Aimful

Maybe the biggest reason I'm quitting my job is that I want to make sure I'm still alive.

The last time I was unemployed was nine years ago. I was twenty-three years old and one year out of college, and I had just been laid off from the startup where I had done unremarkable work. Like many post-college kids at that age, I mistook laziness for existential crisis, and unemployment fit me well in that way.

I soon moved back to Houston to live with my parents, and my chief responsibility that spring and early summer was chauffeuring my dad while he recovered from complications from cataract surgery. My other duties included playing a lot of Scrabble—with good humor Dad blamed his losses on his semi-blindness—and getting in a few good bike rides on the open roads west of town. I also really really intended to get around to doing something about one of my many loose ideas for a software project.

But I never got around to doing much of anything productive in the four months I was unemployed—a fact I later learned to regret once I found a job and lost my free time. Regret has since morphed into a fear that I can't be productive when unemployed—that I must be anchored to a fixed schedule to avoid being aimless. I described this fear to some Phoenix friends, and many of them were surprised because I'm regimented and focused. Yes, but you've never see me unchained from the nine-to-five.

What I mainly remember from those idle days nine years ago was that I enjoyed not doing anything, though there are obvious money issues that go along. I remember being asked by friends and relatives about my job search and being reminded each time that I was suppose to feel sad about my situation. What's sad is feeling sad about not working for someone else.

These days I have no shortage of interests: my bike rack project, teaching myself basic chemistry, learning Go and AJAX and git and other software technologies, becoming a better writer, and so on. I don't know whether I've developed so many interests because I haven't had time to pursue them all or because I've matured and learned the value of hard work. That's the lesson taught in Candide—that we should all tend our garden. I want to believe that I've learned that lesson and I'm ready to tend my garden awhile—now that I won't be tending anyone else's this summer.