Just how much of the corporate ladder are we climbing?

An old boss recently asked me where I see my career going. My immediate answer was: working in a cafe on an island somewhere. I thought I was joking. I've since caught myself romanticising it roughly four times a week, which is not what joking looks like.

So why is that? Are we really this unhappy with the corporate ladder we were always told to climb?

There's a trend I keep coming across online: people migrating to the countryside, opting for the slower life. If you'd asked me a few years ago whether that appealed to me, I would have flat out said no. A big part of growing up was glamourising the city life. The fast life. Shiny buildings, big fancy corporate job. Dubai!!! I don't have all of it yet, but I'm definitely on the way.

But I've been watching this countryside thing properly now, the slow living channels, and don’t forget the podcasts of women who are actually sharing their narratives on this move, and why. There’s one called Lynn Ngugi who has a podcast that interviews these people who have opted for this slower countryside life. The travel YouTubers who have traveled to my own home country and the development in the countryside! My goodness, I envied one woman who is living this country side life in my country, she made blueberry jam and a loaf to go with it.

It's not the farmhouse they've bought. It's the time. Mornings that don't begin with a commute. Dinner that takes two hours because nobody has anywhere to be. Being fully somewhere, with family, with a lover, with a tomato you grew yourself, instead of being half-there while a phone lights up in your pocket. Lol, can you hear the teams notification sound?

They didn't downgrade their lives. They repriced them. And somewhere between the sourdough and the slow pan across a field, I stopped scoffing and started taking notes.

Meanwhile, back here at climbing the ladder and being a fully optimised woman, we have our own version of slowing down, and it's called tracking. I know my sleep score, my resting heart rate, EATING PROTEIN like it's a second job. managing my cortisol, regulating my nervous system, doing breathwork between the meetings that are causing the thing the breathwork is for. My watch buzzes to tell me I'm stressed. I KNOW! I WAS THERE!

And none of it, if we're honest, is actually rest. It's the performance review of rest. We haven't slowed down, we've hired ourselves as our own wellness managers, optimising our recovery so we can keep doing the thing we need to recover from. The countryside people quit the race. We bought better shoes.

Which is roughly when I started wondering if this is what I really want. And to be clear, these are not the musings of someone unravelling. I am fine. I am, by most measurable standards, doing rather well. Which is exactly what makes the island thing so annoying. This isn't an escape fantasy from a life that's failing. It's a question being asked, politely but persistently, by a life that's working.

So let's actually look at the fantasy, because I've been carrying it around long enough to describe it in detail. In the fantasy, I open the cafe at whatever time I feel like. The light is always golden hour. There is exactly one customer, and she is lovely, and she leaves a tip. I make coffee I don't drink because caffeine is bad for my cortisol, and then I stand in a doorway looking at the sea, feeling things.

You'll notice what's missing. Rent, suppliers, the friggin leak in the bathroom, or whatever smell that is coming from outside. A tourist asking if I do oat milk and then not wanting the oat milk. The fantasy has no Mondays in it, and that's the tell. I don't actually want to run a cafe. Running a cafe is a job, and I already have one of those. What I want is the absence. No teams, or calendar that looks like Tetris played by someone who hates me. We’d all be happy without either of those two things. The cafe is just the shape my brain gives to the word "stop." The countryside people found their shape and moved into it. while mine serves flat whites.

Which is where I'm supposed to say the ladder was a lie and quit to go find myself. Except. I wanted this. I APPLY FOR THESE JOBS! Laugh with me. Nobody dragged me up here. I liked the interviews, I liked the offer letters, I like being good at things in rooms where being good at things is noticed. Some mornings the city and the pace and the shiny buildings feel exactly like they did in the daydreams I had before any of it was mine.

But here's the question the ladder never asks you, and the one I keep circling back to: how much of it are we actually climbing? Because nobody hands you a ladder with the floors marked. There is no rung labelled enough. We were told to climb, and we were told the top exists, but I have never once heard anyone describe what's up there beyond more ladder. When my old boss asked where I see my career going, I understand now that the answer was never meant to be a place. It was meant to be a direction. Up. Indefinitely. No further questions.

Maybe that's what the cafe really is. I doubt that an exit, it’s probably just another floor. The first honest attempt to name a rung where I'd be allowed to stop climbing and just stand there, looking at the sea, feeling things.

And here's the part I can't explain away. This is content I'm supposed to watch and file under performative, A NICHE like they are calling it. An algorithm that found my weak spot and served me eggs. Except it doesn't land like a niche. It lands like homesickness for somewhere I've never lived. Not the chickens but instead the presence. The being all-there at a dinner instead of performing all-there while mentally drafting a reply.

And in the interest of full disclosure, because this blog promised no learnings but it did promise honesty: I have a YouTube channel. Not countryside content, no chickens, no field. Just my life, filmed slowly, at its most present. Which means I can't claim to be watching this trend from a safe distance, because the impulse is the same, just with a different backdrop and not that great because I am also just figuring it out. And the most honest read of my own footage is that I might be practising for the life I want. Rehearsing presence in short, well-framed takes until I'm ready to commit to the full production. The island fantasy isn't only in my head. It's on my channel just slightly edited with a profound voiceover.

So here's where the article gives you the answer. The framework. The five steps to knowing whether to stay or go.

I don't have them. And not for lack of ability. I could absolutely build you a framework, with steps and a diagram, and it would be tidy, and it would be beside the point. Claude or ChatGT will even build it and clean it up. I'm choosing not to, because this is not that kind of blog, I did warn you, and if we are being honest, I don’t actually know either!

What I have is this: I'm still here. Still on the ladder, still mostly choosing it, still googling islands on the bad days and closing the tab on the good ones. Still half-there at dinners I am genuinely trying to be all-there for. I've stopped treating the fantasy as a verdict on my life and started treating it as a weather pattern. It rolls in, I watch it, it passes, I answer the Teams message, AND SAVE MONEY FOR THE CAFE! Ha! There are no lessons here!

Maybe one day the tab stays open. Maybe the old boss asks again in ten years and I answer from a doorway, looking at the sea, feeling things, out of oat milk.

Or maybe I just needed to say it out loud to someone who wasn't my boss.

Anyway. I need to go and prepare for my weekly KPI’s. Another day, another dollar, or whatever!