I quit my job this week. I don’t have a plan, no new jobs lined up, and absolutely no idea what I’ll do next. And yet, it’s probably the sanest decision I’ve made in the last ten years.
Here’s the thing, and there’s some arrogance in saying it, but it needs to be said. I have been really good at my job. Job security never worried me, and neither did the thought of being replaced by AI or by anybody else. There was never really anyone to compete with. Software always felt like a problem-solving game I was obsessed with, and the better you played, the higher the stakes and the more money it paid. But games tend to get boring eventually. The money is good, yes. It’s just that I’ve been spending too much of myself on it.
These are my peak years - my youth - ‘jawani’ - and I don’t want to pour them into a game where someone else defines the rules, however much money they throw at me. Early on, the work was about proving to myself that I was competent, that I could survive out there, if not thrive. Now I’m fairly confident I can thrive. So it’s time to think about meaning, and these years deserve to go into something that’s my own. This isn’t to say anything wrong about jobs, by the way. Some people enjoy their work, some people love it, and there’s no hate against that at all. Just that for me, the job had stopped meaning anything beyond the paycheck, and with my basic needs taken care of, that’s not worth spending a lived experience on.
Now, it would be a lie to say I know what I’m doing. For my whole career, there has always been a guiding light, a founder or a manager, someone pointing at the thing that matters for the company or the users or whatever. Now it’s just me. And figuring out what that even means is going to be a real challenge.
Honestly, that is scary. There’s no backup job option, and that’s on purpose. I’ve always done my best work with my back against the wall. Still, I’m quite anxious about it, and there’s no guarantee of success. A part of me says that whatever I’ve set my mind to has always worked out, so this will too, eventually. But right now that voice is much softer than the fear. The unknown is big, and there’s no map for it.
So the next few months are simply for living. Chasing whatever makes me curious, trying to understand the world a little better, working on empathy, and rebuilding connections that went quiet. Travelling a lot and reading a lot, to recharge and to see things from more than one angle. Not to find myself or anything like that, just to be a person for a while instead of a job title.
I don’t know how this ends. Maybe it turns into something that matters. Maybe it falls flat and teaches me why. Either way, I’d rather find out what I can do when nobody is telling me what to do. This doesn’t feel like the end of something. It really feels like the start.