QUITTING

So it finally happened, i left my job. The first month it felt amazing, so much time was finally available! This coincided with a beautiful saturated spring of which i could not have enough. Life was slow and lazy, indulgent. I took myself out for coffee almost every morning. I took care of small medical things i had been postponing. I took advantage of the counseling services of the city of Berlin and felt very adult and productive afterwards.

So much taking! I also did a lot of reading and writing and spaziergehen and exercising. I worked out, gently, every morning. I studied Arabic. Everything felt deliciously Valeria. My time was mine and no one else’s.

The second month was tougher. All the time i had on my hands was being filled with so much ease, yet nothing felt productive any more. Do we have to always be productive? Of course not, i know, but telling myself that slowness and self-care are an act of resistance to this maddeningly fast-paced system was of not much relief.

External and internal expectations were as loud as ever. Self-doubt was as crippling and paralysing as ever. Perfectionism kept screaming in my head whenever i would attempt to actually sit and do something – write, study, research, plan. So for the whole second month i did what i do best: live day by day, slowly. I spent a lot of hours in my beautiful Pankow parks, sunbathing, reading, listening to the wind in the trees, dozing off, feeling grateful. I met a lot of friends, went out quite a lot, travelled to see my family, started running again. I went to Fusion, which was tough and intense and beautiful in a whole new way, as it is every year.

Then the clock hit the third month. I am now in the italian country side, alone, for two glorious weeks where i stuffed in my mind all the things i had to do. And a week already went by and my silly self has done absolutely nothing.

I thought that finally quitting my job would unlock something in me, unlock a new version of Valeria who was resolute and practical, who would finally get her shit together.

And so i realised how deeply imbued in all of us, in me, this capitalistic belief of the to-do list was. I believed that quitting my job would suddenly and surely change something in me, like a switch. Sure, a win is a win! I am very proud of myself for having managed to acknowledge my dissatisfaction and deciding that something needed to change. But the job was just the first step.

And now i see myself from the outside, a spoiled child who is grumpy because the candy she was promised (by whom?) as a reward for doing her homework has not kept on coming in daily. Wasn’t my achievement going to deliver satisfaction and happiness? Where did it all go? Did i munch on it too fast or was it simply, likely, never there to being with?

For me, the funniest and most annoying thing about growing up is realising, in my own time and at my own pace, that most of the platitudes we are confronted with all our lives, most of the banalities we hear repeated by our parents and teachers and favourite motivational influencer and we see printed on our start-up office walls – well, most of them are true.

Growth isn’t linear.

Now i understand what it means and the lesson life is trying very hard to teach me is not to give up. Because right now, the cicadas screaming in my ears all day long their numbing summer lullaby, and the waves of my insecurities encountering no obstacles on their destructive path, the temptation to quit yet another time is strong.

Unfortunately, there is really nothing else i can now quit. All i can do is to keep going, somehow, until i meet the version of myself i am slowly trying to become. How disappointing!