[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

I didn’t play many video games but I watched a ton of movies and tv shows.

It wasn’t all a vacation. I did do some genuine self improvement.

And just so people don’t think I’m some fat cat who can afford to take tons of time off...I was lucky my mortgage was renewing right when I quit so I’ve been paying int only on my heloc for the past 7 mos. and the I increased the balance by $7k in 7 months. Not to mention not paying it down, so it really cost me around $10k. Plus some savings I burned thru. It was not a free 7 months. I had to watch every penny.

On the other hand I spent most of the summer on the beach in Kelowna with my nephews, eating for free staying with my folks, so it wasn’t all bad.

I also put in a lot of work. I saw a career counsellor, met with numerous industry professionals, took an online course, that was quite difficult, to broaden my options when job searching. I also got in shape, cleaned my place like it had never been cleaned before, made numerous other small but substantial changes to my life to help get me off that ledge.

Then I looked for work for 3 stress filled months where I worried every single day that I’d made a massive mistake and would never live down the embarrassment to my friends and family of quitting to change careers only to fail miserably. Some soul searching that would be if I had to go crawling back to my old career because I was broke and unhireable in my chosen field.

It took over a month before I got my first interview and didn’t get the job. It wasn’t until the 6 month mark of unemployment and 2nd month of searching that things picked up steam. Right after Xmas actually.

Then when I did get hired I had to wait a month to start. So I spent all of January worried I might have another terrible experience (having just changed employers 12mos ago which was the catalyst for the entire change in the first place).


Lastly, if you’d rather kill yourself than go to work tomorrow, started suffering crippling anxiety and depression due to hating your job/career/life, had to take start medication and see a therapist to deal with it all, then maybe you should quit your job and do some soul searching like me.

It was not fun and I wish I didn’t have to do it all but I’m glad I did. My life is a lot better now. A lot.

If your work is doing that to you, you may want to consider short term disability to take a step back and still not get screwed financially. Lots of people end up forced into some sort of stress leave. No shame in that.