🐐Escaping the Matrix One Goat at a Time

“What have I done? I started a business I have no business starting.”

These are the words that rattle around in my mind more often than I care to admit. They echo somewhere between the left and right hemisphere, usually when I’m washing dishes or trying to fall asleep.

I already have a full-time job as a clinical laboratory scientist — science by day, chaos by night. Then, for reasons that felt sane at the time, I started an Etsy shop making inlay rings by hand. And because two jobs weren’t existential enough, I decided to launch a publishing venture on top of it all.

Why not? There are 24 hours in a day — you might as well squeeze every drop out of them until your soul makes a soft wheezing sound.

Sometimes I ask myself: What am I even trying to accomplish here? Or prove?

The answer always circles back to one word:

Simplicity.

And that’s the irony, isn’t it? In pursuit of a simpler life, I’ve made mine ridiculously complex. I work myself to the bone in the name of peace. I exhaust myself chasing rest. It’s kind of funny, in a dark comedy sort of way.

So, what does simplicity look like to me?

It’s a small piece of land. A cob house I sculpt with my own hand — and feet (if you know, you know). A vegetable garden. A few ducks. Some chickens. Goats, not for meat, but for moral support and weed control.

I imagine myself canning tomatoes and fermenting cabbage while listening to a podcast about composting. I imagine a pantry that smells like herbs and vinegar, and evenings where the loudest thing around me is a cricket trying to impress someone.

I don’t want a mansion. I don’t want millions. I want enough.

Just enough to live without anxiety — and maybe afford some backup goat fencing, because they’re crafty little escape artists.

But there’s a catch.

Once you’re plugged into the 9–5 matrix, it’s hard to break free. It doesn’t just let you go. It grabs your ankle like a vine in a horror movie. And even when you think you’ve loosened its grip, it whispers things like:

“Health insurance.”

“You need a 401(k), don’t you?”

“What about the electric bill, Barbara?”

Still, I keep writing.

I keep working the 9–5.

I keep making these rings, and books, and dreams out of scraps of time and borrowed energy.

Not because I’ve figured it all out — but because I haven’t.

Because something in me still believes that life doesn’t have to be this hard. That healing and creating and laughing and crying and making things with your hands are still worthwhile — even if they don’t scale. Even if they don’t make you rich.

I write because I need to remind myself that I exist. That I’m not just another cog, spinning predictably. That I still have a soul underneath all of this productivity. That somewhere out there, maybe someone like you is quietly trying to claw your way out too.

And maybe we don’t have to escape it all at once.

Maybe we just need to start by remembering we’re allowed to want something different.

Even if it looks a little weird.

Even if it takes a little longer.

Even if it involves goats.