I'm quitting my job
or, how to make hard decisions
It’s Monday morning in April. Outside is 70 degrees and sunny, with baby blue skies and cottony clouds. As I walk back to my office from the cafeteria, goosebumps flicker across my skin and my cheeks feel warm. My brain feels viscous, there’s a sharp pain in my chest, and my limbs are waterlogged.
The symptoms of something being wrong started four days ago, but I know I am not sick — at least, not physically.
I open my project document, and suddenly English is a language I have never known. I am fluent in brain static. I look and look and look and yet I see nothing, understand nothing. I look away. I come back after twenty minutes. Nothing still—instead, there is something thrashing inside me like a scream.
At 1PM (after much internal debate and workload calculations), I make myself leave the office. I get home, crawl into bed, and close my eyes.
I am not ill.
I am just very, very fatigued.
When I wake up, I admit to myself that taking half of a sick day (a mere half!) feels like weakness. Surely, I should’ve been able to just force myself to keep going. I know others who work longer hours than me, and others who have busier schedules and more significant stressors in their life; therefore, me giving up for half a day is because I have less stamina, less resilience, and less mental strength, and not only is this a sign of failure and disgrace, it is also embarrassing.
I get out of bed and sit at my desk. Maybe I should take advantage of my half day and work on something. Then it hits me: I have been sucked into the grindset-mindset of needing to maximize every minute of time. I need to optimize, augment, and streamline. I need to perform every corporate verb that I claim to despise and operate in the name of Efficiency and High Return on Investment. I am the thing I hate.
post-mortem
I recently deleted socials from my phone so I could have more time to read Ishiguro after work. I read The Myth of Sisyphus during lunch breaks and Substack think-pieces while walking to and from meetings. I have no streaming service subscriptions and my Nintendo Switch battery died a year ago, likely from disuse. My “guilty pleasures” are reading Webtoons and solving the NYT Sudoku every evening. Even my former YouTube addiction evolved for the sake of productivity.
I do actually want to do all these things. I enjoy them. But over the course of several months, all this frantic activity turned into neuroticism and prideful ambition, time-maxxing and knowledge-farming (if you will), building some kind of ivory tower of babel.
The thing I want to do the least (my job) I spend the majority of my time on, and the thing I supposedly want to do the most (write) I have been spending little to no time on. The dissonance rings loud. I thought that if I interspersed reading throughout my workday, the day would be less mediocre and I could take advantage of productivity lulls. Maybe I would be happier overall, if I could just brute force my way into doing the things I wish I was doing instead of my job.
I thought I was above falling prey to what is normally portrayed as the “grindset”: making the gym your personality, ignoring relationships, subscribing to finance podcasts, maybe reading questionable self-help books. I haven’t done any of that, but I perhaps had the same intentions. At the heart of this persona is not just self-centeredness and over-ambition; from my brush with it, it’s deep dissatisfaction and believing that I am in control and I can do it all.
I imagined myself an invincible person who’s just somehow smart enough and a hard enough worker that she can do everything, and her effort will be very impressive and her outcomes very glorious. But it was midday Monday and I was not working. I was not reading or writing. I was not stuffing my social calendar. I was exhausted and doing nothing.
my options
Something irreversible happened, because once I rebooted myself I knew I had to quit my job. I guess I can only be a walking husk for so long (four years). I guess making myself do things I don’t really care about has an expiration date. If I ever enjoyed the nature of my work in the past (questionable, given how I would rejoice over being sick on a weekday), I certainly do not now.
I am burnt out, I am not growing at my job, and I am unhappy.
So here are my options:
If I stop stuffing my brain with information during every waking hour, and instead use my free time to watch Witch Hat Atelier, then I will be less burnt out. But I want to read and think. Therefore, I will be unhappy and I will not be growing.
If I continue doing what I was doing (everything), then I will burn out. Then I will not be able to do anything, and be even more unhappy, and definitely not grow.
If I quit my job, I will no longer have income or I will have a lot less of it. But, I will have time to read and write and think, and thus I will be happier than I am now. And I will be growing, presumably.
I guess I have to quit my corporate job, right?
STOP wait hold on hold on
When I was a senior in high school, I was trying to decide between two universities. Which do I choose? This was a life-altering decision, wasn’t it? What if one of these was the “wrong” choice? I fretted over the possibilities, and no one could tell me what to do because it was ultimately my choice to make.
One Sunday that spring, my pastor said something that I ended up storing away deep in my heart:
“God cares more about who you are than where you are.”
I don’t remember what passage he was preaching on or the context for this, but hearing those words gave me sudden peace. It was like a lapping tide gently washed away every anxiety I had.
Now, I again find myself at a crossroads: to quit or not to quit?
I have no prospects. I have savings that will last me for a bit, but I don’t have a back-up plan, aside from getting a temporary service job. I don’t even want the tech roles I’ve been getting rejected from. I don’t know what else I could do. And what about my precious health insurance? And the economy? The job market? But when have I ever known what is beyond the signposts?
My heart has made a decision, yet I have not carried it out. Who I am right now is a coward.
kam’s philosophy of hard decision-making
Making a hard decision requires two “movements”: a metaphysical one and a physical one. The First Movement is metaphysical, when you know in your heart/spirit that you will do X. The Second Movement is physical, when you actually execute it (you sign the contract, you open your mouth and speak, you hit the “send” button). You could move from First to Second with little thought or reflection, but then that wouldn’t make it a “hard” decision. Thus, a hard decision necessitates an In-Between State, where you make the First Movement but struggle to complete the decision through the Second Movement. The In-Between is uncomfortable, as the decision is both made and not made, the present containing both past and future. What happens in that state?
Scenario 1: If you make the First and Second, then you will have successfully went from metaphysical to physical. You will be changed because you have wrestled in the In-Between.
Scenario 2: If you make the First and not the Second, then you will still be changed, but in a different way. Perhaps you will be regretful, perhaps you will avow to do it next time (if there is one), perhaps you will grieve what could have been. You will still have wrestled in the In-Between, and you will still be changed by it.
In both scenarios, you are affected. Therefore, the most important part of a decision is not the First or Second Movement, but what happens In-Between. Do you trust? Do you act with courage? Do you give up your foolish notions of being able to do everything and have everything? Do you continue gathering information, even though you already know what you will choose? Do you admit that you are not in control? Do you have faith, truly? The pain of honesty will reveal whether or not your movements are based on faith vs recklessness, hope vs laziness.
When you loosen your grip on fear, cynicism, and control, that is when you transform into someone a little different — and hopefully, better — than who you were before. Is that not more important than whether you are a tech employee or a barista, whether you live in a big city or the suburbs? What is the point of all this coming and going, all your toil and time?
It’s not about quitting my job or sticking it out. It’s about who I am becoming by choosing.
the conclusion of the matter
I am in the In-Between, in the midst of becoming. I must complete the Second Movement soon, otherwise my mind and body will suffer even more. I have been making micro-movements: giving myself time to test whether or not my feelings are temporary, calling my dad (marginally helpful), talking to friends who quit recently, and exploring role transfer possibilities. I second-guess my First Movement throughout all of this.
The weightiest micro-movement I make? Dwelling on the gospel. Even though I want to be something (really good and super impressive), I know that I am nothing. This is not a matter of ego or self-esteem. I have seen time and time again that my efforts — all efforts — are futile. Even the quest to be a “good person” is futile. It’s never enough and never satisfying, and at the end everything dies and fades away, erased by time. But despite being like a vapor that is here today and gone tomorrow, the Lord still sees me and says: believe that I love you.
Believe that Christ has borne your weakness, your inabilities, and the vice of your pride; therefore you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, including yourself.1
Believe that I will make your work, your writing, and your striving worthwhile during your time on earth.2
Do not worry about finances or the job market.3
Do not live in fear, because I am with you always.4
I’m quitting my job!
“For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” (Rom. 6:14)
“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Cor. 15:58)
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matt. 6:25-27)
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Jos. 1:9)
Congratulations!! I think it’s a hard decision to make but now you can maximize your time to find avenues to make writing profitable.