This is for those of us who were only ever taught the company life.
I Was Only Taught to Join a Company
School teaches you this. Get good grades. Go to a good school. Join a good company. After that, the correct answer is to be evaluated inside the company, get promoted, and work until you retire.
But here is the strange part. The life where you do not join a company. The life where you earn as an individual. The path where you work without belonging to an organization. Almost none of that was ever taught to me.
It is as if, from the very start, we were guided into a world with only one option.
The Real Reason People Want to Quit
The reason people want to quit a job is not a grand dream. It is not self-fulfillment.
It is unfairness. People whose values do not match yours. A boss you cannot reason with. An evaluation system you cannot accept.
“Am I going to spend most of my life with people like this?”
That sense of wrongness is the first doubt many people feel.
I Want to Quit, But I Am Afraid
Even so, most people cannot move.
What if I change jobs and it fails. What if I go out on my own and cannot make a living. What if my situation gets worse than it is now.
Anxiety keeps tipping the scale back and forth.
I want to quit. But I am afraid. I want to stay. But it hurts. Back and forth, back and forth.
People Who Hesitate Are Not Weak
Here is one thing I can say clearly.
A person who is hesitating is not a weak person. They are a person who has seen more than one option.
Someone who is fully convinced does not hesitate. Someone who truly believes that being a company employee is the correct answer does not worry.
You hesitate when you can see both of these:
- a life bound to an organization
- a life lived as an individual
- the road of stability
- the road of freedom
You hesitate when you have seen the value in both.
That is why I can say this. This is the work of choosing your own life. It is fine to be lost.
I Was There Myself
This is the reality for a person standing at that point of hesitation.
Broadly, there are only three options.
- Stay at the company
- Change jobs
- Earn outside the company
Every one of them is correct. Every one of them is wrong. The only thing that matters is that you choose for yourself.
What I Noticed After Retirement
From here, it becomes a matter of practical work, not philosophy.
If you change jobs, which services are safe. What realistic routes back into work exist even in your 50s. Which side jobs are scams, and which are real. What is a realistic first step if you want to earn as an individual.
These are the concrete choices that come after the hesitation. I want to sort through them, one by one.
Hesitating Is Not Standing Still
Even while you hesitate, life keeps moving forward. You work. You eat. You spend time with your family. Even while you are lost, you are living properly.
It looks like you have stopped, but in truth you are thinking. To be thinking means you have not given up. A person who has given up does not hesitate. They end it with “oh well, this is fine.”
A person who keeps on hesitating has not yet let go of their own life. That is not weakness. It is stubbornness of the good kind.
No One Knows the Right Answer
The person who stayed. The person who quit. The person who went out on their own. Can any of them stand tall and say, “this was the right answer”? I doubt it.
The one who stayed sometimes thinks, “if only I had quit.” The one who quit sometimes thinks, “if only I had stayed.” Whatever road you choose, the grass next door looks greener.
So there is nothing to do but walk the road you chose yourself. When someone else decides your road, you blame that someone else when you regret it. When you choose your own road, the regret is your own to carry. And that, at least, is easier to accept.
It Is Fine to Be Lost. Then Choose.
I will say it once more.
To hesitate is not the weakness of a person who cannot decide. It is the natural state of a person who is trying to take their own life into their own hands.
So it is fine to be lost.
Because it is fine to be lost, gather the information, learn your options, and weigh them on your own scale.
Staying at the company is a choice. Changing jobs is a choice. Earning as an individual is a choice.
Not the right answer handed to you by someone else. Your own choice.
It is fine to be lost. And then, choose.
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