On the Joy and Terror of Quitting

Quitting is just part of the story, not the end of it.

Photo by Filip Gielda on Unsplash

As you may know by now, I closed the chapter (book, really, more like a whole book) on a decades-long corporate career a few weeks ago. TBD how this all ultimately pans out but so far I’m able to report with complete sincerity that I am still here, breathing, speaking, walking, meditating, writing, and doing all the other basic shit you can’t imagine how you’ll do without crippling panic or crying into your flannel pajamas after making such an earth shattering, life altering decision.

Life goes on, is what I mean to say. You walk out the door of your old life and you don’t fall off a cliff and disappear into the fiery pits of the unknown. Mostly, the unknown is quiet. Your feet keep stepping one foot in front of the other and your little heart continues to pitter pat and even though you cycle through a roller coaster of wildly unpredictable emotions ranging from ecstatic to frazzled, you find a way to sleep cosily through the night. And if you suddenly discover that you cannot, as I couldn’t for a rough week or so there, stricken as I was by the inevitable fright-pangs of WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE, you find a way to work through that, too.

For years I honestly didn’t think I could leave my job. I was paralyzed by fear and tortured by anxious thoughts about how unworthy I was of that kind of unwieldy freedom to choose what on this insane earth to do with myself; how out of my mind I would have to be to leave the safety of the status quo and go out on my own doing god knows what to ‘feed my soul’ whilst risking my grip on an income that would have any chance of feeding my stomach. I had suspicions that the culture inside that office bubble was toxic in a way that was not blatantly obvious but was subtly and undeniably palpable. It was something underneath the surface of the thing that didn’t align with me. Something was amiss that was so nearly imperceptible that for a long time I thought I could throw money, bonuses, benefits, status, titles, promotions, and professionalism at it in high enough amounts to shut it up completely.

That was not the case, however, as I bet you already assumed was the point I’d be making in this post. Deep down in places I always wanted to talk about at parties but didn’t for fear of humiliation and the sweaty heat of awkward silence, I knew I did not belong sitting at a desk for hours on end working for someone else’s dream. What is fascinating - and perhaps ill advised, or at the very least naive, the jury’s still out on all of this - is that what I now fear most is not what I thought I would. I thought I would fear, most of all, lack of income, lack of a meticulously outlined, concrete plan, lack of wherewithal to make it in a world where most of the time I feel like the only way to earn a living is to sell your soul and become a robot. That my deep love for the arts, poetry, writing, contemplation, and spiritual awakening make me an unwanted, unemployable freak.

But as I make my way through these wide open days one at a time, as I keep my commitment to my sobriety first and foremost, I have found that what I most fear is ever falling back into a place inside of myself where I am too afraid to continue to design a life I truly desire, even if it pushes against the grain. Even if it makes me an outsider. What I fear most is that now I see and cannot unsee that overall in this society, we employ bodies but do not inspire souls. We salivate over great wealth but do not cultivate the richness of the existence we already inhabit.

All this being true, what I am learning in raw form now as well is that fear has its place in all of this. Our fears are not bad they are just inept. Fear heightens our senses, alerts us to possible danger. The thing about fear, though, is that it cannot create a way out of itself. It wants to protect us but, ultimately, it doesn’t know how. It keeps us trapped and tells us the trap is safe. That is why we must choose to do the hard thing even though we are afraid. Step into the freedom that petrifies us. Because only after we walk through the fear can we get to know the incredible depth of love, creativity, joy, and possibility that is waiting for us on the other side.

And it is there. All of it. The love, the creativity, the wonder, the possibility. I know it now because I’m inside of it. With all the previous daily grind of pretending to want what I did not want, of trying to force myself to be grateful for what I had even though it wasn’t enough, assuming going after what I wanted was selfish, with all of that finally quieted, I sleep better. I heal better. I am more calm, more at peace, more aware, more mindful, more grateful, more present. The trick is now that I know what I know - that in general the world wants us distracted by and addicted to the things that ultimately don’t matter to our souls - how will I stay true to myself as I build what comes next?