As many of you know, I quit my job. I don't have another job lined up, so today is my first weekday of indefinite unemployment since November of last year.
The most common question I've heard this past week about my quitting is: Why did I do it? What I've done isn't common. While there are many reasons to leave a job—sometimes workers find another job, sometimes they're laid off or fired, sometimes they retire—quitting to go be by oneself and have no income is unusual. So it makes sense that people are curious about my motives.
Nevertheless, I like to flip the question: Why not quit? I believe unemployment is the ideal state for most people; we work nine-to-five jobs as a compromise with a world that, for most people, doesn't let you live well without the compensation a job provides. Foremost, people work for the money, though a surging second-place motive for full-time employment is insurance benefits. There are also some intangible benefits to working a job—or at least there should be—such as gaining a sense of accomplishment or spending the day socially, in the presence of other workers. Some people might assert that their job is important to society and few if anyone can replace them and do their job as well. I suppose.
But if unemployment is the ideal state—and let me clarify that I'm talking about unemployment
as any alternative to working full-time to make profits for someone else, and yes I'm aware this is strange definition of the term—then presumably people who're employed are missing some critical ingredient for living life unemployed. As to what those ingredients usually are, we need only traverse the list of motives from the previous paragraph. For most people the primary missing ingredient is money. For many others it's stable health care coverage. And for some others it's a lack of a sense of accomplishment in their life away from the office, or a feeling of loneliness.
So why did I quit? Now the answer should be a little clearer: For the time being, my life is going well.
