This Is Your Sign: Don’t Be Afraid To Leave Your Toxic Job

Hi, my name is Courtney and I’m quitting my job this Friday. 

Depending on when you’re reading this, surely The Day I Quit (henceforth referred to as TDIQ) has passed and I’m now either spending my final few weeks at the job I’ve had for nearly five years wrapping up everything for the coworker I can aptly name will take my place, or I’m dealing with my first few weeks or months unemployed—well, full time, anyway. 

The analytical part of my brain advises against this decision I’ve made and wants to warn you of the pitfalls that come with quitting a job without a quote-on-quote “backup plan” (double quotations added for dramatic effect). Money should be the first place to start, because honestly, money is the most important thing. It doesn’t matter if it shouldn’t be. Or that love and happiness are really what the world should focus on. It costs money to live, to eat, to survive, even at the most basic level. And of course, giving up full-time employment—or any type of employment—will usually add stress to your financial situation. 

And if you’re like me and this kind of thing already stresses you out, then what would be the benefit—or at the very least, justification—for quitting? Why purposely jump out of the frying pan and into the fire? One line: You have to. 

Why? Another line: because life is too short. 

I’m approaching my mid-30s, and as I’m starting to reflect on my life, I haven’t lived it. Not in comparison to how I thought it’d look. As a teen, I thought my twenties would include a house, a baby, marriage, and massive amounts of money. In reality, it brought me a divorce, a PTSD diagnosis, a dead mom, and a remarriage that has fortunately worked out. My thirties, so far, brought me an ADHD diagnosis, a new anti-anxiety medication, a dead dad, mounting debts, and little happiness. 

A few months before my dad died, I created a mental checklist for us. One night, as he sat in his recliner, etching out an angel with expanded, feathery wings, I sat down on the floor beside him and painted thick black lines on a thin canvas I bought from the dollar store. It wasn’t good. In fact, it was rushed. What once had potential ended up looking weird and sloppy, and I convinced myself that it was fine. I wasn’t painting for the love of it. I was painting for the memory of it. To preserve a moment I knew was fleeting. To cross it off my checklist. Another father-daughter moment I wouldn’t regret later on down the line when his hand was burned off in cremation. 

My father loved to draw. He could take or leave painting, as well as using crayons and markers or anything with color. Charcoal was his weapon of choice and he attacked nearly 300 canvases that year with gusto. 

In the last year of his life, the frequency in which he picked up his pencil to draw was akin to how often he used to sketch out self-portraits of himself and Elvis Presley as a teenager—aka a lot. He had never pursued a career in the arts, though he could have. Instead, my dad played it safe. And because of it, it took him 45 to 50 years for him to get back into the groove, because when you know your time is limited, you suddenly emphasize what’s important, what you enjoy doing, and what brings you happiness and fulfillment. 

For as often as friends and family tell me I resemble my mom in both looks and personality, I really followed my father in terms of spirit. When he was a teen, he and his buddies got drunk in the woods and signed up for the Navy on a dare. When he was in his mid-20s, he lied and said he was a fashion expert in New York City and ended up working as a clothing buyer in one of the most fashionable cities in the world. In his 30s, he worked as a bartender that served the likes of Joan Baez and Liberace and film stars from the great ‘70s era. 

Though it sounds cool and trendy, the life he lived, he played it safe because, despite the things he did, he never followed what he truly loved about life. He was always committed to what would bring in the most money, and in all honesty, my father worked really hard to end up with so little by the time it was over. 

He played it safe. And at the end, all I have is that image of him feverishly sketching out faces on a simple white canvas, knowing that every swish of the pencil tip represented another minute closer to the end.

I displayed photos at his funeral. Not one featured him at an auction buying things to resell, or him sitting at his desk to list them on eBay. In fact, we didn’t even have photos like that to rest on the table. But what we did have were photos of him on vacation and with my mom and silly jokes he sent via text message. And of course, his drawings. All the ones he did that last year he was alive because that was the only thing that made him feel as such. 

As I said, the analytical part of my brain wants to tell me that I did the wrong thing by putting my two weeks’ notice in, favoring unpredictable freelance over the steady paycheck of full-time employment. But deciding to align my brain with what my heart’s been telling me was the first time in years I felt genuine relief. It was calm. It was confident. And it was the right decision. 

My parents’ generation will argue that you’re not supposed to like your job. But a job ends up being your life. When you’re dedicating 40 or 50 hours a week to a toxic work environment or people who disrespect you, stress you out, or make you miserable, think about the mental and physical toll that actually takes on you. There are 168 hours in a week. Forty of them are spent working. Ten or 12 of them are spent getting ready and commuting. Thirty-five hours are spent sleeping. So what’s that leave? Eighty-one hours?

But 81 hours isn’t bad, right? That still seems like a lot. But what about errands? What about cleaning and maintaining your house? What about helping the kids with homework? For a little more than three days “left over,” there isn’t a lot of room left for living. 

I understand that I’m going to get hate for this article. And that’s fine. You don’t have to agree with me. 

But I want my life to be more than 81 hours a week, because there are only 681,528 of them in the average lifespan. That means if I live until 79 years old, like my dad, I only have 411,720 more hours – 17,155 days – to spend them how I want. To see the world. To write. To read the stories that make my imagination run wild. 

If there are only 17,000-odd days left in my life, I don’t want to spend them at a job that I hate. Regardless of how much money I make, because I can’t take it with me. I can only leave behind memories for those I can’t take with me. Like the memory of my dad sketching out a face that now hangs above my chest of drawers. 

He deserved to spend more time drawing faces like that because I guarantee he would have gotten even better. And I deserve to do the same, to follow that path that leads to less anxiety and a less miserable, more happy me. 

And according to the creative side of my brain, so do you. When there are only 681,528 hours in the average lifespan, why spend even one of them staying unhappier than you have to be? After all, the impact I made at my job has already been erased. The job listing was probably formed the minute after I gave my notice. 

Is whatever’s making you miserable worth your time? Metaphorically….and realistically.