Quitter and proud
I quit my job.
My well paid job with flexible working hours, close to home, close to training, valued team member, blah-di-blah-di-blah.
I hated it.
Really hated it. My dentist warned me I had worn my eye teeth flat from clenching them so tightly. I would get tension headaches from my knotted traps and and neck. The massage lady at the local Miracle Massage commented without fail on how tight my jaw was. Which was of no surprise given the countless afternoons I spent in the office gaping like a goldfish to try and relieve excruciating tension pain through my face.
I also spent many an afternoon resisting the urge to headbutt my monitor to try and ameliorate the simmering frustration I felt day in day out.
It wasn’t my dream job, not even close. It would be very easy to get my hate on and rail against the wasted time and wasted opportunities but I had a choice to be there everyday and I chose to stay because it had a purpose. It had gotten me out of three hours of commuting a day, it gave me some valuable resume experience and it gave me a highly disposable income which gave us a house deposit and an unbelievable Trans-Siberian adventure. It saw me through my Masters degree and an office relocation 18 months ago, serendipitously saw me sitting just a few desks away from a woman who would provide me even better support and feedback than my supervisor as I completed my thesis.
But it had served its purpose and the cons were trampling over the pros in gigantic spiked boots.
So I quit. I came up with a 10 week plan that would allow me to pre-pay some bigger expenses I had coming up over the next six months, and at week six I handed in my four weeks notice. In the intervening four weeks I literally had a skip in my step as I contemplated life outside the office. In a super cheese-ball moment a few hours after I gave notice, I caught myself humming I’m Walking on Sunshine.The most telling sign about how miserable I had been was the incredible happiness I felt the day I resigned and have felt everyday since.
I love my life. I have a very good life but didn’t know it was possible to be so happy in a general sense. Or the converse… although I knew that I hated what I was doing for work, I didn’t realise how heavily it was weighing me down. Since I’ve left, whether I’m having a good day or a bad, whether I am motivated or procrastinating, my underlying feeling is that of contentment. It feels much nicer than having your life underscored by feelings of frustration, dread and dissatisfaction.
Although everyone I spoke to was overwhelmingly supportive, leaving your job without anything else lined up still raises the question, why? Why now? Why not wait? Why not get something else first? The simple answer, the job was a trap.
I gave this answer fully aware that it may sound like the epitome of Gen Y self-entitlement but it was the simplest one and it was true. Good money and convenience is a hard thing to pull yourself away from. In relative comfort it is easy to convince yourself that you can wait and that everything you want can be shaped in the background ready for you to make the seamless transition from day job to dream job.
This was not going to happen for me. I can always go back to a job if money becomes the priority but for now I’d rather make what I can doing what I love and build a genuinely satisfying life around that. I want to pour my energy into my own pursuits.
Jim Carrey gave some sage advice in a graduation speech that did the social media rounds recently and the key message was this; you can fail doing something you hate so you might as well pursue something you love.
The Linden Tree 
One Response to “Quitter and proud”
Fantastic post! Couldn’t agree more! You need to be happy first and foremost and when you are miserable at work it makes everything worse.
You are so talented and I know you will succeed with anything you do!