Quitting your job. You know you’ve thought about it. If you’re anything like me you don’t just think about it, you fantasize about it.

On a good day it sounds like a far away dream you had last night. On a bad day you know the exact inflection of how you’ll tell them where they can stick their expense report. And on a really bad day, you just cry in defeat.

So for years, at different points in my career, I’d have these fantasies about saying something to effect of “Take this job and shove it!” (with many added expletives), walk out in a dramatic huff, get in my convertible, and peel away to a sound track of something Tom Pettyish with a touch of Nine Inch Nails. The problem is the fantasy never really progressed past that. I never thought about arriving home wind blown, sunburned and jobless with all this time on my hands.

Last weekend I kind of thought about what would happen when the song ended. Then on Monday,  back at work, I REALLY thought about it. It was like I had opened a can of worms that were now standing on the sidelines of my marathon of life wearing pink baseball hats and yelling “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!”. Well, instead of listening to the enthusiastic mind worms, the responsible non-parasitic side of myself took over and knew that I needed to take some kind of action, but not as drastic as quitting my job right then and there. Like most things in my life, I needed to think about it, research it, make a pros and cons list and poll at least three of my five best friends about it. Spontaneity is not my strong suit.

Instead of pulling the trigger, I decided to aim carefully and think about pulling the trigger. I took all of the vacation I had accumulated. Now, telling your boss on Monday that you’d like to go on vacation for the rest of the week usually doesn’t go over so well.  I took the fact that she said yes as a sign that the planets were aligning. I desperately needed to mull it over and “play jobless” for a few days to see how it is. It took about 6 hours to come to a decision.

(Continued on next post)