I left my cushy job after more than 16 years there. I started as a wide-eyed Associate Publisher of a magazine company, so thrilled to be meeting Myrza Sison, Cosmopolitan Philippines editor-in-chief and working in the job of my dreams. I loved magazines and I remember how, during sleepovers at my friends’, I would wake up early to devour their copies of Seventeen, Vogue, Teen and YM because I couldn’t afford my own.
I was steadily promoted through the years until I was handling the entire magazine, books and digital division. The opportunities to learn, travel and grow were amazing. My reasons for leaving were both complicated and simple. The simplest answer was that after 16 years, I wanted to explore what else was out there and see if there were other adventures ahead for me.
This is what I learned two years after I left my cushy job:
1. I learned to be a beginner again.
I was the one people turned to for advice from dealing with a disgruntled advertiser to a cover that wasn’t quite working to hiring a new editor-in-chief.
When I left, I became a beginner again, starting with my life coach training and doing marketing consulting on the side for industries I had no experience in (e-commerce, a Pilates studio, real estate development). It was humbling to not know the answers, to be the one to write the press releases, call the printers, deliver marketing collaterals, implement a new software program, instead of having a team to handle all of that for me.
2. I learned to ask for help.
And I learned how generous everyone was. I asked colleagues for contacts and introductions. I cold-called suppliers. I was patiently tutored on WordPress hosting and SEO. I was embraced and reassured during life coach training when I was blanking out and crying during our practice sessions. I discovered how invaluable Google really is.
3. I learned to be multi-passionate.
I thought that the only work I could do was to be a publisher of books and magazines. But I learned how to be a social entrepreneur, life coach, writer, blogger, knitting teacher, website producer, marketing consultant, purchasing director.
The world tells us to find the one thing we should be passionate for. But why do we have to when it’s so much fun to try out new things and explore what we’re curious about?
Leaving a cushy job meant leaving the high salary, annual bonus, company car, gas and cellphone allowance and other comfortable benefits. I had to stay within a budget and limit my impromptu shopping trips. But what I gained was more valuable—more self-knowledge, the realization that I didn’t really need so much and that I have so much more time to devote to what was important to me.
5. I learned to be open.
I learned to put myself out there, to not be embarrassed to ask (even if there was no answer), to write as if thousands of people were reading my blog. I learned to say yes to opportunities as they presented (from going up the mountains of Banaue to teach women to make knit monsters to traveling to California for life coach training, from winding yarn into small balls for the knitting classes I taught to discovering new book concepts at the Frankfurt Book Fair), to see where this road would take me.
6. I learned to be comfortable with discomfort.
I was shocked to learn how much of my identity was tied in with work and how important I was in my busy-ness. I had to learn how to define myself in other terms, to see how much worth and value I already had, to see that I was not a nobody, even if I didn’t have meetings or a full schedule or even a calling card.
7. I learned how to slow down.
After driving myself hard to meet target after target for 16 years (without pausing to be grateful or even acknowledge each milestone), I had to learn to be okay with the empty spaces in my planner, to have nothing on my to-do list, to have time to nap, to knit, to have lunch with friends in the middle of the week, to watch the first showing of a blockbuster movie.
8. I learned how to work at weird hours.
Full-day shoot on a Sunday? Check. Four a.m. blog post? Check. Client sessions that end at 10:30 p.m.? Check. All-weekend selling at a bazaar? Check.
But the benefit of my weird schedule are free Mondays, a mid-week respite or my favorite mid-afternoon nap break.
9. I learned that I still had to take myself everywhere.
I learned that leaving my job didn’t solve all my problems. It didn’t make me automatically happy. I still needed to take myself—my overthinking, worrying, procrastinating, fearful self—wherever I went. It’s an adventure of discovery, of newness, of never-ending change and while it may look different from dealing with disgruntled advertisers or editors, it’s still the same me that has to deal with the difficulties that being my own boss brings.
10. And I learned to not take things so seriously, to laugh again, to celebrate the small wins, to be grateful.
