Four Years After I Quit: I Still Don't Know What I Want — And I'm Starting Anyway

Four Years After I Quit: I Still Don't Know What I Want — And I'm Starting Anyway

Four years ago I sat down in front of a camera and said the sentence I had been avoiding for months: something in me had snapped.

I had left a corporate career that looked fine from the outside. I had walked away from a PhD program. People around me had a word for it — burnout — and they were mostly right. I couldn't breathe in that life. My calendar was full and my sense of meaning was gone. I remember sitting in meetings doing quiet arithmetic: this many hours, for this, in my only life.

So I left. And I assumed the clarity would come with the exit.

What I thought quitting would do

I thought removing the pressure would reveal the person underneath. Clear the weeds, and the garden appears.

That's not what happened. What happened was silence, in the exact place where the job used to be.

Nobody tells you that the absence of a bad thing is not the same as the presence of a good one. I had a lot of free mornings and no idea what to do with them.

Three years of drifting

For three years I drifted. Part-time work. Small freelance jobs. Money that was enough and not enough.

The hardest part wasn't the money. It was the questions. Relatives at dinner: "So what are you doing now?" I learned to answer fast so the conversation would move on. Some weeks I felt genuinely free. Other weeks I felt like a man who had made a very public mistake and was now waiting to be found out.

I kept waiting for the morning I would wake up and know. It didn't come in year one, or two, or three.

A year ago I went back to work

A year ago I took a job again. Smaller salary. Much lower stress. On paper, this is exactly what you're supposed to do after burnout — reduce the load, sleep, walk, recover, be reasonable.

And I want to be honest about the good parts. I sleep better. I don't carry a laptop to bed. Nobody messages me at eleven at night about a slide deck.

But something kept nagging.

The conveyor belt just moves slower

Here's what I worked out slowly, and am still working out: less pressure is not the same as meaning.

I took the time and energy I had saved by leaving the high-stress job and sold them again. For money. Just at a better exchange rate. I'm on a slower conveyor belt now, that's all. It moves gently. It still moves in a direction I didn't choose.

The hole in my chest is still there. It's not about the job. It was never about the job.

I still notice Sunday evenings. I still check the clock. It's quieter than before, but it's the same restlessness, and I've stopped pretending it will disappear if I get enough rest.

Escaping is not a direction

When I look back at the last four years honestly, almost everything I've done has been an escape. Escaping the company. Escaping the PhD. Escaping the anxiety that followed me out the door.

Escape is real, and sometimes it's necessary. But it's a direction measured from something. It keeps the thing you're running from at the center of your life. You can run a long way and still be facing backwards.

That's the part that changed for me recently. I want to move toward something, not away from something. Even if I'm wrong about what that something is.

So here's what I'm doing

I want to be a content creator. I know how that sounds — vague, crowded, a little naive. I don't have a niche. I don't have a monetization strategy. I don't have a five-year plan, and I'm not going to invent one to make this post sound more professional.

What I have is my own thoughts, my own body, my own failures, and the ability to put them on the internet. That's the only asset I own outright. Not a credential. Not a title. Not a salary band. Nobody can take away the fact that I lived this and can describe it.

I filmed the video for this post topless, in my underwear, in my living room, in daylight. That's not a gimmick, and it's not really the point — but it's connected. For most of my adult life I kept my body out of my work. The body was the thing I hid. Now I'm trying to stop hiding, in both senses. There's an honesty you can't dodge when you're on camera with no costume to hide behind. You can't play a role with your shirt off. Either you're there or you're not.

That's the same decision I'm making about my work. Stop dressing it up. Say the true thing.

What I still don't know

I don't know how to become financially free. I'm not going to pretend a spreadsheet, a morning routine and a podcast solved it for me. I don't know if this works. I don't know if anyone watches.

What I do know: I'd rather be uncertain out loud than certain in a job I don't believe in.

So I'm going to document the whole thing. Every step. The failures especially — the videos nobody watches, the months where the numbers go the wrong way, the days I want to go back to something stable because stable is comfortable. If I only show the wins, this becomes another advertisement, and I've had enough of those.

If you're in the same place

If you're stuck in a job that pays the bills and drains everything else, you're not alone. A slower conveyor belt is still a conveyor belt. Being less exhausted is not the same as being alive.

I'm not going to tell you to quit. I quit, and it took me four years just to start understanding why. What I'll say is this: the question is worth asking out loud, even when you don't have an answer yet.

Are you escaping something, or moving toward something?

Both are allowed. Only one of them gives you a direction.

Thank you for being here with me on this naked journey. If any of this resonates, come find me at nakedwill.com, read the blog, or say hello — I read everything. And if you're on a similar road, tell me where you are on it. I'd like to know I'm not walking it alone.

The question I keep coming back to: are you escaping something, or moving toward something? If you know your own answer, put it in the comments. I read every one.