Quitting Is Just A Beginning

I just want to rest. I just want my mind to stop thinking. I wanted my physical body to work more than my brain do.

Those were the last lines we heard from one of our bosses in our department during our last meeting with him yesterday via zoom. It was actually a farewell meeting as he is about to leave the company.

Today’s post will be talking about reasons for leaving your boss or quitting your job.

In some of my previous posts I have already shared my experiences about my old employers. My life working with blue-collar jobs and how I stayed there for a very long time until I finally decided to change careers.

I have also shared with you the reason why and how I switched to work in an office rather than in factories on physical labor. Honestly I just get tired of seemingly endless hard labor and fed up with deafening sounds of machines every day. I don’t want my hair to grow all white in that type of industry so I decided to escape. I know that I have the guts to work with people in some offices because I believe I can. I trust myself, my abilities and my skills.

But why do people quit their job? Why do they resign?

In my current position at the Data and Business Intelligence department, one of my responsibilities is to deactivate employees accounts who are no longer connected with the company. When the HR sends a notification with a list of inactive employees, that's the time that I will deactivate their credentials with the system I have given the privilege to do so.

So I have known reasons why the account should be deactivated. Most common reasons are resignation but I don’t know the main reason as it’s beyond my privilege. Then some are health issues, end of contract, and or termination for those employees who violated the company’s policies or got involved in some behavioral misconduct.

Going back to my boss who’s been working with the company since 2002, well that is almost two decades. I am thinking that he was once a call center agent back then before he became one of the company’s great contributors in the DBI department.

He is the one training us about how to use Power BI with our reports although I am not really good at making graphical reports in that type of tool. I am nobody (laughs).

So we are curious enough as to why he would want to leave. As he continued talking, giving his thanks and appreciation, he then finally told us the reason why. But I can’t think of any reason because having been in that position and currently staying in the US, seems so good and no problem when it comes to salary and compensation. I also don’t see him having issues with his colleagues and subordinates. He is a very hard working person and devoted to his job.

He told us that even his colleagues were surprised by his decision. So he then tells us his reasons.

“I just want to rest. I just want my mind to stop thinking. I wanted my physical body to work more than my brain. I wanted to try something different like farming in our home in Iloilo or even become a barista. I just want to forget first about what I do now. Living myself out of BPO and things like that. I want to find myself.”

So upon hearing those words from him, I already understood what he was trying to mean. He wanted to follow his dreams, his passion. Whatever it is but it is not with Power BIs and Excel sheets even if he has been in that field for almost twenty years. He just can’t say it directly but the way he talks about what he wanted to do when he leaves was clear to me.

I know he has been preparing for that and I can tell somehow he had savings already before making his decision to quit the job. 

“I just want a rest period”. I guess that is something personal that we should not question about.

You know sometimes we need a break when we feel so loaded that we can no longer handle the burden because it is too heavy to carry. Or it is that we just feel we want to take a different route. Or to change the course of our current path.

We will feel surprised when suddenly a good tenured employee would resign. There are a lot of factors that run into our mind but we are clueless. Of course we might think that maybe an employee was not properly compensated or that he demands salary increase but was not granted. Or it could be that he had a misunderstanding with his boss or colleagues that he just wants to stay out of trouble.

As for my boss, I am not really sure but while watching him talk via zoom I can see in his eyes that he wants to follow his passion and today is the right time for him to finally go for it. Like most of us here. Some find their passion in Cryptocurrency, writing and blogging while they have a current job that is not related to their passion.

I myself don’t even sure if my passion is really for writing but I can see myself being good at this at least. Although I have other things that I want to pursue or follow some of my dreams, there are factors preventing me from doing so.

To Sir Kent, I know that he is happy with his decision and he will become successful with whatever passion he wants to pursue. Just like how he becomes successful in his career. I wish him success and good health always.

To some of you who are planning to quit their jobs and follow their passion make sure that you are prepared and you have a back up plan. At least you have savings so that you have something to resort to when everything else fails.

Actually I am planning to follow my passion and quit being employed too. The question is how or when.

Thanks for reading. Ciao!

 Lead image source credits to  Katrina Wright

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