I Quit

I
quit my job.

I
quit my job because I wasn’t happy.

I’d
been thinking about it for ages. In fact, when the internship became a full-time position, which became day-to-day oh, I guess this is my life now, I knew, the whole time, that it wouldn’t be
long before I left.

I’ve
never been good at casual, never mastered we’ll
see. I’m all or nothing, totally obsessed or utterly disinterested. If I
hold your hand it’s because I want to give you my heart, if I get out of bed
for you at 7 a.m. it can only ever be because I adore you.

I did
not adore this job.

That
doesn’t mean I’m not grateful. Oh dear Lord, I’m so grateful. To land in London six months ago and get the one
internship I applied for, round the corner from my house, and to have my boss
at that internship say, after four weeks- Laura,
the jig is up. Come on the payroll. That’s magic, right there. 

But I
only ever wanted the internship to learn the technical stuff of the digital
marketing industry, knowing that I didn’t
know what I didn’t know and that with my plans for eBooks and building an online portfolio I needed insight into how to be better. More tech-savvy.

I realised
rapidly that I was working a job that didn’t make my tummy sing even when I was
interning, and yet- rent, you know? Gotta pay the rent.

I
learnt. I did. Every day I’d ask questions and practice what I’d learnt at
home, and go in the next day to ask more questions. But it was also frustrating.
I’d spend my days writing articles for the Guardian and Huffington Post, but in
somebody else’s name. I’d have ideas for incredible projects that would be wild,
potentially game-changing experiments if only the team’d say yes to giving it a try, and be met with
ambivalence and mumbles. At first, I thought working in an all-male office made
me edgy and cool- I wasn’t one of those girls,
I could rock it in a man’s world. A man’s world sucks. Nobody ever asks about
your feelings and as the token girl it’s you tasked with looking at office
furniture.

My
boss told me I wasn’t worth the money he was paying me. I asked him why a tech
company had hired a writer, then, if he didn’t know how to utilise me. He said
he wasn’t sure, but he knew he needed me to hand. I decided to quit for
absolute definite then, even though he was offering me a pay rise in the same
breath. I had zero desire to prove to him why he needed me- if he didn’t know then
I obviously wasn’t in the right place. ‘Scuse
me whilst I go be fabulous some place else, mister.

But
then, urgh! Job hunting! Looking for work! There’s nothing worse than filling
out all those applications and interviewing and choosing and… and I don’t even
want a career in anything other than writing, on the Internet, about memememe.

So I
quit without a plan. Also: hi, narcissism.

I
reasoned that I needed to make less than a grand a month to pay rent and buy
food. I could make a grand a month working in a pub, and to be honest, that’d
be fine with me. At least that’d be interesting, and varied, and wouldn’t feel
like I was sacrificing my soul to the corporate devil who didn’t think I was a
worthwhile employee anyway.

I
told my boss. He was really very kind- told me he’d learnt from me, that I’d
changed the dynamic of the office; that he’d be sad to see me go.

I
quit my job and then I got a call from a PR agency who works with a client I’d
written for, telling me she loved what I did, was super impressed, and that did
I have time in my freelancer schedule to consider doing some stuff for her
other clients?

I
told her I wasn’t a freelancer, but that I was
looking for a job.

She
hired me.

Basically,
I could have been writing this on my
sofa at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning before crying into my cashmere blanket and
wondering why I’d been so stupid as to give up a perfectly good job- even if it
was making me unhappy.

But,
because I took a leap of faith, because I’m good at what I do and hard work
always prevails, I actually get to take two days off before starting a new
part-time job working in PR. Which was never in the game plan, but I’m pretty
sure is the perfect solution.

Life is pretty fucking awesome like that.

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