I Officially Resigned From My 9–5 Job

Here’s what I’m doing to survive.

I’m going to start this off by saying I’m the type of person who can’t keep an office job for longer than six months. No, I was never fired. I was never slacking off, and I never gave less than what was asked of me, but I admit I do have one problem with the set up: Dedicating myself to something subjectively insignificant.

I have tried the 9–5 system thrice in my adult life and only once did I manage to reach the end of a contract, which is 6 months from where I’m from; the other two I only made it through for 4 and 5 months, consecutively.

It’s a problem my parents, teachers and older sister had with me ever since I was young. I was a pretty stubborn child. You can never make me do things I don’t want to do, but with that being said, I wasn’t a difficult child — I did my assignments, never failed a class, helped out around the house; problems mostly arose when they were trying to take me somewhere, like church or to the grocery store. I would had rather play with my train set or read books.

The last office job I had did a number on me. I had to wake up at 1 AM because my shift starts at 4 AM. If you can’t do the math then you probably live in a first world country. It wasn’t that the environment sucked but it wasn’t a fun one either. You go to work, get your money, leave and repeat. I did that for 5 months until I mentally couldn’t anymore. I even told my friend that whenever my alarm would go off, I wanted to bang my head against my bedroom wall; but maybe that’s just me being over dramatic.

Here I am a few months later, a freelancer and a hustler. The first week, I survived out of my savings, then the second one was when I started to panic. It dawned on me that I actually need to apply for another job because my supplies will run out eventually, and I truly resented the thought. That’s when I decided that I will do everything in my power to not spend my life in an office cubicle. Don’t get me wrong, some people prefer that, maybe even enjoy the work they’re doing in that set-up but I guess I’m not one of those people.

If you’re like me and want an out from your typical 9–5 job then here are a few things you could do to survive, or at least these are what’s working for me:

Buying and Selling Products

I know. This isn’t what you had in mind when I said ‘’freelancer’, right? Well, like the band Maroon 5 said, “It’s not always rainbows and butterflies, it’s compromise.”

This idea came from someone I met in college who probably doesn’t even remember me. He used to go out of the classroom to meet his buyers. He sold Class A shoes online and made good money out of it, at least good enough money to buy booze for everyone when the class went out that one time.

That’s what I’m doing. I’m buying and selling products. I buy bundles of books, even go out to really old, borderline creepy second-hand bookstores to see if I could find great books for a cheap price. Quite frankly, I enjoy doing this. It’s like treasure hunting. And I get to read the books before I sell them.

I still do this now, but with additions of selling shoes and gadgets. Bigger capital equals bigger profit is the formula to this, and of course being thick-skinned and selling through your social media helps.

ESL Tutoring

English as a second language tutoring, or ESL tutoring, is a common and a well-paying sideline; you can do this for full-time as well, but if you have a passion or dream you’re trying to pursue, it’s better to set aside time for it. Your seed won’t grow if you don’t water it. The reason why I quit my 9–5 job in the first place is to have more time doing something I love and also, I can’t afford the medical bill when I finally snap because taking a number two in the bathroom while scrolling through my phone is one of the things I look forward to at work, which is just sad.

One thing this job requires is patience since you’d be teaching kids who’s first language isn’t English, and every student you get has different levels of understanding.

Overall, this is one easy way to survive quitting your office job. You can Google ESL teaching/tutoring and you’ll see many sites offering jobs on this, a couple of good ones are Acadsoc and 51talk based on my experience. You’ll just need a decent laptop or computer, noise-cancelling headphones, a good webcam and a good grasp of the world’s most used language next to Mandarin: English (Depending on which site with language statistics you’re looking at).

Offering Your Skills as Services

This is where, I believe, the term ‘freelancer’ fits the most, or at least well-known for. I have been a freelance writer and editor for approximately 3 years now. I’ve done it as a side gig along with my full-time job back then; it’s just extra sweet toppings that my passion is writing but it’s still a job and I can’t always choose to write about what I want. Of course there are perks to this, I get to build my portfolio and practice writing in different niches.

Freelancing isn’t all fun and games as some people might put it out to be. Again, it’s still work. You can choose what projects to accept but you can’t really know what kind of clients you’ll be working with. You can choose what time of the day you want to work but you can’t slack off if you want to pay your bills on time.

Aside from writing and editing, there are plenty of projects you can get depending on what type of skills you have or want to offer as a service. I get most of my clients from Facebook groups for freelancers, and some from free job boards like ProBlogger, BloggingPro and FlexJobs, which not only have jobs for writers but for graphic designers, filmmakers, programmers, etc.

These are my sources of income after I quit my 9–5 job, and I’m sure there are plenty more if you’re creative enough or just search the internet to see what will fit you the best. Apart from the three, I get something out of Medium as well. Last month, Medium paid for my monthly gym membership. So there you go, Medium is a platform that can help with your plans to finally quit that job you said was only temporary.

These aren’t stable incomes but my heart is full; I get to have more time working on something I’m passionate about and get paid for it. I have more time with my family and kids (dogs), and I don’t have even the slightest bit of regret about leaving my 9–5 job.

My worst nightmare is being 70 years old looking back on a life full of ‘what ifs’ because I conformed to social conventions on what I should be doing with my life. The water may be scary, but you’ll never learn to swim if you don’t try.