The Great Resignation has taken another victim — me. About a month ago, I left my job with nothing else lined up.
It’s a weird feeling. I haven’t been unemployed in 27 years.
Maybe the occasional 1- or 2-week vacation between jobs, but never just straight up unemployed.
So much has been written about people taking stock in their lives as the pandemic has impacted them. I’m no different.
While I didn’t get COVID symptoms, nor lose anyone particularly close to me, the anxiety and stress of wondering if you’re going to accidentally bring a life-altering virus back to your family after just going to the grocery store starts to take a toll.
You start wondering why you needed to visit a store in person, and eventually end up down the rabbit hole wondering why you spend the rest of your day doing things that seemingly don’t matter.
This resulted in some kind of (self-diagnosed) anxiety and depression.
I found myself being very snippy with my family. This was in large part to finding little enjoyment in my day to day at work. I was an executive at a health & wellness company. Literally making a positive impact on the world.
But I had the “Sunday Scaries” every night of the week, and I had never felt this before. (I’ll write more about this later.)
I’d spend all day in my office upstairs, in a brain fog, feeling like I wasn’t making any progress. Then I’d come downstairs, stressed, and be stressed, snippy and short with my family.
The ultimate catalyst to me quitting was one of my colleagues being diagnosed with a couple of very serious medical conditions. She has young kids.
Imagine the last thing you kids or friends know remember about you is you being stressed, snippy and short with them.
I didn’t want to go out like that.
Life’s too short to hate your day-to-day, so I quit my job and am taking a little break to enjoy the summer while I can afford it, my kid is young enough to want to hang out with me (but old enough to do some fun things), I’m healthy enough to enjoy the summer, and the job market is OK.
I’m spending this summer with my family. Going to the beach. Working on my Willy’s CJ3A. Training for a half-marathon. Playing lots of golf and video games (guilt-free). Making a significant amount of ice cream and BBQ (not quite guilt-free, but close). And talking to a therapist.
I’ve been “burned out” before, but I never did anything to deliberately address that. I’d take a week off here and there, but never totally shut down, so I’m not sure I ever hit burnout escape velocity and just hung out in low burnout for a long, long time.
All of that unhappiness, burnout and frustration was multiplied by being locked down for a year. My wife told me that I needed to prioritize mental health over work, and I needed to be OK with that.
But it’s not easy. Specifically, the hardest parts today are:
- Not feeling worthless. So much of my self-identity is tied to my job, title, pay, etc… who am I if I’m not employed at some fancy company, or with a fancy title, or working on some fancy project?
- Being OK being bored. We live near the ocean in the summer, with a little cash in our pockets. The world is our oyster, but I need to remember that this sabbatical is about recovery — not making up time for something. And it’s ok to just sit on the deck and do nothing.
- Not rushing to find another job. See above.
So that’s what the summer is like.
I posted a thread about this on Twitter and go so many supportive, thoughtful messages that I know others are thinking about this. I’m going to continue writing about it here in case someone else needs a little extra help from the Internet.