Resigning from a career

I’ve been a software engineer my entire adult life. I have never done anything else. And I just submitted my resignation notice and my last day will be the 25th of July.

I will for the first time in my adult life not be a software engineer. I’ve been in between jobs before, but I’ve never had the intention to just be jobless. Who knows? Maybe in the future I can come back to software engineering if there is a calling. But for now that chapter in my life is coming to a close.

Last summer my wife and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. We went to Europe and realized that this was the first international trip we did for our pleasure. 10 years of marriage, no kids, and yet we were so in our own lives that we never took that much time to just be with ourselves.

In the trip I had a lot of reflections about how the 10 years have been centered around me. We came to America because I decided it was good for us. We stayed in America after I got fired because I decided it was still the best place to be for us. My wife gave up her career and was prohibited from working, even when working meant so much for her, simply because I decided a green card is worth that.

10 years later I realized how selfish I had been when it comes to this marriage. Did I ever let my life take the steering wheel? Did I ever follow my wife blindly as she did for me? I was deeply humbled by her love for me when I realized I didn’t do any of the things she did for me.

So I made a decision. For the next 10 years of our lives, she would drive and I would follow. Now that I think about it, this feels natural because when we drive she is the one who drives now. One of the things we decided to do was try out living in different places so we find the next best place for us, should we find such a place.

With that we have a plan to live in some different places around the world. But this comes at the cost of a job in the United States. I talked to my boss about potentially taking some unpaid leaves, but when I told them that I would be in and out of the country after the immediately upcoming trip they decided to decline my request.

My boss wanted me to think about it. But I didn’t really need to think about it, because I had already made up my mind. The unpaid leave wasn’t for me; it was for the company. Since it’s not useful to the company, I can just leave. I submitted my notice today.

I’ve quit before, but how my quitting is being received is so different. In the past I’ve always quit for the next company doing more or less the same thing. So the conversations are all around “I’m going to miss working with you”, but there is this greater sense of “but we’ll probably continue to be with each other because we’re still in this field together”.

Now that I’m leaving this entire industry behind, I can feel that people have a genuine sense of wonder around what will happen in my life. They see me leaving without stress, they see me leaving without any sense of worries about what I’m going to do with my life. It’s like I’m retiring because I won the fucking lottery or something, but I haven’t.

They are genuinely happy for me and they are excited on my behalf. Which makes the inner unloved me feel so strange. Is this what it’s like to be loved? Even with all of my practice and uncovering of my karma there still exists this inner Billy who feels like nobody really loves him for him. And he feels so strange today because he is seeing all these people who genuinely wish the best for him.

What is next? Traveling and living in lots of places. My annual Buddhist training retreats. A full time coaching business along with a YouTube streaming career. More online courses and content creation. More baking bread, more loving my dogs. More fundraising for the places and causes that need it. More volunteering at the animal shelter.

In other words, more Billy to come. I’ll write more about the end of my career when I turn in my gun and badge.