I Quit My Job to Follow My Dreams But It Didn’t Work Out

I quit my job in the spring.

I, like many other people, hated my job. I hated the work that it entailed, the people I had to talk to, especially my boss, and the commute I had to endure. I was miserable.

Every minute I spent at work was a source of anxiety and burnout. By the time I would get home every day, after about fifty minutes of being stuck in California traffic (which would only get worse once the pandemic ended), I was completely and utterly exhausted.

I had no energy or motivation to do anything. I only had four hours of free time Monday through Friday. And I would waste away those four short hours watching YouTube videos and playing games on my phone. I was depressed. I was exhausted. I was numbed when I wasn’t a bundle of anger.

I had trouble sleeping. I was eating junk food almost every day. I wasn’t exercising. I was barely keeping myself hydrated. I was losing myself to the pits of depression, and I had no idea how to get out. It didn’t help that my job was plummeting me further down.

The pandemic, of course, played a major role in my situation. And for a long time I blamed the pandemic as the sole culprit of my situation. I was stressed and anxious every day. I worried I would get sick, that my family would get sick, that my friends would get sick. I isolated myself from the outside world like everyone else, and I did a poor job of keeping in touch with people I loved.

But my job—my job was, I finally admitted, a major source of anxiety in my life, more so than the pandemic.

But soon I realized that I had some control over my anxiety. I could try to not take things personally, to give my boss even more of a benefit of a doubt. But really, I just ended up burying myself doing something I didn’t like doing and being in a place that I didn’t like.

My boss and I were the only two people in the office for most of the time and, somehow, she managed to make it miserable. Any mistake I made, even the tiniest one, would send me into a panic attack, because I never knew how she was going to react.

There were so many other reasons and nuances to the job, like class, money, culture, and race. In a company with only four employees, all of us minorities, I somehow became the “Token Minority.” It was that toxic.

 It wasn’t the place for me. So instead of trying to make it work, I decided to quit.

It wasn’t easy, though. After I made the decision to quit, I waited. I waited to have more money. I waited for things to get better. But I knew I couldn’t wait much longer.

Then my worst nightmare came true. My family and I got sick with Covid in late February/early March. We were all sick, isolated in quarantine for two weeks.

And somehow my boss took it personally. I could feel that she was upset because she had no other employees to boss around. I was, after all, the only “lower-level” employee. Without me, she had to do everything herself.

By the time I came back from work, I was still having some trouble breathing. I would get super tired just going up the steps in our office building. It was a two-story building with no elevator. It wasn’t a problem before, but when you’re recovering from a respiratory illness, the climbing up the stairs really does a number on your breathing.

But my boss didn’t care. The first thing she ordered me to do was to go over the building across ours, drag a chair out of that building back across our building, and climb up the stairs with the chair in tow. It didn’t matter that I could barely move without gasping for air.

Then at another time later that week, she sent me down the street, about a ten-minute walk one way, to drop something in the mailbox. I took my car. I wasn’t going to go on a twenty-minute walk when I couldn’t breathe properly. She laughed when I told her I had taken my car. She laughed. Like I was being silly. Like I was exaggerating about what it felt like to be sick with the virus that had killed millions of people around the world.

But, somehow, I still didn’t quit. No, I waited just a bit more. I believed I could hang on a little bit longer.

But then one day she yelled at me over the phone for something I failed to do due to her own lack of leadership. That was it. I sent her a two-sentence letter of resignation.

I had finally put myself first. I wasn’t going to suffer at work anymore. I didn’t deserve it. I deserved better. I could do better.

I had quit and I was finally going to write my novel.

But it didn’t work out that way.

My initial plan was to focus on my writing, to write a novel for three months, and see where that would take me. After three months, I would go back into the workforce. I told my family, my friends, and myself that I wouldn’t waste my days. I had dreams of writing all day, of starting and finishing up a novel. I was going to be busy. Productive.

It’s been seven months since I quit and I don’t have a novel. I really, truly believed this would be the time I would accomplish this lifetime goal of mine. I had the time. I had the dream. I had the motivation.

But my body had other plans.

It shut down. I had very little energy. I was so burnt out, so depressed, and so anxious after I left my job that my body refused to do anything.

My body and mind needed to heal.

I spent the first few weeks just lounging around the house, watching shows and movies. I went out a couple of times, to the park, or the store, but with the pandemic still raging on, there were not many places I could go. So for the most part, I stayed in. Eventually, slowly, I went back to my first love: reading. I hadn’t read a book in such a long time. I had missed it.

Every day I settled down with a book. I started going to the library and check out books by the bagful. I’ve read about fifty books since I quit. Probably more. I’ve lost count.

Eventually I started writing. I wrote a little, about 22,000 words, but my body shut down again. I’m not sure why. It might have been the pressure I put on myself again.

In my mind, writing was my new job. Nothing wrong with that, except my writing needed to be perfect. I needed to be perfect. And I wasn’t. So I stopped writing.

But I’m planning on starting again. I will have to take baby-steps before I’m writing the amount of words I want to write in a day.

But in the meantime, I’m focusing on my mind, body, and soul. Slowly, I’ve started to feel like myself again. I still have some way to go before I feel like myself one hundred percent. But I’m making progress.

I’ve stopped eating so much junk food. I’m trying to lose the weight I’ve gained in the past two years. My mood has improved. I’m no longer so snappy or impatient with people, although sometimes I catch myself being irritated or taking it out on someone. I’m still working on it.

I’m fortunate enough that I was able to save enough money to cover my expenses for almost a year. I’m also very fortunate that I have people who are supporting me through this.

Everyone’s story is different. We all have different circumstances. Some of you have no expenses and very good salaries. Some of you have children to raise and feed and are making less than an ideal hourly rate.

But if you find yourself working for someone who doesn’t treat you well, or if your coworkers are toxic, or if you spend hours doing something you don’t even like, you deserve better. You truly do. It’s not easy. It’s scary. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you should quit right now. (It took me a whole year to quit. From the uncertainty of the pandemic and everything that came with it, I hesitated too long to quit.)

As I said, everyone’s circumstances are different. You may not be able to quit now. You may need to hang on for a little while longer until your pieces are all in place. Wait for your time to strike. Then do it. Checkmate that part of your life that doesn’t bring you joy and go sit at another table where the game is more enjoyable.

And when you’re ready to make your move, come back and let me know. We’ll celebrate. You deserve this.