melancholy

The Art Of Quitting Your Dreadful Job And Surviving

Watercolour by Paula Bonet

(Spoiler Alert: İt Smells Like Teen Spirit)

Write the magic word down and send it. There are no other four letters that follow one another so beautifully into freedom. Q-U-I-T. Do it. They have been lying to you all along. You have been scared for nothing. Let me tell you the truth about quitting.

They say quitting is giving up, but let me tell you this my friends, quitting a job that makes you unhappy is holding on to life. It is being able to open your eyes to the day without wanting to get lost between your duvet and pillows for the first time in months. It is picking up which vinyl to listen to as you make yourself a proper breakfast and coffee. It is being able to do what you are meant to do. It is what you have to do, to not quit life.

There are of course some possible unpleasant consequences of this beautiful and brave act, some minor risks you should be willing to take, such as having to give up your single flat by the canal, moving in with your mom and sleeping on the couch for a while, having to take another bad job in a few months and starting all over again. Your old-fashioned friends may tell you that you are not a rockstar, that you need to grow up and just take it like everybody else. That you can’t keep quitting jobs forever if you want a career. When that happens, I want you to cover your ears with your hands very tight and start singing “I’m not like everybody else” until they leave you alone.

No I’m just kidding. That wouldn’t be too mature now, would it? Us, I, the already unemployed ones and the ones who are thinking of quitting as they read or listen to this, we are just more in peace with our inner rockstars than some others, that’s all. We are the ones who feel it in our bones that time is the only thing that counts. We don’t have anything else than this very moment. Being here. And if we are going to invest our here and now, all we’ve got, we have to make sure it’s worth it.

So for all the ones in doubt, here’s the check list I used before I made up my mind this week:

Does your job make you want to punch someone really hard in the face every day?

Does it make you do things you don’t approve ideologically (and not pay you enough money for it)?

Do you have to eat something all the time to make the time go faster at the office?

Do you have to drink six cups of shit coffee every day just to keep your eyes open?

Is there something else you really want to do but can’t because you are stuck in your cubicle and realize you start thinking of it less and less?

Did you come to the point that you lost your will to do… anything really?

Then meditate on what you want from life. That’s what I did this week. And I chose life. I am very happy to tell you dear friends, that I had just quit my job. I have no idea what’s next for me now. But as the most handsome rockstar of all times once said, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away”. Because only then you have te chance to be born again, from your ashes.

—

Nazli Koca is a writer and dreamer based in Berlin. It’s very likely that you will run into her while she is writing in the train or reading at Spoken Word events around Rathaus Neukölln. If you live in a city far far away, you can read more of her stuff at rhnk.tumblr.com 

Read all her stories here

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