Answering the Call to Create
Leaving a great career for the right one
For the better part of the last 3 years I’ve lived a split-screen existence.
On one side, I led sales for an AI/crypto company. On the other, I wrote essays online. They coexisted rather peacefully—mornings dedicated to writing and the 9-5(+) to growing a startup. For a while, that was enough.
At some point though, an hour a day became insufficient for what became my life blood. So a tension started to build. A classic tug-of-war between my duty to the safe, stable, lucrative career I spent a decade building and the harrowingly uncertain path of existential fulfillment.
Recently, that tension snapped.
But first, some context.
The Context
For the first 26 years of my life, I was convinced I didn’t have a creative bone in my body. I grew up thinking I’d be good at school and sports and then one day at making money. The Default Path, if you will.
I played the game and went to business school, moved to NYC to work in banking (hated every bit of it), joined the founding team of a startup (loved every bit of it), rose the ranks and before I knew it had more responsibility, income, and genuine enjoyment than I thought was possible.
But somewhere along the way I started writing.
At first because journalling was one of the things the personal growth gurus preached as something one ought to do. It then helped me sort through the psychological and emotional clusterfuck I’d left unattended having grown up in an American culture that seemingly glorified repressing feelings as a man.
Eventually, writing simply became something I couldn’t not do.
It slowed my thoughts to the pace of my pen. It was catharsis. Clarity. Occasionally salvation. The times I’d get into a rut, the culprit was usually the same—I hadn’t opened my notebook in a week.
I craved more. I’d always been a fairly self-motivated person but knew if I could add a healthy dose of external pressure, it’d be a forcing function to spend more time putting pen to paper. So I started publishing online and A Life Examined was born.
At first it was just to friends and family. Then a few followers trickled in. One piece even got some traction and landed me a podcast appearance. But mostly I just loved doing it—the hours spent thinking, marinating, shaping an essay, until I could finally press send on something I was proud of.
The satisfaction was immense. It left me with the acute sensation of having uncovered some enduring truth about myself or the world around me that I could imagine some older, retrospectively wiser version of myself looking back and conceding that this particular insight had subtly nudged me closer to what he deemed to be a good life.
It was here the second window opened on my life operating system. What was previously a singular browser playing “sales leader” now had a companion vying for my finite time and attention. One that was making a compelling case for even more.
But what could I do about it?
I was already expending as much time moonlighting as I could while attending to the demands of a Series B startup—which, again, I quite enjoyed. I felt I was working at a cutting-edge company, surrounded by brilliant people, working on intellectually stimulating problems all in an industry I cared deeply about.
I couldn’t just leave. That’d be spitting in the face of good fortune. Who would I be to walk away from a career that had given me so much?
Proceeding to walk away
And then I went on a literal walk. A very long one. 500 miles across Spain over 35 days as part of a much-needed sabbatical after 7 years in a terminally online industry. It was there on the dry, lonely roads of the Camino with nothing to distract myself for 8 hours a day that I kept hearing this question—what would you do if money were no issue? I thought about it as if I had carte blanche and could design my ideal life, how would I spend my days?
The answer was resoundingly clear. Writing
And everything that comes along with being a writer. I’d also be a learner. A professional curiosity satisfier—able to give the requisite time to an idea with the goal of presenting it in a way that only I can. That would be my ideal life.
When I returned, I was flung into the throes of startup chaos. Back into the jarring world of constant emails and Slack messages and monthly quotas. It was enough to temporarily subdue the Camino-induced realization but it was as if Di Caprio himself had invaded my dreams and incepted this idea. An idea, that whether I liked it or not, had started to take hold.
Life continued for the next 4 months until I had my next vacation to come up for air. This time, from the crystalline blue waters of the Turkish Riviera I was revisited by that same voice that returned with a more assertive tone and emotional vigor to it. I knew what I had to do. I mapped out a course to leave next year.
Fate had other plans. With a company restructuring in the works, the opportunity presented itself, and the week after my 30th birthday I pressed the small red X in the top right hand corner of the tab playing that safe, stable, and lucrative career that had given me so much.
Which brings me here. Writing my first piece since making the leap. Brimming with excitement at the opportunity ahead—aspirations to write a book, take a year-long Humanities course, grow an online following from its meager beginnings.
I don’t know exactly what this means for my day to day. I don’t know what projects I’ll get pulled into. And I surely don’t know how I’ll make money from it. All I know is that there’s this unrelenting drive to create so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
If you want to follow along, I’ll be sharing more frequent updates and thoughts on Instagram (@jpurd17) along with longer form essays here.
Shoutout Rik van den Berge and Cam Houser for feedback
Love this. Rooting for you.