I quit my job to catch up on laundry

and other half-truths

When you quit your job, people have questions.

Which is understandable. When I see other people quit their jobs, I have questions. Do they have something lined up? Did something happen? Are they switching careers? Is this temporary? In this economy?!

How can they afford it?

So when I quit my job, I guess I should’ve expected an onslaught of questions and to explain myself time and time again. But I didn’t, and it took me by surprise.

I’m not saying I mind the questions, nor do I find them rude, off-putting, or otherwise invasive — I very much not only understand it, but have so far welcomed them. But it did surprise me.

I’ve retold the story again and again — to my former boss and colleagues, to my partner, to my friends, to my parents, to my kid, to acquaintances, to the LinkedIn universe — and I realize everyone has gotten a slightly different version of the story.

The core of my message has stayed the same, and to answer a question you may also (rightfully so) want answered, it’s this:

I quit because I needed to, and because I finally felt like I could. Yes, logistically, but also emotionally.

To me, the more interesting question is why it took me so long to quit in the first place. Why am I driven by having a job, and why does financial security feel like it’s the only thing that matters sometimes?

The short answer is that working and making money is what I’ve known for two-and-a-half decades, and this is the first time in that time that I’ve chosen to not have a job.

I got my first babysitting job when I was 11. It wasn’t consistent, but it was a source of income. Since then, if I wanted spending money, I needed to earn it. In high school, I continued babysitting. I still had my normal gigs, working as an occasional date-night sitter, but I also had regular after-school jobs that would involve me picking a kid up from school and taking them to an after-school activity or back home. I was really good at navigating babysitting ads on Craigslist, and even maintained my own listings¹.

When I was 17, I became a counselor at the summer camp I’d gone to since I was 11.

Within the first three weeks of my first semester of college, I realized the money I’d made at camp that summer was almost completely gone. I quickly assembled every resource I had available to find a job.

My roommate sold vintage clothes on Etsy (in 2009! How innovative!) and I handed her a stack of my clothes, asking what would sell.

“I can probably sell this one,” she said, pulling a single red and white polka-dot romper out of the pile.

With my plan to ride her coattails foiled, I looked at the campus job board, hoping to find a job opening at the Gopher Hole cafe or at the Help Desk or the library, but what I found were scraps — there was a job fair during orientation, but I slept in that day. My two options were to either take a job as the college mascot, a Gopher named Mortimer, or to work the front desk in the Comptroller’s office.

What the hell is a Comptroller? I thought, as I applied for both. They were both work study jobs, both paid $7.25 an hour.

I got an email to audition as the Gopher almost immediately. This is my last resort, I thought. This is my rock bottom.

I picked the date and time furthest away, praying I could figure something else out by then.

I logged into Craigslist and quickly posted an ad College Student available in Towson for Babysitting!

I thought I could find someone who lived within walking distance of campus, not realizing most of the houses there were occupied by college students. Requests flooded my inbox to pick the kids up from school (“don’t worry,” the responses would read, “you can use our car!”), but I realized I would not be able to babysit in this town without my driver’s license.

As my Mortimer audition came closer and closer, I realized I was fresh out of options. I took myself to the campus gym for the first time, and spent 20 minutes on the elliptical — surely, if I’m going to be wearing a mascot costume, I’ll need to be in shape, I thought.

The day before my audition, I received an email with the subject: COMPTROLLER INTERVIEW.

I quickly skimmed the email and responded, Yes, I am still interested! and sent over a few times I was available to interview. By the end of that day, I had the job and cancelled the fateful Gopher audition.

The Comptroller’s office job was boring but easy, and it was my first glimpse of what working in an office was really like — one of the only places on campus completely devoid of students. I would sit at the front desk and do my homework and pretend I was Pam from the Office. Sometimes, they’d have me do some filing. I’d work a few hours in between classes, and come out the end of the week with just enough to join my friends for a movie or Chipotle burrito or whatever else we may be getting up to.

Throughout my college years, I picked up tutoring and mentoring jobs as well, both for middle school students in the area, but also for our very own impressionable freshmen. Eventually, I scored an interview at the Gopher Hole, the ‘cool’ cafe on campus where everything was either made in a blender or a toaster oven.

When I moved off campus my senior year, I realized everything off campus was more expensive. One afternoon, I opened the directory for the Towson Town Center, the mall next to campus, and got to work sending off applications.

The Apple Store was the only interview I scored from that effort, and I ended up working there for four years — I realized I’d make about the same going full-time at the store as I would have as a teacher in Baltimore City, my original post-graduation plan, and the benefits were better. So I stayed.

Four years later, we moved to California. I got my first job in tech, and then another, and another. And here we are, ten years later.

That history is to say: I’ve spent a lot of time working, and for me, working has always been a means to an end. From that first job at 11, I’ve had some sort of employer ever since.

That was twenty-four years ago, which is a long time to build an identity around having an income. Long enough that quitting a job, even one that wasn’t a fit, felt like it needed a reason good enough to justify all of it.

If you’ve spent any period of time around me or around here, you know this isn’t my first time being unemployed or without consistent, reliable income. I’ve been laid off three times since 2022. It’s just my first time choosing this.

Which, maybe, begs more questions. Because up until this year, I never would’ve imagined I’d willingly put myself in a situation where I don’t know where my next paycheck is coming from, draining the savings I’ve so meticulously built for an ‘emergency’ or a rainy day.

In many ways, quitting is neither an emergency nor a rainy day. But in many ways, it is both.

The last time I was laid off, I felt a strong pull to try to pick up some consulting work or figure out another path, after realizing the things I like and don’t like about work don’t actually line up with a traditional Product Manager job description.

I became disillusioned by the industry in general — is this my last job in tech? Unsure. Is this my last job as a traditional Product Manager? Also unsure, but honestly? Probably.

As much as I wanted it to work, it was hard to believe it was possible. It felt like everyone in my corner was so focused on me finding the next JOB (well-intentioned as they were) that I, too, started chasing it down.

But then a contract role landed in my lap, and I was comfortable in the unknown for quite awhile.

Slowly but surely, as news of layoffs at other companies and a tanking economy inundated me, the fear of job insecurity set in. Instead of just extending my contract, I negotiated a full time offer.

I could not have anticipated how quickly that decision would unravel, and how it would lead me to where I am today — unemployed, with no backup.

All of the reasons I’ve shared so far are true, but they’re also not the whole story.

The true, full, and real reason I quit my job is this: