A short while ago I quit my job with no place to go. Superficially, an irrational decision as everything was going fine. I was well compensated and regarded, but I just couldn’t quite settle.
Getting uncomfortable
Being a little uncomfortable can be a good thing. It means living outside the comfort zone enough to grow personally and “being comfortable with being uncomfortable”, which I’ve often heard thrown around. Instead, I’m talking about being unsettled in a way that eats away at the core of your being very slowly. It’s a sense of no longer being on the right path. Your path and that of your company and career have deviated sufficiently that it’s no longer possible to keep the two together and stay moderately sane.
It’s a little like how the direction that a compass points, magnetic north, and true north are very close but not quite the same. Where I live they are just a couple of degrees out, which is not much. Follow one or the other on a compass for a couple of kilometres and this will make just a little difference to your navigation, which you can easily correct. Keep going for much further though and it gets harder to bring yourself back in line without a significant re-evaluation of where you are at.
Letting go
I see navigational errors have parallels with being in a job for a long time. You can spend 2 or 3 years where your values roughly align and there is mutual benefit to employer and employee in taking a role before moving on. 5 years of this and you need to quiet closely aligned. Any longer, like I did, and you really have to surrender yourself to the company way or be the person setting direction. I was doing a bit of both, but not really enough of either to feel settled, and ultimately I had to let go.
Correcting the course
Now, with the tension released, and a couple of months behind me to reflect, I realise it was the right thing. It was right to let go for a while and reorientate myself. Rather than leaping from one long term relationship to another, and taking some of the issues I’d developed, a healthy break is helping to evaluate what I would do better next time around.
I wouldn’t actually suggest deliberately taking a break if you are regularly changing job or you have commitments that a lack of income won’t meet. Chances are though, if you’ve been with an employer for 10 or more years that you have built in a bit of a safety net and the time, pace and distance gained may be therapeutic. Of course, no one can decide this except you alone.