A month or so ago I quit my job. Does that mean I don’t work anymore?
For a long time, I equated ‘work’ with being employed or as something I did in exchange for money. If you don’t get paid, is it really work?
Over the course of my life, I’ve been unemployed, I’ve been employed, and I’ve been self-employed. Now I don’t know what I am.
But I do know now that my job is not me and I am not my job. The term ‘work’ encompasses so much more than a job I get paid to do,
For me, the pandemic has been a clarifying experience and made me question a lot of my assumptions and beliefs. I now know what is important to me and what ‘work’ means to me.
Quitting my job was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made.
Did I like my work? Yes, I did. I worked for the same government department for over twenty years. I was good at my job and I enjoyed the work.
Did my work give me satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment and purpose? Yes, it did. I got things done, made a difference, and often put work before my personal life.
Why did I quit? The workload became unsustainable. The increased workload caused by the pandemic, burnout, lack of support, and poor management eroded the sense of attachment and loyalty I’d built up over twenty years. I was naïve to think my loyalty would be reciprocated by an intangible entity like a government department.
I agonised for months over whether I could give up a regular paycheck for the uncertainty of not knowing where the next dollar would come from.
I don’t have a lot of savings. I’m too young to touch my superannuation or receive a government pension, so I can’t ‘retire’. But I’m too old for most businesses to even consider hiring me no matter what my skillset looks like.
I felt guilty even considering quitting a well-paid job with the world like it is right now. So many people have lost their jobs over the past pandemic-filled year-and-a-half through no fault of their own and here I am saying ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ to a stable permanent job.
But, I had to ask myself: Am I prepared to die for this job?
The answer was no.
Do I regret my decision? Not yet, but ask me again in six months when my bank account and my waistline are both a lot slimmer.
Work is not just what you do for money.
Just because I don’t get paid for my time, doesn’t mean I don’t work. We all work every minute of every day.
I work to make myself get out of bed in the morning and do what I need to do to get through the day and support myself and my family. I don’t get money for this work, but I’m paid with feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction.
I work to write this essay. I work to discover what I really know or think about a subject. I work to put my thoughts into words. I never used to do that. I don’t get money for this work, but I’m paid with learning to understand what I really know and think. I understand more about my assumptions and biases and beliefs.
I work as I sit and watch television or read a book. I work to follow the plot, decide how I feel about the story, and study how the story is executed. I work to learn how to tell stories. I don’t get money for this work, but I’m paid with those aha moments, those epiphanies of realising how better storytellers than me do it.
Even when I’m asleep, my mind is working, trying to make sense of things I sometimes don’t even know I’m thinking. It never really switches off. I don’t get money for this work, but I often get paid with ideas or thoughts that surprise me, that I didn’t know were there.
When you think about it, we do more unpaid work than we do paid work. Who gets to decide what’s work and what’s not?
Work to live or live to work.
When I was a kid, people expected to get a job and work there for life. That no longer happens and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Changing jobs, doing different types of work, paid and unpaid, stepping out of your comfort zone, exposes you to people and experiences that you might otherwise never have known about.
As humans, we need to be curious and observant and continue to work to grow our minds, help each other, and increase our understanding of how things work.
The time has come for my work to become the pursuit of things I want to do and know about. I want to write essays like this and learn things about this wonderful world I live in before it’s too late.
I have nothing but admiration for people who do volunteer work to help others. Volunteers don’t work for money; they work for the benefits they get from helping others. Working as a volunteer can have a huge impact on life satisfaction. I’m starting to dip my toe into this type of work and it’s more rewarding than the job I got paid to do.
I doubt I’ll ever work for someone again but who knows what the future will bring. I do know that I want to be responsible for myself now. I no longer want to ask someone else’s permission to do something that I need to do for myself or my family.
After a lifetime of working long hours in high-performing teams, I struggle to believe that not every hour of every day needs to be productive. I still feel guilty when I try to switch off and relax. Then I tell myself that working to relax is still working and I take a breath.
So, am I unemployed? Am I self-employed? Am I retired?
None of the above. I’m working but I’m working on myself, for myself.
I have more work than I can get through in one day — the time between daylight and dark feels so short — but it’s my work. There’s still no money coming in, but the work I do is the work I want to do.
I used to be terrified of rejection. I believed that my self-worth was tied up in external validation and recognition for the work I did. I now realise that as long as I enjoy my work, then internal validation and feelings of accomplishment are adequate compensation for my time.
Read my stuff or don’t. Like my stuff or don’t. I’m happy either way. I’ll continue to work for me.
“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” ― Jerome K. Jerome
