fall into quitting

Autumn approaches and I prepare to cross the first seasonal threshold of my adventure in life-skewing decisions.

I quit in the spring.

I stopped working in the summer.

I tiptoe towards fall with an odd sense of nextness that I can’t quite put my finger upon.

It may be that I’ve been delving into the literature. Well, popular science books, online articles, youtube videos and podcasts as a kind of literature, right? I’ve been delving into that literature in search of a thread to trace the nuance of my life choices back to something resembling justification.

I recently described the reactions I’ve been reading too much into as of late as a kind of magician’s audience smile. Watch as I perform this act right in front of your very eyes. I’ve done something astounding, having quit my job and now I’ll say the magic words and …

There’s no trick. This is no performance.

It’s just me trying to reset. Take a break. Figure out how I want to spend the next ten to fifteen years of my life, and I’m very much not sure what that looks like yet.

Ta-da! It’s magic.

Nope. I quit my job in the spring and spent most of the summer regrouping and now the leaves out the window are a lovely shade of orange as the road construction crews frantically work long days trying to finish their work before the snow flies any week now and all the while I sit here trying to wrap my mind around the decision to quit. The right decision. The healthy decision. But a decision that society doesn’t quite understand, at least any better than I do.