I Quit My Job Over Half a Year Ago and I Don't Miss It at All
It was over a half a year ago that I finally reached my goal of being able to quit my job and achieve so called "early retirement" according to USA standards.
Co-workers at my last job (and others) asked me questions from "how did you do it?!" to "how will you survive?" to "what are you going to do with all of your time?"
It's that last one I am focusing on here.
They knew I had been an obsessive workaholic in all the time they had known me (and truly it was a lifetime). So it was a reasonable question.
Some thought I would become so bored without having a job filled with demanding projects to pour myself into.
I knew that wouldn't be the case.
My whole life - well at least since I was about 10 years old - I have had far more interests than I had time available to spend on them.
For the majority of my adult life I looked forward to the day I no longer had to "waste my life" working to make money and could finally have time... PRECIOUS TIME... to be able to do whatever I wanted to do.
To be fair, I have still been incredibly busy so that is a big part of why I do not miss "work" at all.
And I do mean I do not miss the job (or any job) at all in any way.
I was so burned out from constantly pushing myself by the time I finally freed myself from jobs I was just ready to be "done". There is no other way to really put it than that. I was just DONE with that part of my life and ready for something different.
Ready for the next chapter... or more accurately the next book... in my life journey.
And that was it. I moved literally thousands of miles from the USA to another country.
But that is another story for another time.
Burnout is real and the way "strong work ethic", particularly as it pertains to jobs, is so glorified in the USA is not a good thing.
I wouldn't have agreed with that decades ago. However, over time through living it, I realized how extreme this obsessive workaholic thing had become.
This topic will also become a post at a future time, I am sure. :)