Dear World: I Am Going to Iceland to Eat Ram's Testicles

This is why you work for yourself—DON'T STOP BELIEVING IN THE DREAM, GEN Z ͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­ Forwarded this email? [Subscribe here]() for more The art of living a stylishly original life. 🔪 I’m Ash Ambirge, author of [THE MIDDLE FINGER PROJECT]( newsletter & book (Penguin Random House), 15-year digital nomad and unconventional work & life expert, and undefeated buffalo wing champion (as voted by my gastrointestinal tract). 🤷 ♀️ --------------------------------------------------------------- [Dear World: I Am Going to Iceland to Eat Ram's Testicles]( This is why you work for yourself—DON'T STOP BELIEVING IN THE DREAM, GEN Z [Ash Ambirge](ashambirge) Jun 12 ashambirge   [READ IN APP](   Wednesday, 2:52pm: dirty martini caesar salad with steak Newark airport en route to Iceland prob to eat some ram t*sticles but pls tell me again how you have a job opportunity for me 😇. [insert sly grin] I KNOW, I’M BEING (S)ASSY: people who have never worked on the internet before have no idea how this side of the world works. Case in point? Gen X parents are currently freaking out, telling their 21-year-old kids they need to get real world experience before they could ever dare *think* of starting their own creative projects and spearheading an interesting idea and striking it out on their own. Have you heard these conversations? I have heard a ton of ‘em, now that graduation just happened, and 21-year-olds worldwide are scrambling to find direction. From what I can tell, Gen X parents thinks that working for yourself is for entitled young people who “don’t want to work.” I hear this all the time: kids these days don’t want to work! 🫨 Alas, I remember when I was twenty-one (see a picture of my walker on Instagram), we elder millennials heard the same thing. (Usually from a sneering woman with big 80s hair who was afraid we were coming for her job.) Except, that was never the case. We did want to work. We were ambitious as hell. And we didn’t just want to work: we reinvented the entire fucking game. We were first to create personal brands. The first to share our ideas online. The first to sell our creativity in a global marketplace. The first to recognize work as a form of self-expression—not just a form of oppression. Our internet made that all possible. WE made all that possible. And, the internet is, still, where I live in my mind. It’s a place. It’s my home. It’s where I belong. It’s where I feel the most like myself. There is forever a dichotomy between my people—we internet people—and the rest of the world. The regular people. And Gen X are—for the most part—100% regular people. Trying to raise kids who are 100% internet people. It’s no wonder they can’t see eye-to-eye: they’re living in two completely different worlds, even though Gen X doesn’t actually seem to know it. I suppose that’s the real crux: Gen Z is trying to invent a whole new planet for themselves, and their Gen X parents are trying to tell them how to live on Earth. They don’t realize there’s a whole other world that exists in parallel. Sure, they have Facebook, they know Instagram, but they use the internet as a *user*. Not a creator. Whereas, we create with the internet, not just consume it. As a result, Gen Z sees the endless, boundless opportunities in front of them, and as a result, they may be even more ambitious than us millennials were. One of the things that keeps coming up in the conversations I’m having with young people? Their insistence on finding fulfilling work. The generational attitude feel a little like this: Gen X: Work sucks Millennials (Gen Y): Work doesn’t have to suck Gen Z: Work will not suck And, GOOD FOR THEM. I wish I could reach out to every Gen Z kid out there and let ‘em know that they are on the right track. That they should be encouraged. That they’re RIGHT. That they have no choice but to chase ALL the big ideas and do whatever makes ‘em feel excited. (Or else they’ll have a quarter-life crisis and do it then. 🤷 ♀️) That there is no better time, better age, better moment in history. That no living person has ever had the power, the technology, and the tools to create that they do. I wish I could tell them that it will all work out. 💯 That their youth is their superpower. That their creativity is their authority. That even if they feel like amateur teeny boppers, the rest of us are looking to them for advice on how to live in this new version of the world. That whatever weird, wacky, big, unreasonable ideas they’ve got, are GOOD IDEAS. It’s okay if they’re misunderstood. And it’s okay if their ideas are pooh-poohed. And it’s okay if they don’t feel supported. And it’s okay if no one they love gets it. WHO CARES, GO, GO, GO, YOU ARE A SHOOTING STAR. And babe? We all want to be you. As a digital native who has spent the last 15 years working for herself as a writer on the internet, traveling the globe, living as a nomad, buying properties in places I love, doing things on my own timeline, and rejecting traditional norms, I can promise you that I regret none of it. Not a single decision, a single risk, not a single hard day. The only thing I regret? Is not doing it sooner. Because maybe then I would have ALREADY dined on ram’s t*sticles. But then again, when you’re having a dirty martini in the Newark in an airport on your way to Iceland? The last thing you worry about is an undercooked scrot*m. Subscribe to The Middle Finger Project with humor writer & cheeky author Ash Ambirge to follow your passion, move abroad, make art, make money, reject norms & live an original life🔪 [Upgrade to paid]( You’re currently a free subscriber to The Middle Finger Project with Ash Ambirge. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. 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