the life you were meant to live

For the educated and ambitious, the two most obvious templates for how to live are:Become a high-achieving professional—especially in law or finance (in the ‘90s) or tech (now), where you affiliate yourself with one prestigious organization after another, and use your disposable income to acquire strategic lifestyle experiences: a two-week trip to Japan, an Equinox membership, and Le Creuset cookware that never gets used (because you’re always getting sweetgreen near the office)…And sometimes you remember that, in undergrad, you really loved art history/literature/insert-another-subject-that-you-ended-up-leaving-behind, because it didn’t make enough money. But someday you’ll have enough (relatedly, is Anthropic still hiring?) and then you can do what you really want, though maybe that’s an illusory ideal (because you like having stakeholders and action items more than you’d admit). And also: you’d rather not have roommates at the age of 30.Become an artist/writer/academic—because…