Goose Farmer

“I can’t believe he gave it all up to go live on a farm!”

Really? You can’t?

I can’t wrap my head around people who don’t. I recently read a story about a high-level, long-tenured (more than two decades), and well-compensated executive at a major tech company who quit and became a goose farmer. There were all these shocked statements from industry colleagues who couldn’t believe he’d walk away from a high-paying, high-status job to do that.

But… really? You can’t?

Look, whatever your version of “goose farmer” is, that’s the goal. Not the thing you’d do if you were rich, but the thing you’d do if you didn’t have to care about money. Because those are very different thresholds! Long before you’re rich, you’ll reach a point where if you’re careful and wise, you can stop worrying about money anymore. At that point, whatever you do for work becomes a conscious choice in a way that’s fundamentally different from when your survival depended on your income potential.

Getting to that point might take a long time. And if we’re being truthful, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever get to it. It requires some luck, a lot of determination, a good strategy, and time. Enough time, in fact, that some people lose the thread. They forget why they were grinding in the first place, and they blow right past the finish line and never see it. They keep making more money and gaining more status until they die.

If that makes you happy, then do it. But I don’t think it does. I strongly suspect that people who could have long ago become goose farmers and have instead stayed in their command centers have something fundamentally wrong with them. I’ve seen the seed of that wrongness take root in me, sometimes.

Video games – old school video games, like from the 80s – had two ways they could end. You could die, or you could “beat the game.” Either way, the game was over. You weren’t supposed to play it forever. That’s what modern life is like. The goal of this life is to stop. And there are only two ways out: you can die, or you can beat the game. Either way, it ends eventually.

One way is better. On that farm or boat or mountain or non-profit or stage is who you really are. They’re waiting for you, with some geese. Don’t let them wait too long.