Epicurus was easily the philosopher with the biggest quality of life impact on my life from school. I was never going to be the best at anything, but suddenly I was able to be satisfied with what I had. My academic fall from grace was inevitable, but it didn't destroy my sense of self worth, largely because my ideas of what was important in life shifted to relationships and simple pleasures.

Years later, as work started to feel just as fruitless a pursuit as academia, the #IWW and #antiwork notion that we all deserve lives that support "leisure and the pursuit of the finer things in life" Epicurus seemed like an obvious core influence. What good is toil if it doesn't allow you to enjoy yourself from time to time? To idle away an afternoon in a scene plucked from Wind in the Willows: you and a close friend on a lazy bike ride to a picnic spot on a river bank where you can idle away an afternoon with a good, simple spread, perhaps a line in the water or a kite in the sky, just watching the world move around you as you engage in pleasant conversation?