013. I QUIT MY JOB AND I'M STARTING OVER AT 36

the myth of the 30-something crisis, easing into life and figuring out what creative success is all about

I’m 36 and I quit my full-time corporate job. Two weeks since my last day in fact.

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It might sound silly but I went through all stages of grief with this decision and it’s still taking some getting used to. It’s a strange truth that I see far less of myself than other people do. I could see myself waking up before my alarm, examining the details on a blazer pocket, admiring my hair the next day after a hair mask, yet sometimes it was those silent moments when I got to work and sat at my desk and looked in the mirror that for a second I felt I was in a place whole to myself. Without the responsibilities of home life, the tables turned towards those outside of the box and the solutions I could provide with a confidence, with a dash of intellectual integrity. I knew what I was doing and I was able to respond without the sometimes crippling whack of self-consciousness.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 days (2003)

The daytime gig become a part of me. Whether the days were long and arduous or I actually left on time due to a joyous day typing away, it seemed to serve as an indication of personality. Of status. It’s like selecting a piece of clothing to wear; a sartorial indication to those around me of my passion: the ideally dressed self. Perhaps its the fault of the 90’s- I grew up idolising films like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Devil Wears Prada, and even shows like Emily in Paris and Ugly Betty seemed to have me in a chokehold with chaos juxtaposed with promotions and sample products. These films showed heroines that weren’t just capable of dealing with mundane and impossible tasks but they were capable of holding banter, fire off a witticism, send the typical wry offhanded comment in the form of a standardised email: *ahem* ‘Thank you for your email…’ The dialogues were sarcastic and passionate, assertive and inspiring and in all cases inseparable from their characters. I fell for them.

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Fifteen tissues, a few breakdowns and one car crying session later, and I was losing control. A Virgo losing control. The very ‘heroines’ and whose lifestyle I had semi-embodied had broken me - ironically, in the midst of their defiance to bow to conventional standards, the corporate life brought it back. No froufrou or silliness for her, no drinks on a Friday or raucous laughter in the mornings.

It’s the crisis of a girl in her 30’s trying to make everything work under a heavy cloud of uncertainty whilst trying to pound the doors to a pressurised cabin. I guess you could say that all of this is expected of course - some of us are making the decision to have a family, or to not have a family, to re-evaluate our jobs and careers, to evaluate the happiness in our relationships, but are we happy with our health and bodies? Should I have bought the right insurance ages ago? Perhaps what I was feeling lately was like dressing for the rebellion - like I owed this sense of security and stability to myself and to the people around me to portray this sense of having all of it together but inside I was crumbling and anxious as hell.

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What did it matter that I didn’t answer an email a particular day? What difference did it make if stock was shipped a day later? Was I just being misunderstood or did I just overreact? Ten years ago I would have thought leaving my job to be impossible, I wanted the stability and ashamedly the status, the titles, the salary. Now at the age of turning 37 this year, taking a step back I found myself in a place of financial freedom and exhausted from it all - had I just reached my peak already? Was I not destined to be one of those women that claimed the powerhouse title all the way until retirement? Perhaps not.

Victoria Ratliff / Saxon Ratliff - White Lotus Season 3

Some ideal self had been embodied and enveloped when I was in that role; it was like I was playing a character with whom I shared everything and nothing at the same time : a pure state of emotional dread and mental entrapment. I was torn between ticking off the bullet points to success - who was I if I was achieving and climbing the job ladder? I participated in the fable unfolding before me, and as I participated I became complicit in all black, in love with the idea of succession. The eldest daughter wanting to achieve it all without the help of those capable around her. That need to go above and beyond in isolation.

Few people are immune to such enchantments and I wish I had been one of them but I guess it really is all about the journey they say. We enter new states with awe and wonder, peace and mental clarity and the daydreamer that I am, will always play out scenarios with the all encompassing and sometimes dangerous: ‘what if..’

These two weeks have slowly peeled back the invisibility cloak, but the kind I’ve reserved for others - I’ve been going to regular Pilates classes (yay!), finding peace in the quiet mornings, and celebrating the time I’ve been able to spend with loved ones and friends. Time that would have otherwise been shoved under a rug. Time that would have been included in the promises of tomorrow. Or the next day. Another checklist ignored for the stability and security of the grind. I’ve come to realise that its these moments where the invisibility cloak is on myself that every transformation is possible. Those comfort films were purely a fragment of my waking dreams and I tried so hard to see myself in those characters; as if I was mimicking expressions I had learnt from birth. I became a creature of ‘habit’ and anything I had selected growing up became an object of meaning, the kind of meaning that would make me ‘fit in’. Understood.

I have to admit the little niggly feeling of financial freedom slowly bowing out over the next two months scares the living shit out of me but I’m not the same girl anymore who would sit down with a noodle cup in hand and a screen open to press play on her favourite workplace comfort movie. Breaking the mold meant breaking away from the constraints and the safety net, towards an exploration of the true self, no 9-5 job and all.

I’m simply me.

There’s this little tickle of pressure as to whether or not I’ll succeed and honestly I don’t know. I have so many ideas that these last few days I’ve had to hold up mental STOP signs to just remember to take a breath. It is only I that is setting these high expectations, this need to succeed again comes creeping in.

But now before I leave the house, I take a moment to pause and check myself in the mirror before locking the door behind me, happily ignorant of what I look like with this newfound freedom.