I Quit

I recently made the decision to quit my job.  Lots of people make the choice to quit their job for one reason or another, but not me.  I have never quit a job before.  The only time I have ever left a job was when it ended.  All of my previous employment has been seasonal.  This was my first year round job, and after 13 months, I quit.

Now, I could go into a whole bunch of reasons why I quit, but it does not really seem necessary.  I could go on for pages about how the company I was working for mistreated me and took advantage of me.  Then I could talk about how there are no real benefits to working there.  Or perhaps I could talk about how the management either didn’t exist, or was completely clueless as to what the needs of the company actually are, but it seems all for naught.  I have done my complaining and venting.  I stuck it out for as long as I could.  It wasn’t even the pay that was the problem; I made enough money to be comfortable.  It was all the other things, problems, and issues.  All in all, these factors caused me to put in my resignation and say – “I quit.”

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Was there reason to quit?

Most people would tell you there is a right way and a wrong way to quit.  Ideally you should have another job lined up so that you can simply transition from one job to the next.  At best, you should do something like my wife did and planned a one week vacation between her prior job and her current job.  This is the right way to quit.

There is also a wrong way to quit.  The wrong way to quit is because you are unhappy at your current job, or you are having one or two issues at work that you could actually live with or resolved with time and effort.  For many people, any job is better than no job at all.  You have to be able to pay the bills and survive.  You should not quit any job too soon (unless you fall into the paragraph above).  To some, it would appear that this is how I quit my job.

As for me…

I would submit that the reason I quit is somewhere in between right and wrong.  I stuck it out for as long as I could.  However, after a while it starts to take its toll on your sanity.  I had very little time off this summer with my wife.  I’d work weekends and she’d have them off.  I wouldn’t get home until 10:00pm or later some nights and she’d have to be in bed by around 11.  With the holiday season coming up this was only going to get worse.  Perhaps the worst of it is that I could not even get simple requests that I had from day one.  For example, when I was hired I gave one condition that I could not work Sundays.  I was working at least 2 a month at the time I quit.

So long story short, I quit without having a second job really lined up.

So you quit now what?

This is the obvious question that people have been asking me.  To some extent there has been excitement around me quitting.  I can spend more time with Melissa, and my schedule is much more open to being able to work on my ministry and personal development.  This is all well and good, but none of these things bring any real income into my life.  Though I quit my job, I was offered the opportunity to be hired back on whenever I wanted.  This is also true for my previous seasonal job, as well as the job I used to work at every summer.  However, none of these options are ones that I really want or would really work.

So what am I going to do now that I quit?  Well, I have a couple of ideas and options.  First, I think that I really need to try to pursue a dream.  I am sick of working in a job just for a paycheck.  Really, I want to be able to do something that I actually enjoy doing and something that I am actually excited about (who doesn’t?).  I check the job boards often enough and most the time I think “nope, nope, heck no, ugh, and probably not.”  Second, I have skills and abilities that I have trained for but have not really used to their full potential.

So, here are three things that I am going to be spending time doing now that I quit and have a fully open schedule.

1.) Ministry

This is something that I have already been doing quite a bit in the last few years.  I have the opportunity to preach every so often at my church (and this does actually provide some income), and I am the youth pastor.  For the most part, especially in the last six months or so, my youth group has had to take the back burner at best.  When I was working 60 hours a week, I was making great overtime.  However, the work schedule was impossible to have a life.  I would often work from 9:30-9:30 and then have church on Sunday (if I managed to have Sunday off).

Now, I will be able to dedicate a lot more time and effort into the Sunday youth meeting that we have.  This is necessary at this point as we have many more students coming on a regular basis that are high energy and have less spiritual maturity than some of our previous students.  I will have more time to put together relevant devotionals, build relationships with the students, and spend time with them more than once a week.  I can also look for opportunities for events that will help to draw more students in.  There are plenty of opportunities available if the time is made to organize them.

If you want to help support my mission to my local church as the volunteer youth pastor, check out the next section for the best way to support me financially at the moment.

2.) Writing

I am going to quit my job and become a writer!  Said a whole lot of starving people.  Obviously writing on your own is not something that generally helps you to make money right away.  It is something that takes a long time to develop.  Blogs take tons of posts, lots of follower, and people looking at and clicking on ads in the website in order to make any money.  Writing books takes a long time and then they have to be good enough and unique enough for people to care enough to buy them.  However, this doesn’t change the fact that I really enjoy writing stuff when I have the time to do it.

Plan A.

This is a twofold area of work for me.  First, I will spend more time on this blog.  I’ll make more regular posts about things that I find interesting and what not.  This will help to generate more traffic to my site and in turn increase profits.  There is a way that you can help to make this more profitable for me.  Consider signing up to be a patron on Patreon.  You can click this link here and sign up to be a sponsor.  With enough sponsors even giving me a small amount of money, it will help me to support my goals and also my ministry.  You can also click on the image below:

Plan B.

Second, I am going to attempt to write a book in the month of November.  This is to be a 50,000 word novel or more.  I  have had an idea for a story for a while and I am going to use NaNoWriMo in order to accomplish this.  I believe that the story I am thinking of is fairly compelling and I actually little doubt that it will be a struggle to come up with 50,000 words for the book.  This is the dream right?  Quit your job and write a book?  We’ll see.

3.) App/Game Development

This is a somewhat new idea of mine.  At least newer than the book idea.  I have thought of an app, well a game really, that I think would be quite fun on Android.  Technically, I do have a degree in computer science so it would be nice to actually be able to use that for something other than knowing how to restart someone’s computer to fix 85 percent of their problems.  The actually programming of the game should be fairly easy.  I would be able to use advertisements in the game in order to make money from it.  Also, I could put in app purchases in the game, but I don’t know if that would work well with the concept that I will be using for this.

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In the end…

I realize that none of these things are going to be able to provide me with much income in the short term.  At best these are long term endeavors.  However, these are things that I really want to do.  I’ve spent the last 5 years doing work that has ended up being downright miserable to go to.  So this is what I am going to be focusing on for the next couple of months at least.  If I am met with success in these things, that would be great.  I wanted to shed some light on the reasons why I quit and what I am going to be doing now that I have.

To some extent I see this as a step of faith.  I have let my relationship with God fall behind.  I’ve missed lots of church, and often have a less than positive attitude when it comes to the ministry I am leading.  Restoring and rebuilding a healthier and better relationship with God is also a big focus on what I am going to be doing.  So, please keep me in your prayers as I take these next steps on my journey through life.

 

God Bless.