So.... I quit my job

Hi!

I have a confession to make - I resigned from my job a month ago and was serving my notice period till a few days ago. So if you just read my previous post and are immediately jumping into this one, it was not an impulsive decision taken last week.

Yup, I’m unemployed right now. How’s it been these past few days? It’s been same as before, only that I don’t have to attend stand ups and pretend to work. That’s been liberating! I think it will take some time to get work out of my system.

But before that, some explanations:

Why quit?

Over the past couple of months most of my day has been occupied with my baby. Now if you want to be pedantic, yes, I had about 3-4 hours in small intervals over the day where she’d be sleeping. But I preferred to relax a bit and have food in peace before she’d be up again.

To cope with work deadlines, I was working after my daughter went to sleep for the day or I’d sleep for a bit and work in the early hours of morning. I’d have a good stretch of 2-3 hours to avoid losing focus, but that was coming out of my sleep budget. Was work that important that I’d sacrifice my sleep?

Till about a month ago, my wife was on maternity leave. If I needed to attend work meetings, my wife could stretch her energy and take care of my daughter while I took the calls. But trying to keep a baby occupied with over-enthusiastic smiles and exaggerated expressions the whole day is taxing on one person. I couldn’t rely on this band-aid for more than an hour a day. Now that my wife is back to work, this option goes out of the window. She also needs to get back to work mode and I want to be able to support that by taking on some of her responsibilities.

All the above reasons are valid, but in a nutshell I think it’s a perspective shift. After my daughter was born I think my view on work changed from something everybody has to do and work hard at, to something which can be optional. That helped me think that work need not be at the top of my priority list after all.

I know gaps in employment in India are not looked kindly upon. There are always questions if you are dedicated enough to prioritize work in spite of personal issues. You took some time off, so what’s the guarantee that you wouldn’t do it again? This was something I thought about a lot, but it boiled down to choosing between juggling deadlines and potentially burning out severely, or having some mental peace and focusing solely on family. I decided to choose the latter.

How does it affect my FIRE plans?

We recently became debt-free and can run our household with my wife’s salary, so we don’t need to dip into our savings to fund my career break.

I’m lucky that we have built a decent corpus and emergency fund that I can take time off for a few months and not have to worry about any emergency. I can’t obviously contribute to our retirement and other goals till then, but that’s OK.

The job market is shaky right now, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to get a job. But that’s not something I’m focusing on. I think once I have some motivation to get back to work, I might start worrying about it. Hopefully things aren’t as bleak as they are now. Fingers crossed!

Wrapping up

To all you folks out there who manage taking care of a new-born and work, hats off to you! I’m thankful I don’t have to do both and can prioritize for a few months. In a way I think that’s an advantage of having some FU money. Hey, I can’t retire on it, but it can cushion a mini-retirement.

This is uncharted territory, and I’m cautiously optimistic about how this will turn out. Like any good content creator would, I intend to take full advantage of my situation and keep you guys entertained with new posts about my life. Wish me luck!

Until next time.