I Quit My Job. (And other analogies)
pov: you stumble upon a random substack and end up getting rambled at by a 23 year old who has biweekly existential crises.
I’ve recently had to make a big dramatic Adult Decision to quit my job to pursue a postgraduate degree.
That’s a lie, the decision was really made a while ago - I just finally trudged through all the necessary bureaucratic processes to send in my letter of resignation. It was nerve-wrecking.
Why doesn’t anybody teach us how to resign from our jobs?
Why don’t we get a little information booklet detailing, you know, the awkwardness of drafting an email expressing our immense gratitude for The Many Opportunities, but unfortunately you will have to resign from your post that makes you cry at exactly 8 pm every Sunday, but still thank you so much for everything?
I say this, but I’m actually quite uncomfortable and sad that I’ll be leaving this job. With all its flaws and headaches, it was so distinctly mine and I loved it in the way that you do in an inexplicably frustrating relationship - I put so much time and effort into making it good. I just wanted it to be better.
It’s just a job. People quit jobs all the time, especially when they’re my age.
There is however a very specific brand of discomfort when faced with seemingly trivial steps in your life that, in reality, are leaps and bounds beyond your ‘normal’. And I’ve always been a person who clings to any semblance of stability and normalcy in life.
But nothing changes if nothing changes, doesn’t it?
As dragging as it is, I need to take my time to stack up small changes in hopes of making it out of whatever low place I’m in. A nutritious meal a day, a stupidly long walk, therapy, quitting your dead-end job, etc.
I’ve never been a happy decision maker. I ponder and wonder and THINK too much and eventually exhaust myself into making any choice.
But this year, I remind myself (and you, reader!) that we can all carry ourselves in such a way that all life’s problems are just ice cream. And the big question is how to eat all the ice cream before it melts. (Nathan Alan Davis, you beautiful human.)
It can be scary that there are two, sometimes even more decisions to make.
But it could also be robustly pleasurable to know that we have so much being offered on our platter, and that we have the opportunity to go one way or another.
Either way, the ice cream will melt. I just want to find a way to fully enjoy it before it does.