Now What?
Last week I quit my job. Now what?
The last job for a while have been really wearing me down. I was really tired of the the dynamics in play. Sometimes I put on the Shakespeare hat (hey, he was balding: he totally would have had a hat on). With the hat on I once spouted to myself, "where superstition is fact and ignorance is currency," of the last place. If I couldn't explain to a non-technical person a wholly technical concept, then the concept had no merit. Try pulling that the next time you get in a car: "I don't know how the spark plugs make internal combustion work, so I don't endorse the car."
I couldn't see any way to correct the dynamics or get my head around the way to survive the dynamics. There came a day that I pulled the plug. I quit.
That left me with the question of "Now what?" What had been going on for a long time was the fear of being financially destitute for quitting my job and ending up emotionally destitute for keeping it. At the end of the day, I figured that I could make money eventually, but there was no magical solution to have some emotional currency. It's not as air-fairy as it sounds. Here's the logic train:
Since the quitting, I have been inundated with work and requests for me to help out. It's as though I am back on the market and people are buying. Being on the market isn't enough to make success. It's like being good looking but you show up for a date with a chicken wing stuck in your hair. You have to follow through, you have to do the work that you ask for. If the work is interesting and worth doing, I will take it on. I will separate challenging from frustrating (they often look almost alike, Myth Adventures' Imps vs. Deveels-- a challenge is to horse trade a coat hanger into a diamond; frustration is to trade a hanger into different hanger). All challenges can have frustrations, but no challenge is made solely of frustration. If you find yourself with a frustration and isn't nestled in a larger challenge, my advice is: a) quit; b) ask, Now What?
Has anyone out there hit this dynamic? What you found happened?
The last job for a while have been really wearing me down. I was really tired of the the dynamics in play. Sometimes I put on the Shakespeare hat (hey, he was balding: he totally would have had a hat on). With the hat on I once spouted to myself, "where superstition is fact and ignorance is currency," of the last place. If I couldn't explain to a non-technical person a wholly technical concept, then the concept had no merit. Try pulling that the next time you get in a car: "I don't know how the spark plugs make internal combustion work, so I don't endorse the car."
I couldn't see any way to correct the dynamics or get my head around the way to survive the dynamics. There came a day that I pulled the plug. I quit.
That left me with the question of "Now what?" What had been going on for a long time was the fear of being financially destitute for quitting my job and ending up emotionally destitute for keeping it. At the end of the day, I figured that I could make money eventually, but there was no magical solution to have some emotional currency. It's not as air-fairy as it sounds. Here's the logic train:
- We all die eventually.
- We come into this world and leave it with nothing tangible.
- Regardless of your belief system, once you are gone you either cannot affect the world of the living nor would you care to.
- Life is supposed to be about happiness. Were life about work and misery, you wouldn't need to feel good. Just like I can't see into the ultra-violet because it's not neccessary, if happiness were unnecessary you wouldn't be able to sense its presence or absence.
- You can derive happiness from any situation-- some of the poorest people in the world are happy.
- You don't need to endure unhappiness and if poor people can be happy, you don't need to keep a job because of the money.
Since the quitting, I have been inundated with work and requests for me to help out. It's as though I am back on the market and people are buying. Being on the market isn't enough to make success. It's like being good looking but you show up for a date with a chicken wing stuck in your hair. You have to follow through, you have to do the work that you ask for. If the work is interesting and worth doing, I will take it on. I will separate challenging from frustrating (they often look almost alike, Myth Adventures' Imps vs. Deveels-- a challenge is to horse trade a coat hanger into a diamond; frustration is to trade a hanger into different hanger). All challenges can have frustrations, but no challenge is made solely of frustration. If you find yourself with a frustration and isn't nestled in a larger challenge, my advice is: a) quit; b) ask, Now What?
Has anyone out there hit this dynamic? What you found happened?
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