So, I quit my job yesterday. For the first time in my life. I did it for a lot of reasons, but the main one is that it made me intensely unhappy. I hated working nights. I hated that I was never really “off.” Even when I wasn’t at work, I always had one eye on my tether (aka work phone) to see what crisis might be emerging that I’d have to deal with later. For five days a week (plus one day every weekend), I was a man divided.
I walked away from making the most money I’ve ever made. Not a lot, but enough to probably get my own place, pay off credit cards, maybe even get a new car in a few years. And I almost talked myself into staying. Almost convinced myself that being a “grown-up” meant shutting up and accepting doing a job that I didn’t like because that’s what an adult does.
But I couldn’t do it. I realized that a couple of weeks ago. I came in exhausted from editing Channel 101 stuff all night, then getting up early to help pull the screening together. My boss looked me over and said I looked like crap. I explained what I’d been doing and he took a pause, then said “Do you even get paid for that?” I explained that I didn’t, that I did it because I loved doing it…and he just shook his head.
And I realized that I’d rather be struggling and doing something that I love than financially secure and doing something that I hate. I took a leap. And now I’ll be out of work in a couple of weeks and I don’t have anything lined up. And I’m scared shitless. But I know that I did the right thing. For the first time in my life, I took the kind of stand that I didn’t think I was capable of taking. If I was happy to take the easy path, the convenient one, then I wouldn’t have left home. And I wouldn’t have followed the dream that I moved out here to chase.
There are jobs out there that I will love. I know that because I’ve had one or two of them. I just have to find them.
This job was the latest excuse in a series of excuses for me not to do what I came here to do. And those excuses need to go away. So if I hit you up for job leads in the next couple of weeks, I’m sorry. I’m just another guy out there who wants to do something that he loves. The money’s just a fringe benefit.
