When Not Taking a Risk is the Biggest Risk of All
How I quit my job and took charge of my mental health during the pandemic.
By the summer of 2021 I was bored, burnt out, and broke. Like many others, I had been working from home since March 2020. Plodding away at my company-issued computer, my dog was my only water-cooler confidante. I soon found myself willing my tropical plants to beam me into another reality – to take me anywhere away from my 480 square foot downtown office (read: my studio apartment.)
The monotony of the work week, and many months prior, had created an exhausting apathy for my work, and life in general. After hermitting for so long my friendships had suffered, along with my bank account as online shopping became my new favourite hobby. My vision for the future was as clouded as the fog I felt waking up every morning, searching social media for the next dopamine hit.
The anxiety that came along with the expectation of returning to the office in September really broke me. (As did the $6 coffees to get out of the house everyday.) After going through several boxes of tissues, and accounting for every penny in my (figurative) piggy bank, I made the scary but liberating decision to quit my job.