I did quit. I have spent the last 9 months unemployed doing things that cannot make it to a resume. I had worked with my head down and blinkers on to find a sense of financial security for 12 years and in 2022, for the first time since I was born, my family was debt free. We could want things without guilt. When I arrived here, I found I had no will left to continue. I had made it - but I was spent.

I grew up with ambition. Ambition to be anywhere other than where I was. “Do what makes money” is how I had made decisions. I did the best I could and here I was…manager of someone, lead of something. We didn’t pick our careers with the kind of astuteness we claim in interviews. We make the best of the hands that are dealt to us and 10 years later, we have no idea where the path we are running so desperately on, leads.

There is a school of thought that condemns any kind of overthinking about what we do for work. Do what everyone is doing, run the race and only when you are successful, can you share your thoughts of irreverence for the system. If you didn’t play by the system, how would you know it doesn’t work? So I will set aside any lofty questioning of the system. This is not that. This is making meaning. Making meaning of the choices I make and the truths about me they lead me to.

I am not above it all - the need to be ahead, the fear of falling behind, of not having enough, of regret. I am not as successful as I want to be. I care about who becomes CEO and who raises a million dollars. I have always wanted the validation of success, the way every kid wants candy and every dog, meat. How you grow up is sometimes, who you are.

This break, it isn’t about saying no to success or a fuck you to any system. It is about trying to re-wire myself, to want success on terms I am happy to pay the price for. I am demanding reflection, on what a full life means for me, on who I want to be and what I want to spend my time doing when not pushed against the wall.

As pleasant as it sounds, the break has been a hard thing. I have woken up and gone to an office since I was 18. Every appraisal has meant something about what I can desire. When I started the break, I tried to drown myself in routine, an intense hobby dance with my time. I am happy that I spent my time overcoming some fears & learning new things but I know in the back of my mind that this ‘over-scheduling of my calendar’ is escape, not transformation. This hobby dance of avoidance will put me back in the same place. A kind of burnout created not by hard work but lack of direction.

I have been unemployed for 9 months now. On a break. I am unhappy to report no epiphany has arrived. There is no soulmate waiting on the other side of the tunnel asking where I have been. It is all just messy through and through - deciding how one must spend their lives turns out is a lifelong pursuit.

If I cannot give you hope, let me share some advice -

1. Make some money and save it. When you feel the unavoidable pang to make meaning with your life and not just money - it will help. There are good days and bad days but the bad days are better if you don’t have to worry about the rent.

2. “You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.” Fenyman said. This was a hard pill to swallow. I am learning to define what my potential is based on how I want to spend my time and not what other people think I ought to accomplish.

I am not wiser or better because I have travelled and picked a few hobbies in these last 9 months (maybe a little). I am still scared. One can feel small and irrelevant not being tethered to a larger organism. But the good thing about having no other baggage to carry but your own, is that you feel light. And maybe that can get you far.