I’ve quit my job

On June 24,2018, I’ve quit my job

Not because I’m pregnant. Nor because I’m sick. I haven’t been laid off either. And I didn’t quit to spend more time with my children: I don’t have any. I’ve quit my job because I didn’t want to be a salaried employee anymore.

I can already hear people protest, “What makes you think I want to work from 9 am to 7 pm every day? ». Although, to be honest, these past few months I’ve been working more on a 10 am – 5 pm basis. Now you’re going to ask, “What are you complaining about then?” Well, it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. And yes, I guess I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to go through the daily grind of modern life anymore. That’s why I decided to quit.

Before resigning though, you need to ask yourself one important question: why do I want to stop working? Is it just to live the dream American TV shows and movies are selling us? That shows us rich people living a life of leisure peppered with just enough drama so they don’t get bored day after day?

No, obviously that’s not why. Let me make something clear: I’m not rich, far from it; I’m even in debt. I don’t have any money set aside for the coming months and I don’t know how I’ll be able to make a living in the future. And of course it’s out of the question to spend my days doing nothing; staying inactive would probably make me feel very depressed.

My decision to stop working has everything to do with something I’ve started thinking about two years ago: I wanted to find out what I really wanted to do with my life. At the time, I was unable to say what that might even be. My desires? I had let my entourage and my business partner crush them: I had soaked up their own desires and tried to make them mine in order to feel better. I was doing exactly what was expected of me.

It took me six months to find out what I did NOT want and set up a plan to escape the hell I had created for myself: I sold the shares of the company I was running to my partner and resolutely distanced myself from the people who were polluting my life with their negativity, their criticism and expectations I no longer wanted to meet. Then I applied myself to the next task at hand: finding out what I wanted to do with my life, what was appealing to me and what would allow me to get up every morning, filled with a desire to embrace every minute of every day.

It took me another six months to figure this out. In the meantime, I took on a project manager position, the same one I had left only one month ago. It offered me the opportunity to breathe, to rest and enjoy the routine while I was working on my plan to change my life.

Spoiler: I didn’t carry out any of the things I planned back then.

But one year after discovering or rediscovering my own desires, I finally quit my job and stopped working as an employee for good. This life was clearly not meant for me, I just couldn’t thrive under these circumstances.

I became a full-time writer. Because writing on weekends wasn’t enough. Writing one hour a day before going to work or upon coming home in the evening after a tiring day, wasn’t enough. I wasn’t involved enough. Things weren’t moving fast enough. How could I ever hope to live off my writing some day and fulfil my dream if I only gave it one hour a day? I felt bad, I felt frustrated, I felt illegitimate. How could I actually blame myself for not moving forward, if I didn’t commit to what I really wanted? How could I blame myself for still being at the same stage I had been the year before, after I had found out what I wanted to do? With the same novel on my hands, still unpublished, bearing just a few more improvements compared to its former version twelve months ago?

So I quit my job.

And my whole life changed…

Even though it was only one month ago.

How exactly has my life changed? I leave you to find this out for yourself on my blog.