Stoicism tells us to focus only on what we control, but I've found that applying this to my career choices feels like a cop-out. When I decided to leave a stable job to freelance, everyone called it reckless—yet the Stoic framing of 'internals vs. externals' doesn't easily capture how much our decisions shape our circumstances. I wonder if the ancient Stoics, who often had no real political power, would have endorsed the same mindset for someone living in a democracy with genuine agency. Maybe dismissing external goals is a privilege of those who never had a chance to influence them.