Reflections
The tension between who I have to be at work and who I really am is just getting to be too much. It’s exhausting to be the high performer with the master’s degree and a quarter century of experience. I’m just not her anymore. In fact, I don’t want anything to do with her. Today, I identify with the happy go lucky homesteader tending her garden and watching after her chickens.
It’s not just that I no longer care about my work, I’ve completely lost connection with the people in my field. I scroll through LinkedIn and cringe when I realize that I have absolutely nothing in common with 90% of my contacts. I’ve been unfollowing and disconnecting from my network weekly. When these people talk “shop”, I feel like a stranger in a strange land.
I can only drag myself into work five days a week and pretend to care about what I’m doing there so much longer.
My Solution
For another 18-36 months, my career has a purpose. That purpose is to fund our transition to our breakaway to our more authentic life. Pragmatically, I’m not quite to the point where I can wave full-time work goodbye. I wish this weren’t the case, but I’ve got to soldier on while we fix up the house, clear out our stuff and move. Yes, I hate all of this pretending at work and wish that I could just pull the plug, but I’m not that kind of risk taker. Too much is at stake for us.
Until I can quit, my proxy for tossing out my career is getting rid of stuff in preparation for our move to our new lifestyle. It’s quite cathartic. I’ve already cleared a hall linen closet of all but a few things, wiping the shelves clean. I’ve gone through my clothing closet now twice, donating, recycling or tossing things I haven’t worn in a year. I’m starting to eye bigger things like wall hangings and furniture to get rid of in our next yard sale. Every item I toss, donate, give to a friend or sell puts distance between me and the “old” self I’m walking away from.
Having a light at the end of the tunnel is what keeps me going.
Key Takeaways
Feeling completely detached from your career network is a clear sign that it’s time to go. It may be hard to come to grips with, but it’s the cold, hard truth. You need to have a plan to migrate into your what’s next. Set a timeline for leaving corporate and starting what’s next. Engineering your exit can help avoid stress, chaos and expensive errors. Having a plan illuminates the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s inspiring to keep your gaze focused there.
There’s a strange, heady feeling to getting so close to jumping from our careers that we spent so much time and energy building. It’s exciting, fun and scary at the same time. It’s terrifying, really. That’s ok to acknowledge. Even as friends and former colleagues sporadically announce their retirements, it can seem too good to be true that retirement from career duties is on the near horizon. Harness that nervous energy to propel yourself into your future state.
If anything, I suspect you’ll find yourself a few months into retirement / semiretirement wishing that you had made the leap sooner.
Spent my lifetime in this cage
I’ve built around me
Bangin’ on the doors
– Cody Jinks