been for the genre’s (overwhelmingly male) writers to cross gender anti-slacker biases even when they’ve been able to cross cultural ones.

Notable characters:

• Harold, titular slacker #1

• Kumar, titular slacker #2

• Dr. Patel, Kumar’s dad and voice of the immigrant work ethic expectation

• Billy Carver, Harold’s coworker who functionally functions as the “villain” and the “privileged” slacker (my term…more on that later)

• Cindy Kim, the seemingly prototypically careerist, studious international Asian student. 

• Maria, the girl next door who, in typical early 2000’s comedy fashion, exists to be hot and telegraph Harold’s figurative growth of a “pair.” 

Meet the slackers:  Harold and Kumar

Harold, the true protagonist, is very much not a slacker.  When we meet him, in fact, he’s being overworked by colleagues eager to exploit his “Asian” diligence (“I’m telling you, those Asian guys love crunching numbers.  You probably made his weekend!”) Accordingly, his “growth” arc is clear: get a little Big Quit Energy and learn to set some boundaries.

Kumar fully embodies the slacker archetype.  We meet him purposefully sabotaging his med school interviews (despite his high intellect) while milking his dad’s allowance as much as possible, despite pressure from his entire family to achieve a high-status career.

Their World: The NY/NJ Metro area

I.e. the work-humpiest region on Earth.  This isn’t small town Jersey a-la Clerks, but more of an office-park corporate hellscape a-la Office Space.  And like in the latter world, the specter of downsizing looms over Harold’s life, coercing him to grin and take exploitative assignments.  That and, for our slackers, of course a nice layer of the rude, racist, homophobic provincialism that the Northeast US low-key (not so low key?) delivers along with the best. 

Within this world, the film also finds time to poke fun at the obsessive careerism of Asian-Americans—both young adults and the families who pressure them. 

What does our slacker want and what’s in the way? (defining desire vs. opposing force)

At face value, just weed and White Castle–the whole purpose of their road trip.  But underneath they seek a more elevated form of hedonism:  the permission to slack, blow off steam, make mistakes, AND still feel accepted by the world around them.   In the way is, well, the LACK of permission that their culture and society (and, ultimately, their own “inner bosses”) grant them to do all this.

How does the film define a “slacker” in broader terms?

Of all the films in our series, I feel like H&K implies the most straightforward definition: someone who blows off work and responsibility, plain and simple.  Unlike other films in the series, our slackers have a fairly clear sense of their path in life (neither of them making drastic life changes at the end of the film), but are either burnt out by the way they’re approaching it (Harold) or avoiding getting started altogether (Kumar). 

Could anyone other than a White an Asian dude pull off slacking in this story world?

I think so!  Beyond centering two Asian-American protagonists, it actually–upon further reflection after I criticized the writers for Plan B–showcases some female characters who at least dabble in slackerism.  For example: Cindy, the girl who Harold dismisses as a boring and studious international student turns out to have it in her to throw a huge banger.

Does the film “approve” of slacking?  Is it a broader anti-job statement? 

This is not an anti-work film: no dismantling systems or questioning  basic mores here.  However, I think it approves of “pockets” of slacking as part of a balanced, healthy life, which puts it somewhat ahead of its time.  If the 2000s-2010s were peak millennial work-humperism and the 2020s are the disillusionment era where corporate lip service to self-care is in vogue, H&K feels more contemporary to today.  

Yet even if everyone conforms to careerism in the end, it’s hard to call the film conformist when it contains perhaps the most radical monologue in the genre: Kumar’s climatic speech that reframes the immigrant American dream from the duty to work tirelessly to the duty to enjoy America’s plentiful and delicious fast food.  

Finally, similar to The Big Lebowski, the film condemns slackers who do their slacking on the back of other people, and does so more explicitly.  

It’s very telling that Harold and Kumar doesn’t start with the protagonists (as most films conventionally do), but with two of Harold’s White colleagues.  The opening scene portrays them sympathetically, as one is trying to encourage the other to get over his ex, ditch his work, and have some fun this weekend.  If you didn’t know the film’s title and marketing, you may think the film was about them–until they make a heel turn and devise to have their fun by exploiting Harold’s work ethic.  

What I like about this introductory “red herring” is that it points to the genre and suggests that behind all those white dude slackers we cheer, there are people who labor invisibly (usually minorities and/or women) to pick up their slack.  This nascent critique of slacker’s “collateral damage” in H&K was explored more in-depth in the genre’s last notable entry, The Beach Bum (analysis forthcoming!).

What does the film see as “the enemy” in broader terms?

Cultural expectations of work ethic, careerism, and perfect behavior as they’re projected onto ethnic minorities.  Both characters struggle with the pressure to be perfect, both from their family but (more insidiously) from a society that will only accept them conditionally as long as they “work harder” (something that’s given as “helpful” advice to marginalized people of all types). 

Walt Wiltman’s favorite line

Grant Cardone’s work-humper take

“You’re either an eater or a hunter. Folks, Harold and Kumar are just eaters, driving for miles instead of channeling their craving to seize the 10X opportunity of filling the market gap and franchising some new, more conveniently located White Castles. Play small, stay small!"

Are there any slacker-like innovations in the technique of the film itself?

Plot / Setting

Plotwise, I’ve already highlighted the “red herring” start to the story and the fact that Harold has a concrete “growth arc” (which, while common for protagonists in most mainstream films, is definitely NOT common in slacker films).  He “grows” to learn to set boundaries and not let himself be exploited (at least by his coworkers–bosses are absent altogether in this story).  He doesn’t become a slacker, but at least he’s no longer a workhorse for other slackers. 

The plot overall is very vignette-driven instead of linear.  While it shares this with most slacker films, I suspect this is primarily driven by seemingly EVERY mainstream early aughts comedy’s complete disregard for plot cohesion.  

Cinematography / Camera use / Color / Mise-en-scéne 

Editing / Pacing

Sound / Music

What would I want to keep for our slacker film?  What do I want to leave behind or improve?

KEEP

• The exploration of how different ethnic groups face unique pressure to justify themselves through work and careerism.  This remains the central theme of Sirena and the freedom from these pressures is shaping up to be her driver, just like it was for Harold and Kumar.  

LEAVE OR PUSH

• The gratuitous homophobia in Harold and Kumar (which to be fair to the writers, Plan B later tries to atone for).    

• As much as I like this film, it lacked a bit in the way of “slacker” innovations in its non-plot techniques and felt like a very conventional early-aughts comedy.  Not that this isn’t enjoyable, but if possible I’d like our film to feel different than whatever the conventions of today are.  

It’s a shame that the slacker genre more–or-less petered out after Harold and Kumar came out, because this film started to lay the groundwork for the genre to become more self-reflexive and self-critical.  I’m not saying there's been a revival of the genre in recent years, but if there is one, H&K may have laid the blueprint for the themes that guide it.

Next entry:  The Beach Bum

It feels selfish to say that working again has sucked, because my new job provides great coworkers, the privilege of relative autonomy, a good salary, and even interesting projects. But (as you can probably tell by my total inactivity), this is a classic case of a “good” work life completely displacing the rest of my life. I thought writing this blog and taking time off would somehow train me to protect my other roles as human from the role of “worker,” but that hasn’t been the case, and it makes me sad.  

The week before returning to work, I was riding my bike and chiding myself for not having totally changed my life during my time off.  “Going back to the same industry that I’ve complained about for years. How lame.”  But suddenly I was overwhelmed with how nice the afternoon wind felt after having worked out at the park, and how happy everyone looked as they strolled on the street. I felt the undeniable truth that my life is, by any measure, awesome.  If it amounted to nothing more than this, not only would I feel OK with it–I’d already be so, so lucky. 

It’s one of the greatest feelings I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve tried to hold on to that in the months since.  It’s not easy.  I often focus on all the “shoulds”…this office is not where I should be, I shouldn’t be playing this demeaning game again, my life should be more balanced.  These are legitimate feelings.  But I recently ran into this triggering [paraphrased] thought by :

“Most people who [want to maximize income in order to stop working] do so by unconsciously [deciding] to not like working. They are working for fuck-you money (or what is almost the same thing, fuck-you fame) same as boring careerists and second-rate entrepreneurs solving for an “exit” rather than the next level of their mission. Working to stop working. A finite game. 

Once you decide to like work, and solve for both quality and quantity to make it sustainable indefinitely, it becomes obvious that solving for maximum revenue OR for maximum “status” as indicated by bill rate is a very dumb thing to do.

This is a blog about hating work, goddamit, and I will keep it on brand! But…

I’ve got to admit it: a lot of people who have “escaped” still play status games, still engage in performative busyness, still buy into the bullshit, and still burn out.  I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to accept myself as an office stiff, learn to blunt the inherent indignities that come with that, and let myself be happy.

This sounds like hard-core copium, and maybe it is. I’d still love to abolish work.  Seeing people quit their job is one of life’s greatest pleasures, only topped by the pleasure I feel when I quit.

But this blog has also taught me that the “energy” of Big Quit Energy comes from, above all, quitting the coercive stories in your own head.  And if you have to (or even CHOOSE to) make your money in a chump job, the ultimate shamelessness is not to feel shame at that either. 

How do I balance acknowledging that striving for change may be good for me with accepting how things are now and being happy anyway?  It’s a tricky balance.  As I get my feet under me and hopefully acclimate to this next chapter, maybe we can explore it further.

“Utopian” tends to be leveled as a bit of an insult, often to imply that people or ideas (Antiworkers, for example) are naive and unserious. Yet, have you ever noticed that those on the other end (pundits forecasting doomsday, apocalyptic futures) are never treated with the same skepticism?  Apparently, this wasn’t always the case, and is trying to bring back a little bit of that quaint optimism.  After all, imagination is for creating reality, not just escaping it. 

Author of the very popular substack The Elysian, Griffin writes both fiction and non-fiction speculating on what utopian futures could look like in the realm of economy, religion, and work—among many other areas.   She expresses some views I agree with and some that trigger me, but in both cases her ideas are always very thoughtful, clear, and fair.

Her latest novels "Obscurity" and "Oblivion" are available to read serially, and her essays have also been featured in Esquire, Forbes, Every, and The Muse. 

In a bit over an hour, we discuss:

• Why her work focuses on envisioning positive futures rather than dystopian pessimism and why she considers open borders an essential ingredient for utopia.  

• The future of work in a utopian society—emphasizing vocational work and community contributions—with her current personal lifestyle of remote work and autonomy serving as an example.

• A totally-not-dystopian thought exercise of whether we’d rather live under the thumb of governments or corporations, as power increasingly shifts from one to the other and firms provide benefits traditionally offered by the state.  

• Why she believes a “capitalist utopia” is possible within a vision of capitalism centered around worker cooperatives.

• Whether human nature can also become utopian enough for truly egalitarian governance, or if we’ll always need hierarchies to protect against negative behavior—something she debated in correspondence with anarchist thinker .

• How writing fiction and non-fiction help her think about the same topic in different ways.  

Note: the critique of futurism that I referred to but couldn’t remember is a Spanish-language book called Futuro Ancestral.  

People (OK, one person…OK, me) keep saying “It’S cAlLeD bIg QuIt EnErGy!  WhAt ExAcTlY aRe YoU qUiTtInG?!?”

Here’s a series of shit we should quit* to enjoy a post-work, joyful existence. 

(*A lot of this shit is shit I haven’t quit.  Lay off.  Recognition is the first step.)

#1 Small business owners as sacred cows

I understand that proliferating small businesses is better for society than concentrating economic power in a few large corporations, so I’m on board for supporting small businesses overall.  But deifying small business owners (without any sort of corresponding reverence for small business employees, by the way)?  Not for it. 

First, is working under a petty little dictator THAT much better than working inside a large corporate machinery? You could argue that it’s worse: at least employees at large corporations have an HR department pretending to protect them from the whims of their supervisor.  There’s a reason why restaurants have the rep of being some of the worst work environments out there. 

But that aside, sacred-cow small businesses serve as the perfect front to justify rules and legislation that mostly benefit hideously oppressive and gargantuan corporations.  “Raising the minimum wage will drive this small business owner out of business!  We can’t do it!”  For some reason, it’s blasphemy to respond with “I don’t care if you’re some scrappy bootstrap story…if you can’t pay a living wage, you don’t deserve to have employees.”  

You don’t get a pass on exploiting people just because you’re not a faceless corporation.  It’s nice that you have a face, don’t get me wrong.  But faces can be punchable and loathsome, and right now I see such a face, one lusting for growth and selling out and getting rich off the back of other people.  Miss me with that. 

All the writing on Big Quit Energy is free to the world.  But!--if it resonates deeply enough that you want to support it with bucks, you can subscribe for perks here or you can also contribute a one-time donation.  

You can also pitch in (and look cool AF) by gifting yourself or a friend some Big Quit Energy in the form of sweet swag.

Subscribe now

#2 The proverbial “We”

As in using “we/us” to make blanket assumptions about our audience or, worse, all of society.  For example, “We all grew up loving the Ninja Turtles.”  I mean, I did. But all of us?  Really?  Or, “The 90s as we all fondly remember them.”  Beside the fact that a sizable portion of BQE readers were born after 2000, I’m gonna put this out there:  I didn’t particularly enjoy the 90s.  I’d much rather live today.  

I’m guilty of using the proverbial “we” a lot.  It’s a hard habit to quit (I introduced this series as shit “we” should quit).  And I get that it gives a warm and fuzzy feeling of unity, of “us” all being on the same team.  But it can be insidious when people write thought-pieces and use the proverbial “we” to establish their experience or view to be a universal given, above any debate.  

This sounds nitpicky, and overall it is. But it’s good to watch out for throwaway expressions that “normalize” or “universalize” attitudes and points of view that are decidedly NOT universal or normal.  Such as, “We all want a good job that gives us purpose.”  Bitch, not me!  I get my purpose from play and leisure just fine, thank you. 

This has been today’s installment of “Shit to Quit.” If you have shit you think people should quit, shoot me a note and we’ll try to get everyone to quit that shit.

This is the second update on the progress of our film to broaden the slacker genre. Past dispatches: #1

I’ve finally caught a rhythm on this project, but only after months of paralysis. This always happens, and my process makes it hard to prevent. For years, my approach to scripts has been very linear: start with research, write progressively more detailed treatments and outlines, leading to one very detailed step outline of about 20 pages, and only then (about 6-7 months in) slog through a script draft.  

I picked up the philosophy of researching and relentlessly outlining before starting a draft–knowing my path before I walk it–from every screenwriting book I’ve ever read, but non more forcefully than Robert McKee’s Story (of Adaptation fame).  

The workhumper McKee school of screenwriting

Beyond merely having an idea of initial plotting, the “McKee School” counsels you to iterate outlines (and build character biographies) to become all-knowing about your world and your characters, to the point where you consciously know how they’d react to anything.

“Who are these characters? What do they want? Why do they want it? How do they go about getting it? What stops them? What are the consequences? Finding the answers to these grand questions and shaping them into story is our overwhelming creative task.”

I find this to be reasonable advice.  It’s also a lot of pressure, and gave me a year’s worth of writer’s block back when I first read McKee.  It made it very hard for me to give myself “permission” to start writing my stories if I didn’t feel like I knew everything ahead of time.  

Fifteen years later, putting the story into script format remains a fraught step for me, and Sirena is no exception.  I spent all summer and fall putting off the earnest work of outlining the story, happy to let Slacker Fest become a “productive” excuse to procrastinate. I dreaded the months-long process of “earning” the fun of writing the actual story, like a school child having to earn recess by doing math drills. 

Discovering the “half-known” school

It was serendipitous, then, that I picked up Robert Boswell’s The Half-Known World during this stretch of procrastination. The book–admittedly meant for literary fiction, not film–encourages writing without fully knowing your characters or your world in order to let them surprise you.  Emphasis mine:

“I come to know my stories by writing my way into them.  I focus on the characters without trying to attach significance to their actions…I remain purposefully blind to the machinery of the story…I work from a kind of half-knowledge…Invariably, things have arrived that I did not invite, and they are often the most interesting things in the story.”

Beyond half-knowledge as a way to generate surprising discoveries as you write, Boswell argues that knowing everything in advance hinders the quality of your work (again, emphasis mine):

“The listing of characteristics in advance of real narrative exploration tends to cut a character off at the knees.  Such a character may be complicated but is rarely complex…The writer who has typed in the answers to the preceding questions may feel knowing…but may find it difficult to let the character break out of these imaginative restraints…Here’s another definition of stereotype: any character that is fully known.”

Discovering the “half-known” school was like finding a jug of lemonade in the middle of a barren wasteland.  Here was an invitation to be reckless, to run straight to recess, to start writing before I knew anything.

The taboo of not knowing

In principle, McKee isn’t opposed to discovering character ideas through rewrites. But he clearly prefers outlines, and has called the notion that a character would have a “will of their own” (and lead the writer, not vice-versa) “childish.”  

While it’s true that all decisions–and all characters–come from writers, McKee’s attitude overestimates the extent to which writers can consciously know the contents of their psyche before they make the art. His school cautions “being led” by sudden discovery as lacking professionalism and seems generally weary of the artistic impulse–something it shares with most of studio Hollywood. 

Something it shares with most workplaces, actually. In professional culture, it’s taboo to “leave bases uncovered,” to start projects without a full strategy that claims to map the expected path.  It’s taboo to say “I don’t know,” despite the fact that not knowing is the constant state of most human experience. 

I’m feeling drawn to the “half-known” school because, ironically, the workplace itself has taught me how irrational it is to want to fully know.  The most successful work projects I’ve been a part of were those that just kind of happened before we knew what we were doing.  We just pretended after the fact to have thought things through in advance.

Synthesizing a new process

While I still value outlining and researching, it’s been necessary for me to figure out a process that integrates the “half-known”approach,  if only so that I can have fun sooner and actually, you know, get started.  This has become my approach:

• Continue the original plan of slowly iterating longer and longer outlines, with some character explorations and other research in between each iteration

• However, for every outline or piece of research I do, I’m writing at least one scene in script format

• Worse, I’m allowing myself to write scenes out of order, without knowing how they connect or if I will even use them. 

This has already resulted in some awful scenes.  But if I ignore my inner boss’ attempts to mortify me, it’s also a lot of fun! It’s fun to already be writing the thing–even if I will eventually have to rewrite it all.  It’s fun to have a process that’s more chaotic. And, as Boswell promised, “meeting” the characters on the page has given me new ideas for the outlines I’m fleshing out in parallel.

Speaking of which, let’s catch up with these characters. Here’s your official dispatch.

All the writing on Big Quit Energy is free to the world. 

But!--if it resonates deeply enough that you want to support it with bucks, you can subscribe for perks here or you can also contribute a one-time donation.  

You can also pitch in (and look cool AF) by gifting yourself or a friend some Big Quit Energy in the form of sweet swag.  Your support will go toward the site’s bigger projects, including producing our slacker film, “Sirena: a drag on America.”  

Subscribe now

Progress Report

(everything labeled “same” can be referenced in dispatch #1)

The basics

Working title and logline:  same

Current stage:  After writing four short prose versions of the story, I’m two drafts into a “step outline” that more deliberately maps out each beat in the plot.  That, and I’ve written 20 or so pages worth of actual screenplay format scenes (some are alternate versions of the same scene, which has been a fun way to experiment).  The goal is to write 1-2 more iterations of the step outline before summer, when I’ll focus exclusively on writing the screenplay itself. 

Current working outline file: Find it here  (you’ll also find a “mood board” for Sirena in there, which I explain below)

A lot more characters have names now!  They all started out as placeholder names but the longer they remained, the more natural they felt.  In the spirit of the “half-known school,” I think it’s better to keep the names and forget why they came up in the first place.  

The thematic “north star”

Same, with one additional wrinkle–I’m now not just trying to poke at the command to be productive in order to “belong,” but also the sense that some people are more “worthy” because they have marketable talents.  

You’ll note that the current outline plays with the recurring gag of Zoe seeing “talents” in Sirena–chess, business, etc–that Sirena actually doesn’t actually have. I like the possibility of making Sirena as unremarkable as possible, because it contradicts the usual immigrant/poverty story trope of a special protagonist that has “the stuff” to succeed.  Contradicting the conventional wisdom that a protagonist has to be “special” is a nice plus too.  We’ll see if it works.

Your slacker:  Sirena

While I’ve only done some cursory explorations into Sirena’s “biography,” (and there’s a ton I don’t know about her), I’ve had fun supplementing this character exploration with a “mood board” where each slide is a person (fictional or real) that I may model her after.  So far, in my attempt to make Sirena unapologetic and combative, I’ve given her a bit of a one-note personality, so I like keeping in mind models–like Ozu’s Noriko or El Norte’s Rosa–that have an independent edge but are also pulled by a sense of duty.  

I’ve also landed on a provisional “character arc” for Sirena that I’m excited about:

Feeling separate and wanting to be free from her community (and the expectations placed on them) →  Feeling pressured to take responsibility for her community → Feeling a sense of responsibility to lessen the work-driven burdens placed on her community (driven to play a bit of a “liberator” role)

I have not yet really brought this to life in the story, but I like that it may give Sirena a sense of larger purpose while providing a container to explore the sense of duty that many women and people of color have to “make good” on behalf of their identity groups. 

Her antagonist:  Zoe

It’s become apparent to me that Zoe should, despite her relative position of power and wealth to Sirena, be in turn crushed by her own employers, men who she has to constantly manage and impress.  Maybe Zoe, deep down, wants to be as reckless and antiwork as Sirena, and her drive to tame her “protegé '' comes from not wanting to face the “Sirena” she carries inside.

I also have a mood board for Zoe, but as of now it’s exclusively non-fictional people, who it’d be mean to put on blast as models for a “villain.”  The upside of this is that looking at her models’ social media, I get a vivid sense of their loving, complex side, and it reminds me to put a generous amount of that into Zoe. 

Her possible love interest / best friends / secondary antagonists:  Paco and Grizzie

The “suitor” has a name! I haven’t fleshed him out too much otherwise.  If anything, writing the script has brought the other secondary character, Grizzie (Zoe’s bratty teen daughter) into starker relief as an important partner-in-crime for Sirena.  

Right now, I can see endings where Grizzie and Paco end up as enemies to Sirena just as much as I can see endings where the three of them end up collaborating in more revolutionary ventures.  We’ll see.

What does Sirena want, and what’s the main societal/psychic “enemy” in the way?

There’s been a surprising development on this front:  does Sirena perhaps have a workhumper deep inside of her, and does she deeply want to feel like a contributor to society?  

At the very least, she wants to be accepted into her community.  BUT!  At the same time, she’s absolutely terrified of a life where she constantly has to prove herself in order to belong to a community.  You could say that what she wants is a community where she can belong simply by being who she is, no accomplishments needed. 

If that’s indeed her desire, then what gets in the way is nothing else than American/Western work culture itself.  How that best manifests in our humble story is still TBD.

By the way, her “surface” desire has changed from an afternoon at a spa to taking one of those cliché van-life years with Grizzie.  I don’t love this either, but it’s an improvement in the sense that it gives Zoe grounds to feel that Sirena is corrupting her own kids with her slacking.

Other new notes/aspirations/doubts 

• There’s no true strong “inciting incident” that ends act one and forces the story to “start” (the discovery of the van is a stand-in).  This might not be an issue in the end–a lot of slacker movies don’t have a strong inciting incident–but it doesn’t feel ideal.

• Right now the conflicting desire (sense of responsibility toward her community) that drives Sirena to change her mind at different parts of the story isn’t clear.  We have Sirena agree to go on a job interview and later take a job with Zoe, but these are based on impassioned speeches and vague threats by Zoe, which is a weak way to turn people’s minds in a story.  Gotta figure out a more credible pressure to acquiesce.  

• There’s a couple scenes involving a neighborhood priest which right now stick out like a sore thumb.  They’re in there because a friend suggested the idea of someone evangelizing work while not quite believing in it and I like it, so I’m still trying to make it work.  But if I can’t make it fit more seamlessly in later drafts, I’ll have to drop it. 

• If they indeed join a commune of squatters, this commune can’t be introduced in act three.  Right now, I seed them when introducing the van, but right now that’s placeholder and weak as hell. 

• Act III is still extremely placeholder and disconnected from the rest of the story.  I’m not even pretending otherwise.  MAJOR THIRD ACT PROBLEMS!

• Except I do like the last two scenes as a payoff for a lot of themes that I have in mind, and some of the details that are seeded in acts one and two.

Those of you that actually read through these updates are the most hardcore BQE aficionados.  I salute you.  And, as always, I’m all ears for any suggestions, feedback, criticism, or even for more involved collaboration if you’re feeling it. 

Thank you for your support and readership!

Big Quit Energy is important to me. It gives me a sense of purpose, and it’s often very fun too.  Yet, just as often, it stresses me out.  

For example, when I think about needing to be “scheduled” and “consistent” to keep people’s interest and justify paid subscribers’ generosity.  A need which Substack, the algorithm-boss (maybe the worst kind of boss) is happy to reinforce.  Or when I think of “the backlog”: all the posts and series ideas I’ll never get to.  It makes me sad to know I won’t finish a sizable percentage (let alone all) of them.

I used to see my other creative projects this way too: a backlog, bearing down on me with guilt.  I had this constant feeling that I was behind on a deadline, a Gigantic Cosmic Deadline.  

How did I stop thinking about my creative projects this way?  It was a gradual process, but it consisted of two main shifts:

1. I began looking at the process as the reward.  Doing a project for the growth and joy of doing it instead of the validation and opportunities from finishing it feels like less of a chore.  Gratification is immediate and I don’t worry about being “on schedule” according to some career story I’m telling myself.

2. I quit telling myself a “career story” about  my creativity.  I see it as a life practice instead–the practice of going to the proverbial playground and playing with my friends (external collaborator friends, inner artist child friend…both are cool).  At the playground with your friends, you “achieve” nothing.  You create, tear down, go home for dinner, do it again tomorrow. It’s also a practice I get to enjoy NOW, even if in small chunks. In that sense, I already “made it.” I already get to do what I want to do, and there’s nowhere else to be. 

All the writing on Big Quit Energy is free to the world.  But!--if it resonates deeply enough that you want to support it with bucks, you can subscribe for perks here or you can also contribute a one-time donation.  

You can also pitch in (and look cool AF) by gifting yourself or a friend some Big Quit Energy in the form of sweet swag.  Your support will go toward the site’s bigger projects, including producing our slacker film, “Sirena: a drag on America.”   

And remember to check out BQE’s companion podcast, “Friends with Big Quit Energy,” where we have in-depth conversations with people who have some BQE in them.

So, looking at Big Quit Energy:

1. I’ll admit it: the genesis of this blog was a career-driven attempt to build a public profile so that I could make creativity a “career.”  These types of motivations are fine as nudges (I’m certainly glad they nudged me to start and meet you all), but they’re inadequate for long-term sustainable fun. 

2. Even doing BQE for its own sake doesn’t resolve the angst of getting to all the ideas I have for it before the GREAT COSMIC DEADLINE.  This is because I’m still thinking of the blog as a series of achievements to be checked off.  No. I must think of it as another way to play with friends.  The game of creating, yes, but also the game of healing and disarming the obsolete stories we carry inside. 

Here’s to hoping that, by writing this, I consciously make BQE as fun as it deserves to be.  Thank you for indulging me, and I hope it helps you have more fun with the (non-coerced1) activities you care about.

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If you want a measure of how little power someone has, you could do worse than track how much “code-switching”--alternating between ways of presenting yourself (speech, dress, attitude, etc.)--they do on any given day.  And of course, despite employers' sweet talk about bringing your “whole self” to work, jobs are where  99% of us (some more than others, of course) code-switch most.

Necessity drove NYRican in LA’s aka “Mamita Mala” (writer, activist, mom, non-profit leader, and much more) to develop code-switching expertise from a young age.  We kick off this new season of Friends with BQE discussing her story and how, slowly but surely, she grew to unapologetically express her uncut identity more often, including where it’s riskiest: in “professional” spaces.

In a bit over an hour, we discuss:

• Her experience growing up as a Nuyorican trying to assimilate into “mainstream” culture, and the events that convinced her to fully own her heritage instead [Trigger warning:  there’s a short retelling of racially-motivated violence about 9 minutes into the recording, and it ends by minute 11]

• The tricky dynamics facing people who are living in between two cultures (including an interesting thought experiment on what you need to experience in a community before you can claim to be part of it) 

• On her intentional habit of “making trouble” at work meetings to size people up and model what it can look like to exist at work without code-switching.

• The counterintuitive insight that the more ways you know to scratch together a living (odd jobs, side hustles, whatever) the less you have to warp your personality to keep a paycheck coming.1

• The continued prevalence of “respectability politics” (basically, code-switching as a political strategy) in the nonprofit world and some of Meagan’s colleagues’ instinct to “co-opt” her decision to work as a stripper into what she calls a “bootstrap narrative”  

• How the “bootstrap narrative” tends to value certain types of laborers (especially among undocumented immigrants) over others

Beside NYRican in LA, you can find all of Mamita Mala’s work and socials here. 

If you want to support or collaborate with IDEPSCA, the institute for popular education that Maegan helps run, you can connect with them on socials at instagram, facebook, or tiktok. 

Also, here’s the Resistencia Comunitaria media collective, for you Spanish speakers who like good radio and popular theater.

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