Whether it’s your first job or the last — quitting it is a defining event of anyone’s career.
Everyone needs to quit and move on at some point in their lives.
But when you don’t have another offer in hand, and you know you won’t be getting one anytime soon either since you don’t plan on applying to another job, and when you don’t really know what you’re going to do once you quit — it’s difficult to imagine how one can even press the send button on that official resignation email.
It’s probably your vision that helps you pull the trigger.
But what happens in the aftermath of this event? That’s what I’m going to share today.
What happens when you quit your job to pursue your interests?
You pass through a storm that brings alternating periods of ominous silence and intense chaos — all beyond your control.
* * * * *
The date was September 20th, 2018, when I sent my first resignation email.
Below is a slightly reworded excerpt taken from my journal, written soon after that:
“September 20th, 2018 1:07 AM. Should I call this a historic day?
After 6 hours of contemplation, I finally decided to press the send button. I officially quit my first job.
People will treat this as an impulsive move since I just received an appraisal that I’m not completely happy with. But the appraisal is only a trigger; I know I’ve been thinking about this for months now.
Nobody would understand that this is not about finding an escape from X; it’s about having the freedom to pursue Y.
Only two more months remain until my final working day. A string of thoughts race through my mind.
The most important question is – who am I and what is my ultimate goal? I need to be completely honest with myself. Without that, I can never truly figure out what I want in life.
And until that happens, no matter what I do, I’ll always feel directionless.”
The first few moments
It felt great to write the resignation email, but not just great — it felt scary, anxious, exhilarating, bewildering, and a few ineffable feelings that I’d never felt before.
It’ll probably be better to explain with an example.
Imagine yourself flying smoothly in a comfortable, business class cabin of a flight, where the air hostess is serving you the choicest cuisines and drinks every 3 hours, you’re sleeping cozily inside a blanket, and everything in your life is taken care of.
In the next scene, imagine yourself falling out of that same aircraft, cutting through the air with only a parachute on your back that you still don’t know how to open. All you know is that you need to reach a destination that the aircraft was probably not going to take you, or at the very least, that’s not the path you intend to take anymore. You’re in the middle of nowhere and about to cover the remaining journey all by yourself — hiking, running, swimming, hitchhiking, and, if required, even crawling.
That feeling inside your stomach — moments after you’ve made the jump and just realized where you are — that’s the closest I can tell you what it feels like when you quit your job to pursue your passion or explore or work on a business idea without having a plan in hand.
I had just cut off the safety net from below myself. Relief is the first feeling, closely followed by anxiety.
The irony was that I didn’t totally hate my job.
True, I’d been feeling disconnected from it for a while since I wanted to do something else.
My job was demanding and incredibly stressful. But it had its rewards and it was a conscious decision for me to take up the responsibilities that I had taken.
I worked with some of the best team members led by incredible people.
And my work was the perfect mix of technical and functional responsibilities – precisely what I wanted at the moment.
In fact, I was pretty good at what I did. I felt valued by both my boss and my colleagues, and that’s a big thing.
Financially speaking, my compensation wasn’t top of the shelf, but I had zero expenditures per month apart from anything I wanted to spend on personal things. I saved everything I earned.
Quitting a job like that is not easy, to say the least, especially when you know that there are innumerable ways things can go wrong in the near future.
Yet, when the zeal to pursue what you want to pursue is strong enough, you know that there is no other way forward.
I quit my job because I wanted to quit.
You learn the first lesson: Time will never be right, but you will have to make a leap of faith.
The reactions from close ones
As I entered the war room in my office the following day, my manager and I exchanged glances and subtle smiles.
“Thanks for dropping the atom bomb last night,” he teased me.
When my friends from work heard about the news, they looked at me with feelings of shock and betrayal. Some even thought I was playing a prank on them!
My director was traveling out of the country at the time, and the first WhatsApp message he received after landing in the country was from me, saying “I’ve resigned.”
(Okay, I agree that was a bit cruel but totally unintentional.)
The office felt different.
Initially, my parents were quite supportive. In fact, they gave me the final nod before pulling the trigger.
However, they were under the impression that I’m just a little frustrated and will soon be on the lookout for another job — which wasn’t going to happen anytime soon — and they had no idea about it.
I did not tell anyone else.
At first, as expected, everyone thought I was being emotional and using the resignation as a leverage to negotiate a better salary. But when a month passed, and I declined on the negotiation, people began to understand that this was serious.
Most people also assumed that I had another offer up my sleeve that I was just reluctant to share about, and the big surprise would be revealed right after I had left.
Too bad for them, there was no surprise. But this lack of surprise was surprising in itself.
You learn your second lesson: Your decision will seem illogical to everyone except yourself.
Your Vision, Put Through the Test
A few days later, four colleagues pulled me inside a room to hold a grilling intervention and make me reconsider my decision.
They wanted to convince me to stay, or at least understand my rationale behind this significant step.
When I told them I would explore and figure things out along the way, they didn’t understand.
Why would anyone in their right state of mind want to quit and walk away from a half-decent job that is paying the bills? It didn’t make any sense!
I’m not telling you all of this to brag about myself. I’m simply laying out the facts and trying to show how others generally perceive this situation.
My colleagues were not wrong at all. I fully agree that it was insane of me to do it this way. But the point that they missed out on was that this is exactly the way I wanted it to be — to foster an environment for exploration without bias.
It was a matter of different perspectives.
The problems I wanted in my life were different than the ones they wanted in their lives.
Being entrepreneurial and risk-taking was in my blood.
For me, exploring my interests, trying and failing at my ideas, learning new skills, and trying something I’d never done before, all this was not just important—it was the next logical step for my life and career. It was my way of living.
Further, if I was going to pursue something for the rest of my life, how could I not try out all my options before finalizing and committing to one single field of interest?
It was as clear as daylight for me.
You learn your third lesson: Before convincing anyone on anything — you need to have the clarity to first convince yourself.
When You Quit Your Job, You Actually Quit A Way of Life
The last and most important thing that happens when you quit your job for yourself is that you start living freely and embrace uncertainty.
Your way of life changes.
You suddenly find yourself with all the time you wished for to pursue your goals and other interests. For some people, getting this abrupt burst of “free time” in their schedule is frightening.
You enjoy the newfound freedom, but you also quickly realize that you have more responsibilities on your shoulders than ever before.
You notice that, earlier, you were only concerned with completing the tasks that somebody else handed over to you. Now that you’re your own boss, you need to plan those tasks as well. And being the managing director of your career means you need to be accountable to ensure that you make regular and continuous progress.
This does not mean that everything turns blue and severe and gloomy.
Obviously, there are benefits of quitting your job for your personal goals, otherwise you wouldn’t do it in the first place.
One of the most important privileges of it is that you get complete autonomy to decide how you want to spend your time and what you want to do with it — a privilege that is most likely unavailable to you before.
Just how judiciously you will utilize this time is entirely up to you.
Over To You Now
So that’s what happens when you quit your job to pursue your interests or an entrepreneurial undertaking.
Eighty percent of the people in your life never understand what you’re doing or why.
Friends and family (who want the best for you) try to bring you back on the regular track.
Colleagues sometimes support, sometimes think you’ve completely lost it.
And you?
Well, you rise and shine with confidence on one day while running around frantically with stress and self-doubt on another.
It’s a journey of mixed emotions, but a thrilling one for sure.
I hope you get the idea.
The critical question is, now that you have some idea of what to expect when you quit your job to pursue your interests — will you do it?
