I Just Resigned from My Job to Write Full Time

And deep down I always knew it was the right path for me.

Have you ever felt out of place? Like you have never and could never belong or really excel at your job or the life you wandered into?

Have you felt that persistent itch for something more — an itch that you could never seem to scratch?

That’s always been my reality. Stumbling around not quite knowing how to be.

But there were times when I could see the truth all too well and never knew what to do about it.

I knew I didn’t fit in not because there was something fundamentally wrong with me, but because there was something fundamentally wrong with how society squeezes us all into and out of the same molds over and over again.

There’s something wrong with how we’re told that being an artist or a freelance web developer or a writer or a dancer isn’t a real job. And sometimes we tell ourselves that too.

But it’s not the way it should be — and I argue that it’s not the way it actually is. All of those skills are valuable to society and potentially lucrative.

Whatever you do every day has to be what you love doing or it’s never going to make you happy, no matter how much you get paid or how respectable the job is. A job you only tolerate is not sustainable.

You can ask any person what their dream job is and they’ll likely tell you something completely attainable but non-traditional and follow it with a resigned shrug. They’ve given it up because it’s not “a real job”.

I wish I had known when I was younger that I could do what I loved for a living and I would be better off for it. I wish I had known that people needed my skills and that they were willing to pay for them.

But so far I’ve spent all of my adult life believing the lie and trying to fit into the mold.

I was never the manager type, but I thought that was what I wanted — what I needed — to be happy. When I was promoted I thought maybe I would finally feel like I had found my place — I thought perhaps I would be happy when I made more money and got to have more control over my workplace.

The opposite was true — being a manager was like having a magnifying glass focused on all of my inadequacies in the corporate world. I wasn’t like the rest of them and I didn’t want to be.

So it didn’t take long for me to realize the management game wasn’t for me, and that’s when I started to feel completely hopeless.

Being a manager left me feeling even emptier than I was before, so I found myself wondering if there was a career out there that would actually suit me.

It’s absurd that I even had to wonder.

I knew when I was seven. From the time I put my number two pencil to hilariously wide-ruled paper and wrote a story about an elephant helping his friends escape from the zoo.

I knew it in high school when I spent hours writing poetry, short stories, and blog posts.

I knew it in college when I stayed up all night writing just because I just needed to write.

And I knew it when I took the management job.

I’m a writer. It’s the only thing that has ever felt like ‘my thing’. It’s the only thing I could ever imagine myself excelling at and actually wanting to do every day for work.

A few months back I tried to envision my life going on the way it was — my career staying the same, and I realized how desperately unhappy and exhausted the idea made me. I could no longer stand to only write in the periphery of my life —I was too invested, too defined by what I knew I was. From then on, it was clear that my future was writing, and no other job could come close.

I put in my resignation from my management job a few weeks ago, and on January 1st, 2022 I’m going to be a full-time freelance writer.

I still can’t even believe it.

For the past few months, I’ve been strategizing and preparing my life for this huge change, and it’s terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

For the first time in my life, I’m going to be doing what I love every day, all day.

I realize that I’m extremely privileged to have this opportunity and that not everyone has the means to quit their day job to write.

I also know that I need to work my ass off if I’m going to be successful. It’s not going to be a walk in the park.

The alternative is never living my life to its fullest potential — and I’ve already been doing that for far too long.

A new adventure awaits!

Thanks for reading!

I’m going to be documenting my journey as a new freelance writer over the course of 2022. Follow me for updates!