The year I stepped off the straight and narrow

Last month I asked you what single thing most stands in the way of doing the work only you can do to change the world — was it not knowing what to do? Fear of what people would think? A lack of a supporting community? Eighty percent of you gave the same answer: money, and how you would support yourself.

I get it, because it was me. For years I earned a very good salary and still felt I was making the minimum to survive — money always, somehow, felt tight. I let go of opportunities that genuinely interested me because taking them would have meant a pay cut I was sure I couldn’t absorb.

So last year I ran a quiet experiment. I said yes to one of those opportunities — just for one year as a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton— knowing it would cut my income to a third of what it had been. Then I pared everything down to meet it. I got rid of my car. No store-bought gifts, no vacations, less electricity, a smaller grocery budget, no taxis — I walked, or took the bus.

Here is what surprised me. It made absolutely no difference to my happiness. If anything, the opposite. I found adventure and surprise in those bus rides, like the day a man sat down next to me, offered me a cupcake on Halloween, and told me about his harrowing escape from Nazi Germany. I wrote letters instead of ordering gifts online. I discovered which luxuries actually mattered to me — my fountain pen, my notebook, and an hour or two each morning letting my thoughts flow through the pen.

What I gained, in the end, was freedom — and with it, a question I'd never made time to ask: what do I actually care about? I still don't have the whole answer. But I've come to think the asking is the point.

I am fully aware that not everyone can afford to run this experiment— I’ll be honest about that below. But for me, at least, the fear turned out to be far larger than the fact.

This is what the word amateur has to teach us. It comes from the Latin amator: lover — someone who does a thing for love, not because it pays. To be an amateur is to decide for yourself what work, what questions, what activities are worthy of your precious time, instead of letting the market decide for you. The market is very good at pricing things. It is very bad at valuing them. The two are not the same.

Stepping off the straight and narrow road, I’ve come to think, is not recklessness. It’s the decision to value something for yourself — and that takes courage and a spirit of self-discovery.

So this month's Field Guide takes the fear you named seriously — and gets practical: the full story of the year I cut my income to a third, who actually gets to be an amateur, the difference between what your work is priced at and what it's worth, and the smallest bet you can safely make on it. That's below, along with the exercises I use.

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