The Leap Away from Work

We're finally back from Asia, which was lovely. I'll have a summary next week, but today I have a quick post on leaping away from work.

I’m finishing Tess Vigeland’s Leap, which is maybe the best book I read in 2016. It documents her decision to leave the big, fancy job hosting Marketplace Weekend, without a specific plan for what would come next. No job lined up. Not starting a charity or a business or writing a novel: just an understanding that what she was doing wasn’t working all that well anymore, and that something needed to change. A real leap, without knowing where she would land.

The book should be required reading for anyone working towards an early retirement, because when I hear the plans of what we personal finance bloggers will do after leaving work, they sound pretty similar to what Vigeland's talking about. It’s always a little vague when we talk about financial independence, isn't it? We’re going to see the world, either by travel hacking or maybe even in a tiny house on wheels. We're going to rekindle our passions. We’re going to take our days back, and finally live our lives again, and make them adventures. Stuff like that. I’m no different: my "plan" is just to divvy up my day more evenly, then take some naps.

All that may be honest, and that's important, but it’s not all that specific.

We early retirees feel the need for a detailed plan when we leave the salaried job with good pay and paid vacation and matching 401k. Because why would you give up all that income-based security, just to walk into the unknown?

Plus, there are those pesky bills and unexpected medical emergencies that are sure to pop up over a sixty year retirement. At some point, might we need another traditional job with corporate security to shelter us? Don’t we worry about what will happen to our family if (or when) disaster strikes?

The traditional FI response is to point to our big, honking pile of money. We have a million bucks, so there. Diversification and the four percent rule will save us. We'll likely earn some money on the side, too, and in a way more enjoyable way than we did at the nine-to-five. And if we need to go to work again, we will. We're smart, well educated, and in the end some employer will take us back. On every level, the naysayers' fears are unfounded.

While all of that might be true, there’s still a weird feeling in my gut when I think about what to tell people when they ask what I do for a living. For one, having a lot of money doesn’t really address the lack of a specific plan of what comes after I leave work. A million dollars is not a plan. It's just money.

But what I think is driving this anxiety is that my career is a lot more than just a salary, benefits, and security. It also comes with status. These days, I have a title that has the word "Senior" in it. That's nice. My career shows that I have some ambition, that I have professional goals and, hey, look at that, I’m achieving them, too. Aren't I impressive?

As Vigeland notes, our careers offer us regular chances to indulge our ambitions and salve our insecurities. If we don't have a healthy self esteem, a career is a way to show others that we're doing well, and to gain their acceptance:

"I think that need for approval can be extended...to an entire career, an entire body of work such that, if you get positive responses to it on a regular basis, those responses feed your ambition, and it is very hard to imagine living without them. And what I feared in many ways was that in leaping I would not just be quitting, but, ultimately, I would also be letting the ambition seep out of me like a leaky balloon." 

If I accept that basic truth (that my career, along with doing a lot of other great things, also offers me a chance to salve my ambitions), then I have two choices. On one hand, I can come up with some other plan on how to satisfy that itch to achieve (and show others that I've achieved). I can find a new passion project that just happens to have some impressive perks, or a cool title, or something that inspires envy.

Or, I can try to mitigate my ambition. I can lean into the fact that I don't really know what comes next after I quit. I can learn not to worry so much about the possibility that friends, neighbors, and former colleagues will probably think I'm wasting my time and my skills. I can come to terms with the reality that others might not be as impressed with my life as they were before or, more likely, they'll just think that my life is weird. Something to just raise your eyebrows at, rather than admired.

The logical side of me thinks that's okay. It knows that trying to get external validation is not a great way to build self-esteem.

But the realistic side of me knows that I'm an extrovert, and that I like seeming at least somewhat impressive to people, and that desire drives a lot of my behavior.

Still, I want to actually leave the workforce: to leap into this next life, without really having a perfect definition of what it will be. As with any leap, the real hurdle to get over is in between your ears. With all the focus on budgets and asset allocation, all the external stuff, I need to give more attention and time to getting my mind right. So that when the countdown nears and the spreadsheets say it's time to go, I have the guts to actually leap.


*Photo is from wolfsavard at Flickr Creative Commons.