In my first post on this blog I wrote: “I want to document my journey to try and prove that I don’t need to quit my job, give up my current life for an extended period of time, in order to travel and see the world.”
My how things have changed, because I’ve decided to quit my dream video game job, give up my current comfortable life for an extended period of time to travel and see the world. The only difference from what I wrote is that I’ll also be taking this time to start my own business and pursue working for myself instead of a normal 9-5.
Here’s how I changed and ended up doing a complete 180:
So all things considered, I had an great job and a healthy lifestyle. I worked at Blizzard Entertainment, and working at a video game company was always dream for me, the work life balance was great, the pay was good, I was a fan of what I was working on, and I liked the people that I worked with. However I found myself feeling like I had plateaued and for 3 years I lived the same day on repeat.
I was happy with my lifestyle. Everyday in the morning I would wake up at 5:30am, check Surfline to see how the waves looked at my local beach, if they were good I’d jump out of bed, slip into my wetsuit and drive to the beach for a morning surf session. Otherwise I’d crawl back into bed or read up on some financial news and check how my stocks were doing. Around 9:00am I’d make a full breakfast then head to work. Work would always be fine, but rarely memorable. The highlights of my day would be a good conversation during lunch with coworkers, otherwise the 8 hours spent were forgettable. After work I would either go rock climbing with coworkers or go home and struggle to fill my night doing something memorable or productive, but just end up on /r/GetMotivated hoping to read some inspirational post that would fuel the inner fire I was sure I had. Right before bed I would feel super motivated and ready to change my life tomorrow, journal about my day and then go to sleep.
I lived that day one thousand times.
They weren’t bad days but I wasn’t progressing in the way I wanted to. I knew that if I looked back on my life, that wasn’t the way I would’ve wanted to spend the majority of my 20’s. I knew I wanted to go off the beaten career path and try starting my own business and work for myself in my 20’s, I also knew I wanted to travel the world at age 25 instead of 65. But I had built a comfortable life, one with a lot of safety and stability, I always tended to be risk averse and everything around me told me I would be crazy to let such a comfortable life go and purse something more risky. I struggled with this decision for months.
One night after work about 2 weeks ago, I was just laying on my bed thinking about my life, goals, daydreaming about what I wanted to do if I wasn’t hesitant or afraid. When I came to some crystal clear conclusions about myself and my life.
I wasn’t going to overcome the fear or hesitation by thinking about it over and over.
Every day I spend living a life I don’t want, is a day less to live the life I actually want.
I have savings to hold me over for at least a year more if I’m smart about budgeting and investing. I’m 25, single, healthy, and have no big life responsibilities yet. There is not going to be a better opportunity than now to take a risk in my life.
These realizations hit me hard, and it evaporated my hesitations. Instead of worrying about the risk of failure if I went and chased my dreams, I suddenly saw that now was the best chance I was going to get to do it successfully. I still had the cushion of time to fall back on so even if I tried starting my own business and fail after 2-3 years, I’d only be 27 or 28, and I also recognized that I have the most freedom and energy now at 25 than I’ll ever have in my life. I wasn’t going to hesitate any longer and have a decision made for me by blowing this opportunity.
So with that I’ve made the decision to quit my job and have already started the exit process. I’ll be posting regularly now with updates on the resignation process, leaving my job on a good note, and preparing to travel the world and start a business!