Today marks my one-year anniversary of quitting my 9-5 job.
What I've done since then…
- Went to Turkey for 20 days
- Finished a 6-month Machine Learning Bootcamp in 4 months
- Joined a soccer team for 1 season
- Solo road-tripped from Los Angeles to Seattle
- Did another road trip with my sister to the White Sands National Park
- Started ANOTHER YouTube channel
- Read 40+ books
- Listened to many hours of podcasts
- And a few more things I probably don't remember right now
Do I regret quitting my job?…
Hell no.
This was the second job that I quitted from. I had many valid reasons to do so. And probably should've left sooner, to be honest.
Did I have a backup plan? No.
Did I have another job lined up? Not at all.
But I was desperate. As the great Tony Robbins once said “In life, you need either inspiration or desperation”.
I was at this job for about 1 year and 4 months. Ever since COVID, my perspective on time changed drastically. Think about it, traditionally, people spend the best hours of their day (and their life) working. If you are lucky enough to be doing something purposeful or meaningful. My mentality in school was to finish as quickly as possible and get a job. Once I did that, it would solve all my problems. But once I reached the end, I realized I had it all wrong. People don't talk enough about their feelings after graduating college. The feelings of sadness, grief and not knowing what comes next in my life. I can't fall back on a laid-out course structure because I'm out of the system. Now I have to go and build my own system. The responsibility is in my hands.
Being unemployed for the last year now has been interesting, to say the least. I am extremely privileged to be able to do this. I am 25 turning 26 in less than a month. That age number thing is looming over my head all the time. If I am not able to do this now, when else will I be able to be how I look at it? Hahaha as I am writing this I am trying to justify it, I'm just going to stop on that thought.
But the thought I do want to bring back up is this quote I read a while back by Eckhart Tolle, “When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life”. I don't know what's going to happen in my life and to reiterate, that's scary as hell. But right now, at this moment, I am okay.