I Finally Quit My Job Today: Here’s What I Learned
I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever done today.
I quit my job.
You think it’s going to be easy. Social media glorifies telling your boss to stick it where the sun don’t shine. That’s one way to look at the fantasy world of quitting your job. I thought I’d do that too.
Not quite.
At 11 AM I rang my favorite colleagues and told them first out of respect. I made sure they knew why I was quitting. At 3 PM I sent the resignation letter to my boss and my boss’s boss that had been hanging in my drafts like a bad fart dying to be released. 4 PM rolls around. It’s my boss. He says something I didn’t expect.
“I think what you do online is incredibly inspiring. I’m glad to see you going all-in while you’re young and doing what you love.”
My boss isn’t the one to give inspirational speeches. He’s usually a get-sh*t-done and let’s get off the video call kind of guy, which I admire. After quitting your job, oddly, you feel like eating sugar. I walked to the local yogurt shop and got a lime-flavored cup of vegan goodness.
Text messages start coming through. My favorite colleague was processing how our work partnership with a single financial services customer was coming to an end. You feel like you let your colleagues down when you quit. It’s a terrible feeling. That’s when a tear or two rolled down my cheek.
Moments that change your life always come from nowhere. Unexpected emotion confirms the enormity of your decision.
There’s only so long you can put what you love aside.
I’ve danced with the corporate devil for the last seven years. I’ve spent less time doing what I love to worship a safe salary I can depend on. You give up a lot when you let a salary determine your future.
The hard part about quitting a job during this moment in history is the global health crisis. In short: you feel ungrateful for quitting.
Millions of people would love to have the job you have. Quitting feels like pissing on humanity with your privilege.
This thought held me back. I am grateful to have had a job during these tough times and to be able to work from home safely without my lungs collapsing. What I love doing is writing and teaching. When I do both, I feel free. Feeling free is real freedom — not the fake freedom we often give up for material bullsh*t we don’t actually need. I gave up hours of writing for BMWs, fine dining, and a dumb iPhone that costs $2000.
I’ve realized the size of my income isn’t what makes me feel alive. Getting closer to work I love brings joy. So I chose joy even if it pays terribly.
You’re not getting any younger.
I turned 35 recently. YAY. Not. My brother called me an old man with a couple of grey hairs. This is a long way from the fantasy Peter Pan character I played in my 20s. I used to say “I don’t age and will be young forever.”
LOL.
It’s never the right age to do anything. The right age is when the thing you want to do is pulling on the strings of your soul and begging you to listen.
That’s where I’m at. I’ve had a fantasy to write a Substack newsletter for ages. Working a job has prevented me from doing it. I don’t want to be 65 years old with no hair and going to the Substack website to find out the platform died like Facebook and websites don’t exist anymore (everything is a dApp).
Today is the youngest time to start.
The best-case scenario is camouflaged by your fears.
I’ve been scared to quit my job. The creator dream I’m dying to live full-time is camouflaged by useless fears that say “it won’t work.” Watching your savings go backwards can be a nightmare. The nightmare can become the main show playing on repeat in your head.
I’ve learned to see fear for what it is: bullsh*t.
Fear is false evidence appearing real. Of course your goals can be lit on fire — but so can your safe job too. We learned already what happens when a global health crisis strikes: companies fire humans and choose profits. A job is just as unsafe as backing yourself and your skills.
You’re supposed to have no idea what you’re doing.
Planners find it the hardest to quit.
I’m a planner. I have my goals mostly mapped out in an Apple Notes file. The trouble when you quit your job is the future is unpredictable. Who knows if the sandcastle you want to build will get wiped out by a rogue wave?
In a way, not knowing what I’m doing feels kind of freeing. Letting your fantasies become the compass is underrated. Sure you can end up lost again. But you may also find what you’ve been searching your entire life for, too.
Dying with regrets is the worst-case scenario.
This is an exercise I did.
Picture the last day of your life. You’re sitting in the hospital bed with stage 4 cancer. You hear the doctors whispering to your family that you haven’t got long left. You think back over your life. You think about the times you could have quit your job and didn’t. You think about what you could have done with an extra 8 hours per day. You realize how even if your goal failed you could ring the guy from the bank you once worked at and get a job quickly.
Now what happens? You feel regret. You go through death’s door wondering what your life would have become if you’d made a different decision. You’ll never know. This is the worst-case scenario: dying with regrets.
How do you avoid regrets? You make the difficult decisions that bring on fear and make you question yourself. You lean into the stomach aches caused by fear. You see life-changing decisions as options that can be reversed in the event of a catastrophe.
Quit a job you hate at least once before you die.
It will test your level of regret.
All you have after you quit your job are relationships you made at work.
All the KPIs, spreadsheets and revenue projections fade away.
Relationships are all that is left when you quit your job. You can take relationships with you to your next job or with you to a business you start. It’s the little moments. The jokes you shared. The random dinners. It’s going on LinkedIn and leaving a former colleague a recommendation because they showed you so much love at work. Work is a place you can go to understand how you fit into society, and where you can find your natural fit.
I’m a weirdo. I like full control. So I quit my job and took my work friends with me to whatever is next.
People are what make a job worth it. The rest is semantics.
Leave your job on a high.
If you decide to quit your job, I’ll leave you on this note:
- Quit on a high (like when you achieve a huge work milestone).
- Send a respectful resignation letter.
- Mark the occasion. Say thank you. But don’t say goodbye. If you go the solo route (like me) block out some time each week to have coffees with people and be social. Add your former colleagues to the top of the list. Solo work can be lonely. Loneliness can be cured by intentional catch-ups with people you respect.
- Don’t throw people under yellow school buses on the way out. The people at your workplace show up behind closed doors in whatever you do next.
- Make the act of quitting your job an art form. Do it eloquently. It’s nobody’s fault you can’t put doing what you love aside anymore.
– Tim Denning
