Life Without a Day Job: All You Need to Know
“I feel so screwed!”
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“I feel so screwed!” my friend told me over the phone the other day. “I can’t believe I used to go to an office every day for so many years. I now realize I hate it: the lighting, noise, and inability to open a window without discussing it with fourteen colleagues. I should’ve quit years ago. I just thought that’s what you were supposed to do.”
This friend of mine is in the middle of switching careers — she’s clocking fewer hours as a marketing executive in favour of building a list of clients for her practice as a therapist.
And she’s never been happier.
I knew what she was talking about. I quit my job back in 2014 to pursue life coaching, and it’s been seven years now that I haven’t had a day job. Haven’t had a boss, haven’t had to go anywhere or do anything I didn’t want to. I’ve gotten so used to it that I sometimes forget some people still hurry in the morning and sit in traffic around 6 pm.
The Internet is full of people telling you not to quit your job to pursue doing what you love. I’m here to tell you the oposite — do it, just be aware it’s not all butterflies flying through a pink fog.
In a while, the pink fog lifts and… Well, let me elaborate.
“The reality, as Seth Godin so aptly puts it, is that the motivational quotes that tell you “Quitters never win and winners never quit” are wrong. Winners quit all the time — they just quit the right stuff at the right time.”
Your new way of life.
Your first few months without a job, you’ll spend most of your time either watching daytime TV or working on what you’ve always wanted to work on — most probably, it’ll be some mixture of both. That’s how it was for Cheryl Strayed as she was trying to write her first book.
Embrace it. If you feel like relaxing, relax. You need it to adjust to this new life.
If you feel like working, work. It’s the best way to use your newfound enthusiasm that will soon fade.
Start getting used to doing things on your terms. Don’t hurry into building new routines. Just go with the flow. Do yoga in the morning or sleep in. Or work in the morning and…
