FEAR No. 031 – Quitting Your Day Job

It takes a lot of guts to quit your day job.

It takes even bigger guts to quit your day job and not know where you’re going or what you’re doing next. It’s a scary place to be, living without a plan. I remember the days of being able to do just that… two kids ago. In fact, I did.

A few months before BFam and I were to take our vows to ruin each others’ lives for all eternity, I worked at the headquarters of a well-known clothing manufacturer. I was there all of one month before my father dropped dead. My supervisor at the time wasn’t what you’d call understanding, and demoted me after bereavement leave for “excessive time off”. It’s true, the Devil wears Prada. I’ve seen it. She wears Gucci, too. Maybe Hermes. It wasn’t long after this demotion, I was miserable beyond belief in my new surroundings. I was quite the hothead, and office bull wasn’t worth the minimum wage to this fresh-out-of-college graduate. I had no plan, but I had big dreams! I was going to be somebody! This place was beneath me! I lived in exclamation points! (!!)

I walked the aisle a few months later still unemployed. Still without a plan. BFam was furious with me.

What an introduction to married life.

I don’t regret leaving that place, not even the WAY I left that place because that was something… and it makes me laugh. Look at that crazy, young girl throwing caution to the wind. Look at the balls on THAT kid. Look at her go! It makes me happy to know I had it in me, and to also know there was a time I wasn’t afraid. The thing about me is I am no middle-ground type. I’m the ultimate pendulum: swing high, swing low, or don’t. I’m either going to jump off that bridge with no safety net, no harness, no rope… or I’m looking over the ledge of that thing going, “You want me to jump over WHAT NOW?” Sometimes I like the feeling of making the decision without thinking too much about it. Other times, I over-think. There is no happy medium in that mixed up cranium I’m forced to carry around.


I would love to quit my day job. This has little to do with the actual job itself and more to do with what I feel I’m compelled to do with the rest of my life: be a writer. Yet I am not that stupid kid from ten years ago. I have a house, two cars, two kids, utilities and a rental agreement all keeping me within the lines of confinement. Today, I’d better use the good sense God gave me and double harness myself before jumping off that bridge. Write that will. Take out that insurance policy. Make my funeral arrangements. Pick out my plot. Say my goodbyes. My life isn’t over, but I can’t pretend like it will all work itself out with no precautionary measures. Take all those things away, and I could. I’d also no longer be me. It’s a catch-22.


I want to quit my day job. I’m not fit for it. I don’t love it. It doesn’t drive me. It doesn’t wake me up in the morning, or leave me so satisfyingly exhausted I can’t wait to wake up and do it all over again. But I must be realistic. I need my day job to survive. At least until I’m living my real job… which isn’t really a job after all. Especially if you love it.