Appetite for Agency
The Field Review: TFR-099
THE LEDE
A Weekly Column On Living Well
This is the 99th issue of The Field Review, which means this time next week I will be hitting the publish button for the 100th time in about just as many weeks. A hard number to fathom when I first started this side project.
I will save everything I’ve learned about writing 100 issues for next week… this week I would like to talk about two words that have been swirling around inside my brain; appetite and agency.
I’m well into the final year of my twenties. I find myself with a beautiful wife, an incredible son, and a sturdy house in the little village we grew up in. Looking backward, I’m pretty damn close to where I hoped I’d be. Looking forward, I’m nowhere near where I want to be.
I spend a lot of time and energy living in that gap.
Some of it is ambition, which I still believe is useful. Wanting more out of life is not a crime or defect. Wanting more has done a lot for me. It has allowed me to work harder than what was required and to take swings at things before I knew what I was doing.
Still, some of it is just plain old sinful greed. Call it what it is.
Greed for more money, sure. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t like to see a few more digits on those paychecks. But also greed for control. Greed for time. Greed for impact. Greed for a life that feels a little more like mine and a little less like a series of meeting obligations and calendar invites from outside parties.
I have an insatiable greed for more agency over my own life.
That’s what I’m really after. More room to move. More say in how my days are spent. More ability to choose what gets my attention and what doesn’t. More freedom to build a life for my family without feeling like every decision must be made within someone else’s schedule.
As it often happens, the things I consume often have direct correlation to the thoughts I’m having internally. My wife and I were watching an episode from season two of Your Friends & Neighbors this week, and there was a scene where Jon Hamm’s character was giving some life advice to to a junior associate.
When talking about advancing up the career ladder, he says“there is no there. Only here.”
Feels about right.
I have spent most of my adult life chasing “there.” The next job. The next title. The next house. The next project. The next opportunity that might finally create enough leverage to step out of hamster wheel. “There” always looks cleaner from a distance. A mental utopia with more freedom and more meaning. A version of life where you’re able to make a conscious decision to leave the table instead of being force fed another full plate.
But the idea of “there” can be a deceiving one.
It’s a mental block that’s easy to put up when you need to put your head down and get through another tough week. It convinces you that the current state of grind you find yourself in is only temporary, and that the next door will open soon.
Sometimes that’s true. But “there” can also become a habit. A safe place you keep running to because standing still would force you to admit how tired you really are.
What if you never find “there?” What if “there” doesn’t actually exist?
Forgetting about “there” forces me to build agency “here” first.
Here is where the actual decisions get made. Here is where I decide whether to say yes or no. Here is where I decide what gets the best of me and what gets whatever is left. Here is where the work gets done, where the words get written, where the life I want is either built or deferred.
The next job won’t fix a lack of presence. The next house won’t fix a life I don’t know how to inhabit. The next opportunity won’t create agency if I keep handing all of mine away.
I don’t want to stop wanting. I don’t want a smaller life. I don’t want to dress up complacency as wisdom and call it maturity.
I have appetite for agency.
I want to chase the things I want for my life and my family without letting the chase make me absent from the life I already have now. I want to build toward there without treating here like a waiting room.
Agency here, so I can actually live now. Agency there, so the next door doesn’t just open to more obligations instead of opportunities.
Because if I can’t live well with the plate I currently have here, a bigger one there probably won’t save me.
Live Well. Tell No One.
THE MARGIN
A Few Things That Grabbed My Attention This Week
SITKA Presents: Casting for Ghosts
Given the choice, I’ll choose hunting over fishing every time. Still, a record muskie is very much on the bucket list. Sitka’s latest Beyond the Layers film drops us into the strange, obsessive world of Midwest musky fishing through the lens of Chris Willen and with musky legend Larry Dahlberg. The real takeaway is the mindset required to become a complete musky fisherman, and the willingness to keep casting long after most people would have packed it in.
DIRT Hawaii
Huckberry’s DIRT Hawaii drops Josh Rosen and the Huckberry crew into the Hawaiian islands to spend some quality time with locals who each connect to this unique island culture differently through food, hunting, surf, or landscape.
My wife and I went to Hawaii on our honeymoon, and it was one of the best trips of my life. There are not many days where I don’t think about getting back there. Our experience was similar to what this episode of DIRT shows. Hawaii is not just one thing or one landscape. It is not just beaches, or food, or surf, or scenery. It is a culture and a way of life that shows up in all of those things at once. A whole wide world tucked inside a collection of tiny islands.
STANDARDS
Concepts & Vibes For Your Consideration
The Field Review is a weekly newsletter exploring the art of living well.
Every Sunday at 10AM EST, I share ideas, insights, and conversations that help break through the noise, offering a real look at how we can all keep moving forward.
Venture Onward,
Jack
Would love to hear more from you, the reader. What’s on your mind, where you’re headed, what you want to see next from me, the writer. Drop a comment below.