Why Quit If You Love Your Job?
Many people seek early retirement because they hate their job. When we mention that we enjoyed teaching, people are naturally confused, so a common question we immediately get is: Why? If we loved it, why’d we quit? If we enjoyed what we did, why were we so eager to leave?
Our answer is simple: We loved teaching. But there are other things we love which we wanted to do as well. Traveling the world. Both of us being home to raise kids. Having a full time job inhibits these time-consuming things.
We may not be completely done with teaching, as it so happens. Ali still occasionally has dreams of being a teacher, and we think teaching overseas might be a fun challenge.
But we wanted to become financially independent so that we could teach if we wanted to, not because we had to. Don’t you think a student would benefit from having a teacher who has a burning desire to teach, rather than one who just needs a paycheck? (The two obviously aren’t mutually exclusive, but neither do the sets completely overlap.)
The thing is, though, we taught for nearly a decade. A decade is enough time to do anything, in my opinion. One of my favorite SMBC Comics explains why:
If you’re FI, did you quit a job you love? Or if you’re not yet FI, what lives do you want to explore? Let me know in the comments!
Had to share this today on Twitter. I was recently thinking about all the things I have done or been, the different phases of life I have gone through, and pondering the next on the horizon. I often feel crazy as a result that I can’t live in one space (or relationship) for more than 2 years but meeting more and more people in this community has helped me to see it isn’t just me. While I may be the wanderluster in my cicle of family and local friends, I am not alone in the world. There are so many of us who want to get out and DO!! This cartoon summed it all up for me. I may be borrowing it for an upcoming post (credit to yours, of course)… 🙂
I quit a job I used to love because of a manager and corporate bullshit I hated. Yep, people really do quit their managers. But it was bigger than that – it got to the point that I no longer trusted my company and our values were not aligned. I guess we grew apart. I was 10 years in that role in that company – longer than any of my other jobs in my career. I am FI and loving it!
I love this, thank you. I am not yet FI but I decided to take a break and “die” anyway. Not doing it seemed riskier than taking the chance