So you hate your job, but can’t bring yourself to quit.

I know the soul sucking feeling of going into a job you hate every day, and also the gut-wrenching feeling of being adrift out there in a world with no job prospects and no money.

I spent over fifteen years building my dream career, only to discover once I got there it was more like a living nightmare. So, after years (yes years) of going back and forth with myself, I quit my job and decided to take my chances on my own.

I went from general manager to an assembly line worker all within the first six months of quitting my job, and believe me, it’s just as hard as it sounds.

I’m cutting straight through all the glorified internet B.S. to tell you what it’s really like on the other side of achieving your dreams.

To tell you what it’s really like going broke, losing all hope, realizing there’s no turning back, and somehow finding the strength to keep pushing forward to that better future you promised yourself.

1. It’s Lonely at The Top, But It’s Even Lonelier at The Bottom

This is for two reasons.

One being, the vast majority of us aren’t going to want to openly tell our friends and family that we quit our job.

My family is from another country where they had to struggle with little to no opportunities. They have an ingrained sense of working hard because they know all-too-well the feeling of not being able to work at all. I could hear myself trying my best to explain all my heartfelt reasons for quitting, and the personal and professional hell I had been living in for years, only for them to say, “so you quit your job because you didn’t like it?”

Even when I did begin to open up (months after the fact) about how I had quit my job to become a writer, most people were down-right shocked that I would give up a steady, high-earning career for the unchecked (and for the foreseeable future, unpaid) world of writing.

Which brings me to my second reason…

Although some people will admire you, even respect you, they don’t want to be you.

For many people, it’s exhilarating enough to just talk about quitting their job; not actually do it.

Our social job system is set up to promote that true success is only available to us inside the institutionalized structure of well-defined business roles and corporate rules. It’s hard for many to imagine a monetarily successful life outside of those borders, myself included.

Not everyone is going to understand your decision, and I’m willing to bet most of the people in your life probably won’t.

Believe me, you don’t have to feel a need to make a public service announcement about your life choices, but quitting your job can make you feel very vulnerable.

Whether you choose to confide in others about your decision, or keep your plans to yourself, either way, it’s lonely when you do tell people, and it’s lonely when you don’t.

2. It’s a Professional Journey Just as Much as it is a Personal One

If you think your reasons for wanting to quit your job are all about your on-the-job problems, you’re in for a rude awakening once you’re out of work and on your own. Quitting your job is just as much about your personal problems as it is your professional ones, and for many of us, maybe more.

The fact that you are in a position in your life where you’re miserable, broken, even depressed, and still feel as though you can’t leave, are tell-tale signs that some major inner work is in order.

Remaining in an unhappy and unfulfilling career is the equivalent to remaining in a toxic relationship, and the excuses are nearly identical, “I’ve put in so many years of work,” “Things will get better eventually,” “I don’t want to let everyone down.”

Don’t mistake the point I’m trying to make here, there is some validity to the reasons why you want to stay, and your job probably really does suck, but once you’re out and on the other side, you’ll need to do some serious personal work if you’re going to survive on your own.

Use this time of transition in your life to evaluate your ego, validation issues, define what success means to you, and all the multitude of reasons of how you got into this situation in the first place, so you don’t repeat it.

3. Don’t Take Superficial Advice from the Internet

Just like you shouldn’t quit your job because other people at work talk about doing it, you also shouldn’t quit your job because of what you read on the internet.

Superficial advice is one of the most detrimental things people can give, and unfortunately, the internet is full of it.

I’ve joined a few online support groups  for people who’ve also taken the plunge and quit their job, and when I see other people post their heartfelt feelings about how their job is emotionally, physically, and mentally draining, how it’s impacting their life and overall happiness, and then I see people respond with typical internet advice of, “life is short, you have to take a chance now,” “think of who you’ll be in a few years,” or worse, quoting some time-honored thinker to drive home their thoughtless piece of advice, “twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do,” it almost makes me sick to my stomach.

Anyone who has ever truly quit their job and been without work, hope, and money, doesn’t throw that kind of advice so casually and haphazardly around.

If you think your job is hard, life out here without a job is hard too, so take what you’re about to do seriously.

If you decided to possibly bankrupt your family and pull the literal security rug out from under your feet, don’t rely on hollow internet advice as any form of motivation or justification for your decision.

4. You’ve Got to Prepare!

There is nothing sentimental about this. You’ve got to prepare for the inevitable.

Not having enough money to pay your bills is gut-wrenching, avoiding debt collectors is humiliating, having to call your credit card companies to say, “hey, I don’t have the money I owe you, and I won’t have it for a long time,” I don’t care who you are, that’s a defeating experience to have, no matter how nice the call center rep on the other end is.

This isn’t to scare you out of leaving, but rather to encourage you to exercise caution when planning. It’s a hard road ahead.

When I decided to leave my job, I saved up for a few months’ worth of bills, but the unexpected happened, and it didn’t last. I had to pick up any work I could get where I could still find time to write (hence enter the assembly line job).

This isn’t the sweet part of my story about redemption and success. It was just as hard as you’re probably imagining it is. There were many days I truly wondered if I would make in under the weight of my own personal defeat, and if I had made the right decision in choosing to leave.

Life is still happening whether you have a job or not, and having a little bit of a financial cushion, or a break in case of emergency plan, no matter how small, may be the only thing saving you from going under, or even worse, going back.

Which brings me to my final point…

5. At Some Point in Time, You’re Going to Want to Go Back

Like all bad relationships, you’re going to look back over your shoulder and wonder if what you left was really as bad as you thought it was.

This is especially true when all your money runs out, no one is visiting your blog, and your inbox is full of more rejection emails than it is spam.

For me, I hit this fork in the road several times. I’d see a posting for a position that would read something like this: “tons of experience needed; must be available to work mornings, afternoons, weekends, holidays; responsible for hiring and training all staff; starting pay-next to nothing.”

Job postings are like a dating ad for jobs with all their abusive and narcissistic traits on full display. And yet, I still submitted an application a few times. Weird, I know.

You will eventually come to a crossroads where you’re going to have to decide to either go back, or keep trudging along. In some cases, making this decision may even be harder than your initial one to leave.

Just like in any journey, the amount of personal, financial, and professional preparation you put into the beginning, will ultimately be what determines if you decide to go back, or keep moving forward.

Would I recommend it?

It depends on the person you are, and what problems you are willing to endure for the sake of your dreams. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, asked it best,

“What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.”

I had become so miserable at my job, that at the time, the possibility of becoming broke and losing everything seemed like a more enviable option.

Imagine the worst possible scenario that could possibly happen to you, and see if it’s something you can live through.

For me, that was not being able to afford my rent, having to move into a small one-bedroom apartment, and going back to a mindless job just to make end’s meat. And you know what, it all happened, and you also know what, none of it killed me.

The point of all this isn’t to discourage you from leaving your job, it’s to prepare you for the very real, but also very rewarding, uphill battle it will be if you choose to do so.

You know yourself well enough to know what you can and cannot do. My recommendation is just don’t short-change yourself, your potential, and your possibility, because of fear.