I quit my job… for real this time. lol | November Life Update

Can you celebrate quitting your job when it’s the 100th time? Idk but here we are.

The Back Story

When I was little, I wanted to be a business woman, then a lawyer, then a police officer. In college, I settled on Human Resources. I witnessed a lot of people in my life who hated their jobs. I wanted to be an employee advocate and help change the system that led to burn out and misery. As I nestled into my 40-hour work week as a forklift recruiter and HR assistant in a gray corner cubicle, I realized it’s all a f*cking scam. I won’t go into that. I will say I liked that job a lot, but I knew I couldn’t do it forever. When I expressed to my 40+-year-old co-worker who sat in the cubicle next to me that I wanted to travel, she looked me dead in the eye (like the characters from Get Out) and said, “LEAVE. GO TRAVEL.”

I quit my job to travel at 22. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an 8 year anti-sabbatical. I quit my jobs over and over for years in the pursuit of travel, adventure, or as some of my family members would say “running away from adulthood.” Or my personal fav, “wasting my college education.” What is adulthood anyway? And—are we all on the same page now that the US college system that has us thousands of dollars in debt is a literal scam? Moving on.

Once I quit a job after my manager screamed in my face. He screamed at all of us. I wrote a blog about that one. One of my favorite jobs I quit was serving at Cheesecake Factory. My coworkers threw me parties every time I quit to travel (3x 🥲). I’ll always thank Cheesecake Factory for funding the majority of my travels.

I got *fired* as a bartender in Wrigleyville for dancing too much and not tending the bar. In my humble opinion, you really can’t expect people to stay in one place for 8+ hours. I quit a restaurant in River North to move to South Korea. I hated that one.

3 years ago I quit my teaching job in Busan, South Korea. Search “hagwon horror story” (or reference this blog) and you’ll understand why I quit that one. Fun fact: quitting your teaching job in Korea has its own coined phrase, it’s called a “midnight run.” Additional fun fact: A journalist from Vice reached out to me about my “midnight run.” I told her everything about my job. They ended up picking someone else for the episode (you can find it here on YouTube). 

I quit my last serving job to move to Mexico. At my going away party a coworker said to me, “you’ll be back,” insinuating I would “fail” and come back to my serving job. I thank her for that, because it pushed me harder to never show my face in that restaurant again, just in spite. ❤️

I Quit Someone Else’s “Dream Job”

This time around I quit a job I really liked, even loved some days. One that some would consider “a dream job.” I’m not sure if I believe in that term. Somewhere along my journey, my “dream job” shifted from a HR professional to a travel writer, a published author, and then a full-time LGBTQ+ travel blogger. I still have dreams of the third one. 

3 months ago, after saving 6+ months of expenses and burnt (out) to a crisp, I quit my job to pursue my dream. The gay travel blogger one. The one where I get to talk about travel and gay stuff all day 😩🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻. I did it for my younger queer self. My younger queer self who needed representation. I was able to quit my job because of my incredible support system of my girlfriend, my family, friends, my supportive job at the time and my community on here, IG and TikTok. 

Cheers to all the creators out there who’ll have to explain to their families this holiday season how they pay their rent from TikToks and making short lil videos for a living.

Love you. Thank you so much for being here.

-Court