The Slacker's Guide to Building a Life (Accidentally, On Purpose)

On redefining success and learning to see what you’ve built

Couch Philosophy — Rendered by the author in DALL-E

If you’ve known me for long, then you also know I’ve honestly never been the sort of person one would describe as traditionally ambitious. I never dreamed of climbing corporate ladders when I was younger. I absolutely hated school. I honestly couldn’t even picture myself in a suit, shaking hands in a conference room, and saying things like “let’s circle back.”

Really, I still can’t picture those things. So, by most measures, I probably fit society’s definition of a slacker.

For years, I also completely bought into society’s idea of what that meant — that slackers aren’t destined for anything beyond a future as a cautionary tale in someone else’s story.

Except… that didn’t really happen. Sure, I’ve made my share of colossal mistakes in my life. But ironically, most of those correlated directly to my occasional attempts to “listen to my parents” and “be like everybody else” over the years. The better things in my life came my way when I listened to my gut and made decisions I knew were right for me, whether they made sense to others in my life or not.

And as it turns out, even without a five-year plan or “respectable” ambitions everyone else approves of, you can accidentally build a life. Not a perfect life or the glossy version they show you in movies, but a life that works. A life with love, work, and meaning in it.

Here’s how I did it (accidentally, of course).

Step One: Find Somebody to Love and Stick With Them

Let’s start with one of the few things I feel I got really, really right in life. I’ve been in the same relationship for over 20 years, happily so. Two decades. In a row, which is longer than I’ve voluntarily done anything else in my life. Long enough that I no longer think in terms of “if,” but just “until one of us dies.”

Our relationship doesn’t follow society’s rules as far as what it should look like. It never has, and that’s the way we like it. We didn’t have children. We never bought property or “settled down” as most people would define the term. There was never really even a moment where we explicitly went, “OK, this is for the rest of our lives,” and promptly strapped in for a decades-long commitment.

We just really liked each other and kept… deciding to stay together, one day after another. Until one day, 20 years had somehow gone by.

That’s not at all the formula most so-called “responsible” people would prescribe for a lasting relationship, and it’s definitely not in line with what passes for ambitious. But let me tell you. Building something that’s actually capable of surviving bills, stress, pandemics, and ordinary Tuesdays? That’s one of the most baller things you can do.

Slackers may not climb corporate ladders, but we might well climb through the mess of real life with another human. That’s actually a lot harder. And better.

Step Two: Choose Work That Doesn’t Make You Want to Die

I eventually did choose a career — writing and art (duh). Not because they promised financial stability (ha!) but because they were honestly the only things that made any sense for me.

And by “I chose it,” I mean I decided to be a working creative the same way I decided to spend my life with my partner. It’s something I started doing because I enjoyed it, it made sense, and it worked. So, I just kind of… kept doing it, until one day I turned around — many years later — and realized I did have a career after all.

These days, I freelance for steady-ish income and spend the rest of my time making the “real” stuff — essays, art, dream travelogues, mythic fragments, weird t-shirt designs. Does it pay as much as some corner office job? Not even. But it certainly pays as well or better than I’d make working an everyday traditional job somewhere else (which probably isn’t saying much).

Jobs just don’t pay enough in general, especially not these days. So why not at least do the work I care about? That’s the slacker way to go about things, I suppose. If you’re going to scrape by anyway, scrape by on your own terms.

Step Three: Reclaim the Creative Habit

For someone who’s only ever liked creative activities, this one sure took me a while. Years ago, I let my personal art and creativity slip out of my life almost entirely, and things stayed that way for a long time. I told myself it wasn’t practical, that I didn’t have time, that other things mattered more. And looking back, I regret that deeply.

But eventually, I came back to it. I had to, because without it, it’s like life didn’t have a heartbeat anymore. At this point, I’m back to creating for myself regularly, just like I used to when I was still young and idealistic, and I know better than to take it for granted again.

Because creativity isn’t a luxury. It’s oxygen. Slackers, especially, need this reminder. The world will try to convince you that “making stuff” is optional — a fun hobby to pick at on the weekends, if there’s time. It isn’t. It’s the one thing that makes the rest bearable. Treat it that way.

Step Four: Accept That Independence Is Complicated

There’s still so much about my life that isn’t the way I want it yet. For example, my living situation isn’t ideal. We don’t have a place to ourselves for all sorts of reasons, some practical and others personal, and I’m really not satisfied with that.

But I’ve also learned to look at independence differently over the years. By some standards, I’m definitely still “figuring it out.” (Who isn’t, though?) In other ways, I’m actually plenty independent. I earn my living working for myself, doing something I’m good at and that people value. I haven’t let the need to pay bills and “adult” rob me of my creativity and sense of wonder. I built and maintain a loving, healthy relationship.

Those things don’t stop counting just because I wish I had the money for a down payment on a condo or something.

So don’t beat yourself up if your personal brand of independence doesn’t look like the Hallmark version. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it’s a patchwork, especially these days. That’s okay.

Step Five: Learn to Cobble (It’s an Art Form)

If life’s taught me anything, it’s that the secret to slacker survival is cobbling. A little freelance work here, a corporate contract project there, some self-made structure, some cool opportunities yoinked from the void at exactly the right time.

I used to think that was just flailing, because that’s what other people told me it was. But looking back, I realize flailing was the method. You try things, you patch them together, you stumble into what sticks, you stay a while when something in particular feels like it’s working. That’s cobbling. And it works.

So, if five-year plans don’t work for you either, maybe forget the five-year plan. Think side quests instead. Slackers are great at side quests.

Step Six: Redefine Stability

Society loves to sell people on this one hyper-narrow definition of stability. House, car, six-figure salary, a couple of kids, maybe a golden retriever. But the truth is that version of stability is way out of reach for most people at this point. And honestly? It was never the only way to live.

At one point, I think I saw myself maybe owning a little house or a condo (and I’m still not necessarily opposed to that idea). But I’ve always known I’d never have kids or (probably) even be part of a traditional family structure. I just don’t want those things, and I don’t think that would have been different with more income.

Stability is honestly what you make of it, and it’s likely going to look a little different for everyone. Here’s my definition:

• Enough income to survive

• A relationship I can rely on with someone I actually like

• A creative life that feeds me spiritually and mentally

That’s stability, too. Not flashy, not traditional, but real.

So here’s your permission slip. Stability doesn’t have to mean living according to someone else’s blueprint, unless you want it to. It means figuring out what “enough” looks like for you, and building from there.

Step Seven: Celebrate the Work in Progress

I may be middle-aged at this point, but my life is far from finished. There are pieces of the puzzle I’d still love to see fall into place — like more financial breathing room, bigger opportunities for my writing and art, and maybe even that condo I used to dream about.

But here’s what’s changed. I no longer disqualify my life just because it isn’t perfect yet. I see what I’ve already built as worth celebrating. I’ve done things I’m proud of. I have love that lasted, work I actually enjoy, and a creative practice that keeps me grounded. And I can’t help but notice that a lot of people don’t have any of those things, no matter how fat their bank accounts might be.

Don’t make the mistake of waiting until every box is checked to start seeing your life as valuable, worth living, and worth talking about. Celebrate the pieces you’ve already built, even if there are gaps. A work-in-progress is still a work of art.

The Slacker Paradox

Something I’ve noticed over the years, especially when it comes to creative people who’ve turned writing, art, music, or anything else creative into a way of life. Most of them — even the very successful ones — glued their lives together with nothing but duct tape and Froot Loops, just like I did.

Because society didn’t really have a box that they fit into comfortably, either. So, they did their own thing. They kept what worked and trashed what didn’t. They wrote their own survival guides and scratched out the skeletons of lives that worked for them. They failed at a bunch of things and succeeded at others.

So, I guess they were slackers, too.

And slackers don’t build lives the way other people do. We don’t plot it on a graph or climb it like a ladder. We stumble, cobble, improvise, and somehow, years later, look around and realize, “Oh, wow. I actually sort of did something here.”

It might be messy, but it’s also an option. And in its own way, it’s more honest than the corporate success story. Because slackers don’t build lives to impress anyone. We build them to survive, to stay curious, to keep making art, to hold onto love.

And I’m starting to wonder whether maybe that was the point all along. By refusing the system’s definition of ambition, we ended up with a different kind of success on our hands. One that doesn’t look good in a shareholder report but feels pretty damn good to actually be living.

That’s the slacker paradox in action. We build lives accidentally, on purpose, but we build them all the same.