Recently I have begun to wonder if jacking in the 9–5 is the right thing to do. It’s not as if I have loads of money in the bank and I don’t need to work any more.

Money is not the be all and end all. In fact it is quite likely that money will be extremely tight for a while, until I create something that will start bringing in some regular income—that’s the hope at least.

‘Why am I giving up my job?’

This question came to mind while trying to justify my decision to myself and when I sat down and thought about it there were more reasons than I realised.

This still doesn’t mean that it is the right thing to do but I have made my decision and I plan to stick with it. We will just have to see where it leads me.

Intro

I felt like I needed to reaffirm my reasons once I started questioning my decision. What better way than put my thoughts down into a cohesive post rather than just let the thoughts get on top of me?

This is basically a follow up post to I Quit! The idea behind this post is to put down into words what’s running through my head as the finish line comes into sight…

Luckily my wife is being very supportive and so I hope this helps explain, to her and whoever else is reading, why I feel the need to take this path, no matter what the risks.

Reasons

Freedom

I love the idea that I can wake up one day and decide that I just want to go for a walk in the park rather than be forced to sit in a stuffy office for 8 hours, 5 days of every week.

Of course I understand that I can’t do that every day as I still need to make some money somehow, but just to have the freedom to get up from my desk and get out in the fresh air whenever I feel like it is something I yearn for.

My previous job was a long time ago now but I went through a similar issue where I just wasn’t enjoying the work any more. After 2 years I quit and ended up taking a year to just travel around the world on my own.

That was an amazing experience, and I am pretty sure that it would be hard to feel more liberated than I was then. Knowing that I could move on to the next town, or even country, whenever I felt like it.

I have been in my present job for nearly 10 years and have enjoyed the majority of it. There are always a few ups and downs no matter what you do and I am sure that will not change even when I am working for myself.

It just got to the stage that I needed a bit more control over my time.

Learning

I have always felt the need to soak up new knowledge. This inevitably happens when you start a new job as you have to at least learn the company procedures.

After a while though the learning curve begins to flatten out and things turn into a simple upkeep role rather than learning new and exciting things.

This is probably fine for a lot of people but I just feel that I need something a bit more. I realised this fairly recently while writing the post Exercise The Mind.

In my line of work, I am a software developer, there is always a new technology around the corner and you can never tell if it is going to boom or bust. This can be a reason not to jump on the bandwagon whenever you see a new opportunity arise. The problem is if you slip too far from the cutting edge you start to lose touch and it becomes hard to catch up.

A knock on effect of this is that I find it difficult to remain interested in very outdated technology that nobody else seems to be using…

Health

I have been carrying a bit too much weight for quite a while now. Unfortunately that is a side effect of sitting in front of a computer screen for so much of my day.

I know I could be more active in my spare time but that is exactly the problem. Why would I want to use my precious free time to do something that feels like a chore?

When I was younger I used to be very active and was always playing one sport or another. Even now I still love sport but my knees aren’t what they once were. This may even be to do with the extra weight?

I still enjoy walking though, but it is very time consuming so I rarely find the time to get out for a proper stroll. I am hoping this will change when I have more control over my time.

The plan is to break my day up into much smaller chunks, say 1–2 hour work blocks rather than a single 8 hour slab. I do get an hour for lunch but that just seems to be spent running around frantically preparing something to eat, and then sitting down to eat it before rushing back to work.

This new plan should give me regular breaks which should provide ample time to become much more active. This will hopefully help me shed a few pounds, which in turn should hopefully improve my general health levels.

Sense of Achievement

This one came as a bit of a surprise to me. I had never really though about it before but it just came to me while I was writing this and it does seem to ring true.

When working for a company you do occasionally get to feel some sense of achievement. When you finally ship a project you have been working on for some time it can feel good.

I realise now though that it would be nice to have the ability to kick back and enjoy the moment, at least for a while. This never seems to happen as there is always another project that is handed to you the minute you have finished the previous one.

This seems to be a bit counter productive as there is no incentive to reach the end when you know there is a never ending pile of other projects that will land on you when you get there…

Links

Here are a few links to articles I have read along the way that have given me the encouragement to try this. It is always nice to see someone else’s point of view, especially if they have been in a similar situation:

• 27 Reasons You Should Never Have a Job
• One Year After Getting Laid Off—My Annual Passive Income Report
• The Minimalist Guide To Leaving Your Soul-Crushing Day Job
• The Surprising Truth About Using Minimalism To Leave Your Day Job
• The 3-Month Minimalist Survival Guide For Quitting The 9–5
• 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job
• Overwhelmed With Possibilities When Plotting Your Career?

A few of these are from Far Beyond The Stars, the blog by Everett Bogue. I recent stumbled across this blog and love it. Lots of the posts really resonate with me which is always a good sign.

There is loads more information out there and these are just a few of the posts that piqued my interest, and I remembered to bookmark…

Image: mark sebastian