Starting Over During The Pandemic
As we start to turn a corner in the pandemic, with so many people still unemployed and eager to get back to work, my friend Jeff has just made a bold and counterintuitive move: He quit his job.
Jeff was earning 80K per year + benefits as a video editor for a high-end medical company. But Jeff had had enough. You might think he's made a big mistake by quitting, you might even think he's crazy (his family certainly does), but Jeff has just enacted something many of us have only been able to conceptualize: Endings do not stop growth, but rather, encourage it.
Our life choices have been packaged as "milestones," building blocks, where each decision informs the next. We're conditioned to build toward something—a home, a better home, a family, a job, a higher paying job—and if we miss a step, decline an offer, or step back entirely, we will get derailed from our goals. That’s what we’re told, anyway. This conditioning follows a linear model—school, then a job, then marriage, then kids—one we have been programmed to follow.
What's interesting (yet not surprising) is that, just before quitting this job, Jeff had left his former job in pursuit of more money. He, like many of us, doesn't want to live a corporate life, but when this is all we feel is available to us, we might as well earn a higher salary, right?
Him switching to a higher paying job was a last-ditch attempt to outrun the conveyor belt, much like those declarations of love couples post on social media right before they break up.
The pandemic has created a scarcity mindset, particularly around careers. But, for Jeff, it brought more sobering realities to his attention, namely how unhappy and unfulfilled he was. Having worked from home for the last year, our social interactions have decreased significantly. Without this as part of our day-to-day, we come face to face with the bare bones of the work we do day in and day out. It can be a rude and sad awakening.
The tipping point came for Jeff when he tallied up his needs in a job. "My brother told me that I should hit at least two of these three things when taking a job:
1. It pays well.
2. You like your coworkers.
3. You like the product/content you're creating.
I was only hitting #1. And I felt it."
Can we all just stop for a moment to reflect on our jobs. Are we hitting at least two out of three?
Many people have come out of the woodwork in response to Jeff's decision. "It's telling," he said, "that I got equally enthusiastic congratulations both when I got this job and when I quit it." This speaks to a collective recognition that perhaps work is not an end-all, be-all idol. Our current expectations around work and career need to be re-examined.
It's important to understand that this decision did not happen overnight. Jeff spent a year reflecting before finally accepting that he had been unhappy for a long time. "This reinforces and reminds me of the need for quiet reflection and meditation in life in general," he said. "It's important for me to open myself up to the unknown a little bit so that new, unforeseen possibilities can shine through. If you don't try, you don't know." Well said, Jeff.
To be fair, Jeff is in a fortunate position—he can quit his job. He has savings and former employers who will welcome him back when he's ready. So, he has somewhat of a safety net, whereas many of us do not. But, I have the sneaking suspicion that, even without these backups, Jeff would have still found a way to say goodbye to his 9-5, because he knows that life is not linear, as our culture and history would have us believe. Nor is life all about money. "No one lies on their deathbed wishing they made more money or worked harder," Jeff added.
Jeff is correct in pointing out that life is not linear. But if not linear, then what is it? Some cultures believe life is circular (seasons of change, rebirth, repetition), but personally, I don't think life has a shape. It just is.
In episode 9 of Arthur Brooks' podcast, The Art of Happiness, he reminds us that we all undergo changes in life, and each change can last for months or even years, just in time for new changes to occur. But he's not just referring to the sequential changes of life—becoming parents, then grandparents, or getting a degree, then getting a job, then a better paying job. He's talking about major, non-linear changes that force a person to completely rethink and reinvent their life: A wife suddenly finding herself single at 50, a college-educated scientist going back to school to study art, or in my case, living with roommates in your thirties because you were too busy being married in your twenties.
We’re supposed to have multiple loves, lives, and paths that may have nothing to do with one another.
This is why Bruce Feiler, Arthur's guest on episode 9, bluntly points out that, "The idea of a linear life is dead," and adds that it is "unforgiving." To adhere to one job, one career path, one gender, one partner, one long stretch of employment without any time to pause and reflect, is exactly what Bruce called it: unforgiving. It binds the human experience into an unrealistic box without any wiggle room to change course as needed. And to be clear, it’s needed.
Changing course is a way to start over, which is a great gift, not to be wasted. We can mistakenly see starting over as a burdensome necessity after we’ve failed at something. We can fear the thought of having to rebuild ourselves, to start from scratch. But these rebuilding periods are some of our greatest opportunities to create something brand new, from a new starting point, rather than grow deeper into a life we never really wanted to begin with.
For those that worry about Jeff, don't. He is now in the "in-between," or a fishing term known as the "falling tide." It's also referred to as liminality, or the time of transitions in our lives. It's this in-between time when we are our most creative and, as Author Brooks puts it, "fertile" for growth. With so many inevitable changes in life, we often keep our eyes on the next thing. If I jump, where will I land? It's staying in a relationship until someone better comes along, it's waiting until you have another job lined up before putting in your two weeks notice. But when we become too fixated on the next thing, we often jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. We also deprive ourselves of this in-between time, a time that fosters such growth and creativity, that we are bound to end up somewhere amazing (as opposed to blindly taking that promotion or moving from a one-bedroom into a two-bedroom).
The idea of a linear life may be dead now, but it was alive and well for so many in generations before us. Our parents and grandparents didn't have the luxury of finding themselves or taking time off. They had to work hard, pay the bills, and were raised not to question the system. They were grateful for what they had, and didn't have permission to ask for or even wonder about more. Life "milestones" were cause for congratulations—congratulations you bought a house/had a baby/got married/graduated school—but life choices that veered off this path were nothing of note. To this day, I have yet to have a party thrown in honor of my single status, or because I backed out of a decision that wasn't right for me.
So, to Jeff's family and anyone of other generations, cultures, and upbringings, it may threaten a norm and stir up fear. This is understandable. All the more reason why I applaud Jeff for making this decision without his family's full support.
Today, we have more options and choices than ever before. If a person, job, gender, or hobby doesn't suit us, we can choose to change, to get off the conveyor belt and become something different. This is cause for celebration. Turning down a job is just as important as accepting one, as long as your choices honor you and fuel your growth and creativity.
Congratulations, Jeff!
You may also be interested in:
Welcome to the YOLO Economy (NY Times)