"Essential Reading for Big Quit Energy" has two new inductees

Plus: upcoming audio interviews and a gift shop

While I build the next batch of stuff for you, a “housekeeping” post with some minor (but fun!) updates:

I’ve added two books to the official “foundational works” list for developing Big Quit Energy

As I’ve continued reading what’s out there in the “anti-work” / “rethink work” space, I’m excited to recommend two more books to help to heal your own workaholism and fight back against our work-humping dystopia.  Here’s the updated and re-organized list, along with the new entrants below:

Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey

This is the first work I’d recommend to anyone beginning their deprogramming from work-worship.   A self-described “manifesto” by the founder of The Nap Ministry, Rest is Resistance explicitly ties rest to social justice and Black liberation.  But no matter your background, it lays out a clear, powerful, and urgent argument for treating rest and leisure as a divine right (not a luxury experience to help you “grind harder”).  

It’s also extremely beautiful writing, with repetition and poetry that feel like a religious experience (Hersey is a trained theologian who grew up in the church).  It’s one thing to intellectually understand your innate worth as a living being separate from your productivity, another to feel it as true in your soul, without shame.  Rest is Resistance works on the soul.  

(if you want to learn more about Hersey’s whole deal before diving into a book, here’s a good 24-minute interview)

The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd

If Tricia Hersey is the righteous angel lighting your soul on fire to demand better, Paul Millerd is the affable coach that makes taking action feel a little less intimidating.  Through chronicling his own transition from a “default path” career to a self-guided work life organized around play, Millerd’s book is a field guide to what you may encounter if you take the same step:  the inner anxieties and outer barriers, yes, but also the pleasant realizations that most fears around alternate work are overblown.  

Importantly, The Pathless Path is NOT your typical get-rich-quick dream scheme with visions of passive-income within X months.  What’s refreshing about it is precisely its encouragement to consider less income and less status as a worthy “tax” to pay for a happy, connected life. 

Experimenting with audio interviews (perhaps with you!)

There are some interesting people with BQE-adjacent experiences that I’ve been struggling to capture in a structured written article.  Instead of continuing to wrestle with this, I’ve finally decided to get over my distaste for being “yet another cringe person with a podcast” and record conversations with them, which I’ll be sprinkling in here every now and then.  

The chats I have in mind mostly feature people who have carved out (or are trying to, anyway) decent leisure for themselves in notoriously punishing industries.  Other interesting topics–the thorniness of money psychology, the frenzied response to AI in the work world–are also on tap.  

Besides these, I’d also LOVE to feature any BQE readers who are up for a chat.  I like to check out what subscribers are up to (mostly because it still blows my mind that strangers are drawn to this blog), and many of you have a lot of fun stuff you do!  So if you’re down, hit me up ( LVago@bigquitenergy.com ) and we’ll figure out what BQE-themes we can touch upon as we help your fellow readers get to know you.

“I always knew Vago was a sell-out”:  you can now get Big Quit Energy swag

Speaking of cringe feelings, I spent weeks agonizing about the idea of offering BQE swag for sale.  The thought process went something like this:

A few YES reasons

• I love a good t-shirt and have always been charmed by the idea of setting up a kiosk of shirts plastered with odd slogans and drawings. 

• A pleasant side-effect of building this blog has been teaching myself a little bit of illustration and design to produce some odd slogans and drawings.

• I’ve had many people (ok, more like two or three tops) say “that should be on a shirt” about the site name and/or the aforementioned slogans and drawings.

One huge NO reason 

• It may come across as a brazen attempt to monetize a platform that touches upon anti-work/anti-hustle philosophies.  Slapping a tacky gift shop to it could be seen as a “betrayal” of “the movement,” whatever that means.

In the end, I decided to err on the side of making stuff available for anyone who’d enjoy it (or enjoy using it to convert a work-humper in their life).  Welcome to the Big Quit Energy swag store: find it here, or on the upper tabs of the blog’s front page.  

Yay swag!

Plus, I’ve been having way too much fun leaving little Walt Wiltman stickers around town.  Who am I to deprive you of joining in?

(By the way: if any of you really want something but find the cost prohibitive or would like different colors/sizes/formats, reach out–chances are we can make it happen.  I’ll be pumped and honored just at the fact that you want it.)

Thank you for your readership and support of Big Quit Energy!