Shadow Work, Tarantino Style.
It always starts mid-scene. No intro, no context. Just vibes and tension already in the air, like I’ve been dropped into a conversation I didn’t agree to have.
I’m in the backseat of a car with two girls I don’t talk to anymore. Not because of one big dramatic fallout, but because of something quieter and more annoying. The kind of thing that builds slowly until one day you realize…
I don’t like how I feel around you.
It’s summer in the dream. Bright. Casual. Deceptively calm. But the energy? Off.
We’re talking, and somehow it turns into that tone again. The subtle kind of disrespect that tries to pass itself off as honesty. The kind that makes you feel like you’re being evaluated instead of known.
And then it hits me. I was supposed to be at work. Early shift. The kind that starts before the world wakes up. The kind that proves discipline, not just ambition. But I missed it.
And instead of panic, there’s this weird suspended reality where nobody’s calling, nobody’s checking. Like I’ve slipped out of the system entirely.
And somehow, that becomes the least stressful part of the situation. Because now I’m stuck explaining myself to people who already decided who I am.
They don’t believe I had a shift.
They don’t believe I have structure.
They don’t believe I’m… building anything real.
It’s not even what they’re saying. It’s how they’re saying it. That familiar energy of:
You’re not serious.
You don’t know life yet.
(“You know nothing Jon Snow” kinda energy)
Like I’ve been reduced to a version of myself that only exists in their imagination.
And suddenly, I’m not stressed about missing work. I’m irritated. Because I’ve already done this before. I’ve already sat in spaces where I had to defend my reality. Already explained myself to people who weren’t even qualified to misunderstand me.
And I remember, very clearly: I don’t do that anymore. So I get out of the car. No speech. No dramatic exit.
Just… done.
And that’s where the dream ends.
What’s funny is, none of this is actually about them. They’re just placeholders. My brain needed characters to represent something, and it chose people who once made me feel small, questioned, or slightly off-balance. So it cast them. Not because I miss them, but because they fit the role.
The real story is something else entirely. It’s about that split-second fear:
What if I mess up and everything falls apart?
Miss a shift. Lose momentum. Slip back into a version of life that felt unstructured, chaotic, undefined. Because I’ve been there before. I’ve had jobs end without clear reasons. I’ve experienced situations that didn’t make sense.
I’ve seen how quickly stability can feel… negotiable.
So my brain runs simulations now. Late at night. No permission needed.
“What if it happens again?”
But here’s the thing. Even in the dream, in the worst-case scenario my brain could come up with, I still didn’t stay where I wasn’t respected. I didn’t shrink myself to be understood. I still left.
That’s the part that matters.
Not the missed shift.
Not the tension.
Not even the fear.
The exit.
Because that’s the upgrade. That’s the difference between who I was
and who I am becoming.
I don’t stay in the car anymore.
There’s something very cinematic about that. Not in a glamorous way, but in that Tarantino, slightly uncomfortable, hyper-real kind of way. Where nothing is exaggerated. It’s just.. accurate.
Conversations that drag a second too long.
Silences that say more than words. Characters that don’t need backstories because you already understand them. And the main character?
She doesn’t argue forever. She doesn’t prove her worth. She doesn’t beg to be seen correctly. She opens the door, and she leaves.
Maybe that’s what growth actually looks like. Not becoming someone new, but becoming someone who knows when the scene is over.
And walks out.
Afterword:
I read this back later that same night. 8:32 p.m. After making the decision. After sending the resignation letter.
There was a moment, where it almost felt eerie. That part about no one calling. About slipping out of a system without anyone noticing. Because a few hours after that dream, I did. Not in the way the dream imagined it, but by choosing it, consciously.
I left, but properly. No explaining myself. Just a door, opened from the inside.
It’s strange how sometimes clarity doesn’t arrive as a loud realization. Sometimes it shows up as a quiet repetition. A dream.
A feeling. A sentence you write without thinking too much about it:
I don’t stay in the car anymore.
And then, hours later,
you prove it.
— Karny