Quinn Cozens fired his boss with no prospects and rebuilt his life
Quinn Cozens will give hope to a lot of people who hate their lives because of their current job situation. Why? Because he fired his boss.
While Beyond the Lost is a dystopian survival thriller at heart, it’s also a theme-first work that screams libertarianism, self-ownership, and taking personal responsibility.
Quinn Cozens drove that point home. When we find more out about his backstory, we discover Quinn didn’t put in a two weeks notice when he fired his boss years before the trilogy’s events began. No, Quinn walked out of that job and never looked back.
Sounds like something someone on the Left would do. Hate their job, walk out with zero prospects, and then what? Probably claim they’re ‘entitled’ to someone else’s cash, even if they never earned it.
Meanwhile, Quinn did the unthinkable: He lived within his means. Yeah, he was jobless for a while. But before making his move to walk out of his personal training job located an hour away from his apartment, he made sure he had the funds to make it happen.
Quinn Cozens fired his boss then immediately got to work on his dream job
In Beyond the Lost Horizon, we learn that Quinn, through his own words, says he woke up one day and decided he wasn’t going back to work. It was seven in the morning on July 2nd, and he had a training client scheduled for nine in the morning.
Quinn got up from his dingy twin bed whose sheets he hadn’t washed in a year and strode over to his equally dingy couch. He blocked every single number associated with that place, from co-workers to the owner to clients, ate breakfast, went for a run, then set off for a place that had internet because he didn’t have it.
For the rest of the summer, Quinn lived off his savings, never telling his parents or his younger sister, Jackie, of what was really up. He evaded them during the weekdays, making sure they were either at work or school before he set off.
Quinn lived in Northern West Virginia while his parents and Jackie lived in Eastern Ohio. But there was still the possibility they’d cross paths and that someone would recognize his car, so he took those precautions.
He’d spend hours trying to figure out how to break into freelance sports writing before coming up empty in the ensuing months. By November, he was down to his last $400 and had an ultimatum: Either admit to Mom and Dad what he’d been doing and ask for help or re-enter the workforce.
Back to personal training? Quinn’s one-day job and warehouse work
Quinn knew he was going broke a month before he hit that paltry $400 mark, and for a minute, thought he was destined for personal training. He applied for and snagged a personal training counselor position at an LA Fitness in Pittsburgh’s South Hills, about 30 minutes from his home.
While there, Quinn realized he’d made a massive mistake. The job was almost exclusively commission-based, meaning if Quinn didn’t sell, he didn’t make money. After a day of cold-calling and approaching random people who had no interest in training, coupled with the 9:30 to 1:30 and 3:30 to 7:30 split shift that was supposed to go for five days a week, he left that job.
There was also the fact that the regional manager pinged him about 12 times during that first day, asking about how many people he scheduled for a training consultation. No, Quinn had enough and decided that night he wasn’t going back.
He’d rather do warehouse work and warehouse work he did, snagging a seasonal job at a local FedEx that he worked from November of that year until late December.
The wannabe macho man with a Napoleon Complex
Quinn had little time to work toward his sports writing while at FedEx, with its long shifts that lasted from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. for five days a week. Not much different from what he’d have worked if he stayed at LA Fitness, but there were differences.
- The LA Fitness job was a six day a week gig, with an eight-hour shift on Saturday
- At FedEx, Quinn unloaded trucks for 11 and a half hours a day, which gave him a paid workout
Of course, the FedEx job was only temporary, so he ended up getting a job in January of the next year at a steel packaging warehouse. This was probably Quinn’s least favorite job of them all, sans the one-day LA Fitness gig.
While on the production shift, Quinn worked under someone who may’ve been his least favorite supervisor ever. A short, stocky man with a Napoleon Complex who loved to demoralize his workers through increased micromanaging; one who threatened to write people up multiple times a day, Quinn included.
The “production shift” Quinn worked on was brutal. Yeah, he still got a good ‘paid workout’ lifting steel bars all day and using an overhead crane to load the heavier pieces into trucks. But once again, he had little time to work on achieving the dream, working five days a week between 2 p.m. and whenever they filled the last order.
Sometimes it was at 10 p.m., but most of the time, Quinn didn’t get out of there until between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Meaning it wasn’t uncommon to see him approach 60 hours a week. This relegated him to weekends for pursuing the dream.
The final and most brutal crucible before Quinn fired his boss for good
When he saw the Wal-Mart Distribution Center was hiring that summer, Quinn left his job at the steel warehouse. He was so sick of the place that he called off before his final scheduled shift, then underwent the long, drawn-out hiring process for the DC.
In the meantime, Quinn used his extended “vacation” during that hiring process to keep working on his writing, getting nowhere in the process, but finding yet another strategy or attempt that didn’t work. And for Quinn, it was at least something, knowing he was one step closer to finding a strategy that did work.
One big perk as an order filler at the Wal-Mart DC was that he only needed to work three days a week. Three brutal days, but still, he had four days to work on landing his freelance sports writing lifestyle.
And after about six months on the job, a job in which he performed poorly despite his physical fitness, he finally got what he wanted and managed to quit that job in February of the following year. Sure, it meant taking a pay cut during those first few months to a year in the sports writing industry, but Quinn could make ends meet.
Living paycheck-to-paycheck and loving every second of it
While halfway across the world a girl named Yui Kikuchi was rising into a global icon in the K-pop punk metal band, T-Ice, Quinn was just considering himself lucky to have a job that he liked. A remote one in sports writing, and one he could focus building a brand on.
So who cared if he earned just a fraction of what the Wal-Mart DC or the steel packaging plant would’ve paid? Who cared about freaking job benefits; they’re for the dependent crowd; not the self-made one.
He had a chance to build a brand, and dag gone it, that’s what he was doing. Quinn Cozens wasn’t about to let the opportunity to cover a pro sport from a fan perspective slip.
And, as the years passed, he built that brand as a notorious opinionated sports writer, seeing his income rise from paycheck-to-paycheck to a full-blown income stream.
Quinn never accepted a handout and showed intense integrity
Through it all, Quinn could’ve taken a government handout. The guy was going broke several times and there were gaps between jobs. But he kept living within his means when so many others would’ve thrown in the towel or grown used to having little to no income.
Not Quinn. He kept rising up when his situation tried throwing dirt on him. But it never managed to throw enough dirt on him. That’s why he was successful when so many others would’ve folded, taken a handout, or said, “This isn’t for me. I need to get a grip on myself and get a job with benefits.”
Quinn did it, even if that success was short-lived because of the way the world went to hell in Beyond the Lost.
Oh, and do you want to know a secret?
Quinn’s entire backstory was inspired by my own. And it’s realistic to a T. Everything you read above, you can replace Quinn Cozens with TC Marti.
So, when you read about Quinn’s quick rundown of how he fired his boss, just remember something: If I didn’t fire mine first and go through all of the above, Beyond the Lost Horizon would’ve looked way, way different.
And if you’ve reached this point in the article, I’m going to assume two things. One, that you’re inspired. And two, that you’re ready to meet Quinn and Yui. So check out my 37,000-word novella below and get a rundown from Quinn’s perspective of how he made it. Well, made it before that fateful day when America collapsed under a coordinated assault.
