[Photo Credit: yankara]

I’ve been hard at work on my next ebook for the last several days. For the introduction, I found myself having to dig into my own story and discuss the reasons for me quitting my 9-to-5 at the hospital, going freelance and ultimately starting Wage Slave Rebel and all the events that led to me settling on those reasons. I’ve had more than enough time to reflect on everything and it’s been especially nice to realize that I’m looking back on my story with the eyes of a reasonably experienced entrepreneur, a position in which I never thought I’d find myself.

I often talk about the job I held at the hospital and how much I absolutely loathed it. It’s become the single most important detail in my story. When relating my decisions and my perspectives to people, the purpose for everything I’ve done inevitably comes down to me being assigned to tasks that were completely unfulfilling and, at times, demeaning.

But after taking a more thorough look back, something really stuck out to me. While I had thought my decision had been between working a job I hated at the hospital or quitting a job I hated at the hospital, there was actually a third option that might have prevented me from escaping anything.

In fact, had I taken it there may never have been anything I felt necessary to escape.

The Job I Never Talk About

About a month into the hospital job, I’d already figured out it wasn’t anything I wanted to do for longer than I had to. It was already weighing me down and my will to live was being sucked out of me with the passing of each day.

It was around this time that I heard a Starbucks had just opened about five minutes from my house. I checked it out that same day and immediately fell in love. Over a period of two or three weeks it became  the one little escape I got from my sorry existence. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the smells and it became a relaxing way to pretend I was actually the artist/writer/musician/poet/bohemian I dreamed of being than the needle-and-organ jockey I actually was.

Then I got this bright idea! What if I could get rid of the hospital job altogether and somehow find a way to work as a Barista. I mean, it was closer to my house, it was a much less stressful environment, the people were nice enough and I’d be encouraged to mix and try every possible Frappuccino flavor under the sun. Most importantly, it paid the same hourly wage with half the work.

So, while working at the hospital I put in an application at Starbucks. It wasn’t more than a couple days before I was asked to do an interview and it wasn’t more than a week after the interview that I became a full-fledged Starbucks employee.

The job, as it turned out, was actually as awesome as I had expected it to be. Customers were nice, I loved the artsy vibe, I loved being able to try every new concoction we were able to come up with. There was just one problem though.

I still worked at the hospital.

The Mistake

After getting the awesome gig at Starbucks, I should have put in my notice at the hospital and left it behind. It no longer had anything to offer me. The always-changing, flexible schedule of the hospital would make it difficult for my manager at Starbucks to schedule me and working a string of 12 hour days would be enough to drive anyone mad.

And did it ever!

I didn’t quit the hospital. I allowed the expectations of others and my own timid indecision to keep me in limbo. I jumped from one job to the next, I never had a single day off, I couldn’t keep my schedules straight and I was constantly tired. Never in my life have I experienced so much stress and misery as I did in those days.

After four weeks of tolerating my schedule and my terrible “12-hour day” moods, my manager finally said enough was enough. I showed up on a Monday — the day I was supposed to take the barista certification test, no less — and I was promptly fired.

And what was I left with?

Well… a few more months of a job I hated without any longer having the benefit of a relaxing coffee shop to remind me of who I wanted to be. I was too embarrassed to go back to that particular Starbucks. I still haven’t gone back.

Confidence and Courage

With the confidence and courage I feel I have today, the end of this story seems absolutely absurd. Why wouldn’t I quit the hospital and work at Starbucks? Why wouldn’t I dedicate myself to the one I enjoyed rather than the one I hated?

I wouldn’t because I depended on other people to know what I wanted and to fuel my own self-satisfaction. I decided to live my life by the rules of others, not because I was stupid, but because I had been so numb to life I hadn’t made any rules of my own.

There’s a time when it’s more worthwhile to quit. Times when you may actually benefit more from doing less. And when you wander into one of these times, it really takes confidence — the confidence in yourself that you know you’re doing the right thing and that you know where you’ll go from here — and courage — the courage to risk everything for happiness.

These days we have are too limited to spend even one doing something we absolutely hate just to make sure other people are pleased, other people who never have to live with the consequences or the misery of our actions.

Learn to do things for yourself.

And even more importantly, learn what not to do at all.

Related posts

1. Do you hate your job or are you just misusing your downtime?
2. Diary of a Wage Slave Rebel: From a Starbucks in Portland
3. All It Takes Is Persistence
4. How To Break Free From The Conventional Life
5. Enoughism