If you’re interested in this topic I bet you’d love my recent 90-min podcast conversation with Amelia Hruby on Off The Grid. We talk about how stepping back from work last year changed my identity, how making less money can be a goal (not a failure), what slowing down actually requires, and more. I hope you enjoy it!

My dear reader.

Here’s what I’m not going to do: I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t care about your career.

If you are an author, for example, I will never say that you shouldn’t care about your book hitting the bestseller lists. What I will say, though, is that I don't care about that goal, or any goal like it, when it comes to my own life. Not anymore.

“Death of the LinkedIn self,” Sarah Wilson calls it. That moment of finality when whoever you used to be, the version of you that cared about your job title, your professional acclaim, your awards and bylines and status, your work-related visibility, the accomplishments listed on your resume, the desire for fame or virality or a certain public image is simply… gone.

My own LinkedIn self died in 2025, and today’s essay is an attempt to retrace why and how that happened, as well as what it means for my job and life going forward.