“There’s really no career here,” the trim, grey haired shop clerk shared. She was dressed smartly in a turquoise and cream wrap dress, professional among the Hawaiiana knick-knacks of vintage girls and tea towels. “I used to work at high-end art galleries in Boston, but I gave that up to come here.” The clerk shared two sentiments that I’d heard frequently from transplanted locals throughout my six-day stay in Kauai. One, they were from another place and two, had given up the uptight “mainland” to come here, the seemingly most natural and relaxed of all the Hawaiian Islands Thank God, I thought. Thank God there were no careers in Kauai. Careers put people on a life schedule with goals and achievements and rungs to claw up. They fostered endless jittering and nervous intensity like Blackberry checking,
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