Quitting

This week I did something I've never done before: I voluntarily quit my job with nothing else lined up. As a planner and saver and general worrier, up and quitting my job is extremely unlike me. If I'm being honest, it's terrifying. Exciting and gratifying and freeing, but terrifying. But I didn't just say f-you to my bosses and walk out the door - I planned this for a few months. Longer, actually. Since starting grad school a year and a half ago I knew I probably wouldn't be able to keep up a full-time job throughout the whole program. At least not the full-time job I had (I not so affectionately called it "full-time-plus"). I'm in school to change my career path so I really want to give it my all, learn as much as I can, and hopefully get a job that gives more meaning to my life and allows me to give more of myself. I started to realize I wasn't excelling at either my day job or my classes. I needed to quit one, and it wasn't going to be school.

 A lot of lucky things happened to make this possible. The Boyfriend and I lucked out with cheap rent, we don't have a lot of expenses, and I made enough at my job to pay for school and still put money in savings. I have enough to live on for a few months and still not dip below my "don't touch this" threshold. The only thing that makes me nervous (and which I have cried about on more than one occasion) is that I worked really hard to build up that savings. It's modest - in the range of a down payment's down payment, but that and my car are all I've got to my name. The logical part of me says it's ridiculous to waste it on not having a job for a few months. But the logical part of me also understands that everything else was pretty bleak. Realizing the types of thoughts I was having (and some quick Googling on grad school and depression to validate those thoughts) was scarier than the thought of being voluntarily unemployed.

 I did know this was coming, but I was hoping to hold out until June 2018. That would have meant a solid 3 years at that job, another 6 months of savings, potentially leaving at a really busy time in my program, and a summer to not work. The breaking point was a new account at work. I'd asked to stay at the accounts I was currently managing - I felt I was barely keeping my head above water and a new account would sink me. This wasn't unreasonable, as I was meeting the standard for which we were judged for being considered "full". I was honest with my team and bosses about school, so they knew it wasn't out of laziness that I was asking for this. The new account I was given was sold to me as half an account - won't take much of my time, I can delegate most of the work, we just want to show them our capabilities. It didn't seem like a big deal, but that project quickly engulfed my time. In one week I spent over 30 hours on that project alone, all but ignoring my other accounts. I couldn't ignore them completely, so I worked a lot of overtime to make up for it, which meant I turned in some really crappy assignments for school, lost a lot of sleep, stopped exercising, and barely even got to see The Boyfriend or our pets. I was worn.

 After a not so great presentation with this account, my manager said I could have prioritized them more and not focused on school so much. Those words could not have been further from the truth. Fortunately, I said so, but it was in that moment I knew my efforts were not enough and would never be enough. Here I am, feeling like I'm giving my all, stressed the fuck out and not doing well in other aspects of my life because of this one client, and that still wasn't good enough. So I gave my notice the next week. I gave almost two months notice. I didn't have anything else lined up and I knew the company was already short-staffed, so why not? It was a relatively awkward two months... I don't recommend giving that much notice - give a month but not more. But the shitty part was two of my accounts weren't staffed until two weeks before my last day, so I was still scrambling to get everything in order. I ended up leaving not very confident that my replacement on those two would be able to renew the projects, but, as The Boyfriend reminded me a few times, it wasn't my problem. This job was not my passion. It seems that to do it well you either need to be truly passionate about SEO and/or not have any other hobbies or interests so you can spend your nights and weekends working. For some people that's dandy, but not for me.

 Today is the first day I would have normally been working. I cleaned and set up my home desk, took care of some personal paperwork I hadn't gotten to for weeks, finished a book, cleaned the kitchen, got lunch with The Boyfriend, finished my late Christmas shopping, and went on a really long walk with a friend and the pups. I even already had a phone interview with another agency, but it doesn't sound like a good fit for me (same stress, less money, no thanks). I'm looking forward to being a better girlfriend than I have been the last several months, getting back to exercising regularly, reading more, and prepping for my independent study in January. I've gone back and forth as to whether or not quitting my job is a good idea, and I may go back and forth some more, but today I'm feeling good about it. I want to feel like a human being again and enjoy the things that make my life full, and I just wasn't able to do that before.