Unplugged: How to Disconnect from the Rat Race, Have an Existential Crisis, and Find Meaning and Fulfillment

by Nancy Whitney-Reiter

Book Overview

The tremendous success of Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life and Neil Crofts's Authentic, and the resurgence of Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist indicate the inner struggle faced by many working professionals today. Unplugged explains why career breaks are necessary in our modern, technologically-driven society, and explains how to take such a break in easy to follow steps. The emerging trend of young people taking mid-career breaks calls for...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591810701
• ISBN13: 9781591810704
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Sentient Publications
• Length: 182 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

On becoming a person

UNPLUGGED (2008) by Nancy Whitney-Reiter is an amazing book and might have been titled: ON BECOMING A PERSON, which was written by Carl Rogers in 1961 and is called, "The classic work on the human potential for growth and creativity by the pre-eminent American psychologist." So ... here we are forty-eight years after Rogers' book and just where are we, exactly, in our journey towards living lives full of "meaning and fulfillment?" Still in the starting blocks according to Whitney-Reiter (NWR); and I think most psychologists and social scientists would agree. And why is that? It's because of the "Axe Maker's gift," aka, TECHNOLOGY. The axe maker's gift is, of course, the duality of function of a tool (for good or evil) dependent upon the user and circumstance, aka, fate. [I'm going to leave God out of this discussion.] NWR is in agreement with Thoreau, that most Americans lead lives of "quiet desperation." She posits most people have no idea who they are, or why they do what they do, but--instead--do as she did, which is to take "the path of least resistance" (pg. 17); be that determined by direction from The Authority (The Father) or by Freedom (the illusion of Choice.) Ah ... what to do? According to NWR one should "unplug" and get the hell out of Dodge. And, Nancy does an absolutely remarkable job of laying out just exactly how a person can do this--step by step: Here's what you need to do, and how to do it ... to the extent even of how to pack, what to wear, where to go, how to leave your job, how to manage your finances, how to enlist support (both financial and emotional), how to re-enter the real world, and how to re-organize YOUR world once you return. BUT, there's always a but (otherwise we would be there by now) she admits right in the beginning that "... you won't want to go back to the artificial world that most of the world is operating in." (pg. 16) This is the Catch-22. The world we live in is driven by avarice, driven by evolutionary imperatives, which now depend upon technological growth. Thus the "catch." Damned if you do, damned if you don't. This is why I drink and smoke dope. I don't see a way out. Oh, I do ... but I can't see how we get there from here. What happened to NWR, Nancy, was a catastrophic SHOCK. She was in New York at the Twin Towers when the planes hit. She was one of the lucky ones who got out alive. The event SHOCKED her into changing her life. But (again the but) that event is no big deal to the way things are. It's just a "comma," as President Bush said. It doesn't change nature, human or otherwise. It's a friggin raindrop. Now, I argue in my novel, ATTACHMENT, that one raindrop can cause significant change. BUT, that's just a theory. Naomi Kline in her book, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, argues that smart people have figured all of this out and use SHOCK to change the way things are on a fairly large scale (witness, "SHOCK AND AWE," Bush's name for the invasion of Iraq.) So, if you decide to become who you real

Unplugged Techie

Although a self-described "techie", I really enjoyed Reiter's book. She isn't anti technology as I expected she would be. Rather she seems to recommend taking a regular sabbatical from the Rat Race to "smell the flowers." As you question why you are taking that next business trip, take this book along and you'll question it even more.

Unplug

Unplug Unplugged: How to Disconnect from the Rat Race, Have an Existential Crisis, and Find Meaning and Fulfillment (Culture Tools) The other day I heard of a friend who was planning to go off on a year long sabbatical at Christmas. My mum rather dryly remarked 'Why would anyone want to do that? The girl's 35 not 25!' A typical baby boomer response to a modern day dilemma? Perhaps. My first response to this might be that many of us in middle adulthood are living quietly desperate lives. In the words of Henry David Thoreau 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation' and this isn't a situation which appears to have moved on much since he said this in 1854. The problem with quiet desperation is that it is not so easy to get away from. How many of us wanted to cheer when we saw Lester Burnham in 'American Beauty', get up and leave his job, get fit and 'get it back'? How many of us wanted to get up from our seat in the cinema and follow his example, leave the prisons that we have built up around ourselves within the pretence of respectability. As Abba suggest in their hit 'The winner takes it all', is building me a home and a family, and playing by the rules really such a good idea or a kind of false reality? Do a lot of us live in a fake half-life, of the type derided by Paulo Coelho in many of his blogs and writings in which he talks about the drive of many to acquire a status of permanent Sunday afternoon-style peace in their lives, with not too many challenges and everything played by the book? The human existence craves for so much more than this, and Nancy Whitney-Reiter is one person who appears to have realized this. Her book 'Unplugged: How to Disconnect from the Rat Race, Have an Existential Crisis, and Find Meaning and Fulfillment' responds to the inner and unexpressed dilemma of many which asks, how do we reconnect with ourselves, when all around us the modern, fast-paced world appears to be going slowly mad? As a mother of two small (ish) boys, I found myself reading this book somewhat wistfully, as it was clear that a person with no dependents would find everything they needed in this book to help them unplug. I was enthused and encouraged by the first chapters and compelled to read on and discover exactly how I would be able to unplug too. Nancy talks about the reasons why you might need to unplug and I would suggest many of them are relevant to many people, everywhere. All of this is laced with her own experiences, which are candid. The reader is given a glimpse into the journey Nancy has been on, having been caught up in the catastrophe of 9/11. She paints the picture of her former self, a full scale achiever, top earner and successful corporate player who, on the surface of her life, had everything. Maybe someone I would never have come across in my life. Thankfully for me and for many others who will read this book, this twist of fate meant that I did (albeit in the virtual sense). The book also goes into the necessar

How to escape the rat race and find yourself

We Americans work more hours a week than our counterparts in other industrialized nations. Yet, while many of us have found our society's "official trappings of success" (title, income, cars, houses, stuff), many of us haven't truly found ourselves. Why not? Author Nancy Whitney-Reiter suggests that before we're even out of high school, we're being fast-tracked into careers that we then dutifully perform until we wake up one day and finally say, "Even though I appear to have it all, I'm not happy." "Unplugged" asks us to question whether we're enjoying the "success" we have while being connected to the "consumption driven matrix." If our answer is "no," or even "maybe not," then this book is a smorgasbord of food for thought. Whitney-Reiter tells us the stories of others have temporarily gotten away from it all, including herself, and then provides practical advice and resources for unplugging and re-thinking our goals without losing our shirts or our sanity. Our planning includes attending to family, friends, career, debts, house and car, and prospective world wide volunteer opportunities and other travel options. The author reminds us that unplugging is NOT a vacation trip: it's turning off the chaos of cell phones, WiFI, the hustle and bustle of work, and even grand-tour sight-seeing agendas and making time to ponder who we are and what we want. We must plan how we leave work, perhaps through a corporate sabbatical, and how we return to the world we know some 3-6 months later. This well-written book provides you with the well-thought-out advice you need to begin your journey and return with a new lease on life.

Cubical Walls Closing In? You've Got Options!

Unplugged: How to Disconnect from the Rat Race, Have an Existential Crisis, and Find Meaning and Fulfillment (Culture Tools) Burned out? Had enough? Even if you never leave your backyard, this book is filled with tips on how to de-stress by unplugging. If you do venture forth, you will find Ms. Whitney-Reiters' book a plethora of suggestions on how to accomplish even the most minute details you will need to take care of before you pack your suitcase, in a realistic, logical, warmly human, and humorous way. First of all, this is way more than a travelogue. As you read, you may find yourself questioning your own motives for wanting to disconnect. When I got to the end, I said to myself, "Time to put this plan in motion." I read through rather quickly because I found that I wanted to keep learning. Now I want to re-read it so that I can actually study it and do the writing exercises with which Ms. Whitney-Reiter has concluded each chapter. Secondly, the source guide at the end is chock full of useful resources. I've been plugged in exploring websites and researching suggested reading. If you've decided you are in need of a break from the life you're tied to, I suggest you give this a read. As I wrote in the beginning of this review, even if you never leave your backyard, I bet you'll look at your life with fresh eyes.