Since then, a trickle of LinkedIn updates has turned into a torrent. I started hearing these stories this year when several acquaintances announced that they were quitting prestigious and high-paying jobs to pursue risky passion projects. But for a growing number of people with financial cushions and in-demand skills, the dread and anxiety of the past year are giving way to a new kind of professional fearlessness. Not everyone can afford to throw caution to the wind.
To be clear: The pandemic is not over, and millions of Americans are still grieving the loss of jobs and loved ones. (This year’s GameStop trade was the archetypal YOLO.) More broadly, it has come to characterize the attitude that has captured a certain type of bored office worker in recent months. The term is a meme among stock traders on Reddit, who use it when making irresponsible bets that sometimes pay off anyway. If this movement has a rallying cry, it’s “YOLO” - “you only live once,” an acronym popularized by the rapper Drake a decade ago and deployed by cheerful risk-takers ever since. And while some of them are just changing jobs, others are stepping off the career treadmill altogether. Their bank accounts, fattened by a year of stay-at-home savings and soaring asset prices, have increased their risk appetites. They are emboldened by rising vaccination rates and a recovering job market. Others are scoffing at their bosses’ return-to-office mandates and threatening to quit unless they’re allowed to work wherever and whenever they want. Some are abandoning cushy and stable jobs to start a new business, turn a side hustle into a full-time gig or finally work on that screenplay. After a year spent hunched over their MacBooks, enduring back-to-back Zooms in between sourdough loaves and Peloton rides, they are flipping the carefully arranged chessboards of their lives and deciding to risk it all.
Something strange is happening to the exhausted, type-A millennial workers of America. To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
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