I Took A Leap Of Faith And Quit My Teaching Job Without Knowing What’s Next

Yes, you read that title correctly, I did in fact quit my job without any solid income streams to replace it (at the moment), but it seems I’m not the only one. Leaving employment behind seems to be trending in 2021 especially among millennials, according to a video Graham Stephan made on his popular YouTube platform.

From what I can gather the current state of affairs has caused people to really reflect. They’ve confronted themselves with the question, “what am I doing with my life and is it making me happy?” Many times people join the workforce not because they’re passionate about the work they’re doing, but because they’re grownups now and they’ve got bills to pay. So they say yes dear job please sign me up for all the stress and frustration that will undoubtedly come with the territory of being employed here. Also feel free to take away as much of my free time as you deem necessary while also making sure you don’t pay me my worth.

While this is not everyone’s experience being an employee, it’s definitely a lot of people’s experience. I recall clearly, as a young inexperienced 17-year-old, working my first job at 7-eleven and hating it. I knew then that I didn’t want to be an employee forever. I made the decision early on that I wanted to start a business, but the education system doesn’t support entrepreneurship, and somehow in the thick of life I let that idea get away from me.

What Prompted This Leap Of Faith?

As of right now, it’s been almost two months since I left my job without any guarantee that my next moves in life would garner any money. I could for all intents and purposes be twiddling down my saving until I’m left with nothing and forced to send out resumes again.

Yet there was something deeper pushing me to make this decision and it all started summer of 2020. Although that was an utterly terrible time for the world, I personally was able to experience something I’d never experienced in my life, which was financial freedom. Not only was I making much more money during the shutdown than I had working 40 hours a week, I also found that my bills and expenses decreased. My student loans were automatically put on hold because of everything that was going on. I was making 1.5 times my regular income, while staying home and having the freedom to do whatever I wanted. Essentially, I was living my best life.

The last time I was unemployed for a significant period of time was back in 2016. I was let go from a job that I had been working at briefly and from there I made the decision not to look for something else. I felt I needed to take some time to heal from some mental health issues that arose after a particularly rough 2015. At that time, I had very little saved and basically allowed my family to take care of me. It was a little annoying not really having any money, but I found myself happier than I had been in a long time with my new-found freedom.

How Did I Get Here?

Well to start, let me let you know that my day job was as a preschool teacher for a private preschool. I had been working there for two years when the pandemic hit. I had always loved kids, specifically the really young ones, so a career in early childhood education seemed like the right move for me.

After high school, I did what was expected of me and went to college to get a degree so I could become a teacher. As someone who loves learning but doesn’t necessarily love the projects and papers that came with college life, I was not the best student. Honestly if I could have gotten my career started right out of high school, I would’ve skipped college all together, but that wasn’t an option. So I pushed through the annoyingly stressful process of getting my degree, which took me almost 9 years to complete. I spent 3 years on my AA, 3 years either not in school at all or just taking 1–2 random classes at my local community college, and then finally another 3 years to finish up that BA.

Like so many college students, I thought school was the tough part and I couldn’t wait to get out into the work world and move on from research papers. I graduated in Spring of 2012 and promptly started working full-time for my previously part-time after school job as a summer kindergarten teacher. This was the most intense eight weeks of my life and I quickly learned teaching is hard. When fall started again, I was working two part-time jobs within the same company. I was an assistant teacher in the morning for their pre-kindergarten program while still doing my previous after school job. This was a much slower paced situation than the summer program. I liked both jobs but didn’t like the three-hour gap of waiting around in between my AM shift and PM shift.

The following year I got a full-time job as a preschool teacher assistant at a different company and was later promoted to lead teacher. That promotion was what led to a lot of stress and depression in 2015. I was struggling in my new career and felt a complete lack of support from admin and other teachers. Not to mention I was also in a bad relationship at the time, but that’s neither here nor there.

As I’ve moved on and worked at different companies, I noticed one thing in the world of early childhood education. It’s considered a business more than anything and businesses usually prioritize profits. This made it so I never really got the support I truly needed in my role. I just kind of accepted that I was going to be stressed out and underpaid and that was just the way it was. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved my job, but really what I loved about it was more so the interactions I had with some really great teachers and wonderful children. But even with working with really great people and truly loving the kids in my class, none of that made the job itself any less stressful.

Upon returning to the same job after five months of beautiful freedom, and this time with even less help (because they only brought back the staff that was absolutely necessary), I felt that feeling of stress and depression coming back. I no longer had time to pursue the things I had been pursuing when I was free. I also didn’t have as much time to dedicate to myself and self-care seemed to gradually take a back seat.

So What Was I Pursuing In 2020 That Was So Important To Me?

Well in 2019, I started a weight loss journey (for the umpteenth time) and when I found myself with so much free time, I began to document the second year of that journey on YouTube (Positively Healthy Vibes).

I’d found a community of other YouTubers on a weight loss journey and we supported one another. My goal with this channel was to make content and videos that inspired others and of course to get monetized and start making some money. I absolutely loved the process of making YouTube videos, but my channel was not an instant hit like I thought it would be.

In order to become monetized on YouTube, you have to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours within a year. In the six weeks that I had been consistently uploading to YouTube before I was asked to come back to work, I uploaded 18 videos and had gained 114 subscribers, which was a pretty average pace.

Though I’d planned to continue after going back to work just scaling back the frequency of my uploads to once a week, I found that I just couldn’t balance the two. Not only that but whenever I went to film my energy was off and I just didn’t feel like it. So I abandoned the YouTube ship and kept on working my job. By November, my eating habits had started to take a turn for the worst and in December I had fallen off the healthy train completely.

What exactly prompted me to actually quit my job?

In January I was determined to get out of my funk. I started a morning routine that included meditation, affirmations, and journaling every morning consistently. This really had a positive effect on me and I was feeling better than I had in a while. That is until the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) threw a wrench in my routine by changing the train schedule in February, requiring me to figure out a different way to get to work. I had to start leaving earlier and I really struggled to get out of the house on time. This in turn meant, I stopped doing my morning routine. Things fell apart quickly after that and my depression came back with full force. By mid-February, there were a series of events that kind of ended up being my last straw and so I dropped down to part-time hours in March with the intention of completely leaving by the end of April. I ended up staying through May, making June my first month completely on my own.

So what’s the plan now?

Well, I’m a licensed life insurance agent and so that is a source of income for me. I’m also back on YouTube, this time documenting my journey from the point of view of someone who gained all the weight back and is now starting over. Lastly, I’ve rekindled my passion for writing, hence my presence on this platform. I actually genuinely love writing fiction. My absolute favorite classes that I took in college, were two writing classes I took as electives one summer. I became obsessed with writing that summer, but once the semester started writing took a back seat and I’ve never gotten to pursue it. I’m also finding that I’m enjoying writing these personal non-fiction pieces as well.

As you can see my plate is absolutely full and while there’s no guarantees, I decided to take a leap of faith and go for it before I blew my entire savings on random items from Facebook ads and Amazon. I started my morning routine again and have been consistently taking in information about the law of attraction and power of the mind. I put the intention out there into the Universe that I’m going to be successful in these three areas.

Yes, I’m juggling a lot and it can be stressful but there’s something so empowering about not having a boss and knowing that my income potential has no cap right now. Plus, I’m very passionate about everything I’m doing right now. Most people usually wait until they have a stable income before they just up and leave their job to pursue an outside passion, but I knew I would never be able to balance one of these things let alone all three while still at my job.

Right now, I’m putting my heart and soul into everything I do and staying positive about the outcome. I know the Universe has my back. I do eventually want to incorporate teaching into my life in a way that’s not so overwhelming. I’m also prepared to return to the classroom if things don’t pan out, but we’ll save that for worst case scenario.