The Number One Reason Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your God-Awful Job

I am frustrated, and have been probably since I graduated and didn’t have classes to deal with anymore while trying to balance work. Everyone asks you the famous question “What’re you doing now that you’ve graduated?” And I always had such an easy response; “Trying to find a job in my field, not working retail anymore now that I have time!” As always, it was easier said than done.

I have always thought of myself as someone that was ready to grow up and be done with messing around and being irresponsible.

I was excited to work a full time job and have bigger responsibilities, and let me tell you something: I’m doing it now, and it sucks.

Well, let me rephrase that, it’s hard, and it’s terrifying. But the worst part of it all, is that everyone from the outside who isn’t in my shoes, at this moment, tells me to find something better if I’m not happy. And it’s not even that I’m not happy, it’s that I wasn’t ready when I thought I was.

The first day of my job, I thought “Nope, absolutely not”. The second day, I stared at the clock a lot while people talked at me. The third day, I cried. No, I ugly cried with hiccups, snot, and all in front of my new boss. I went home that day, looking at my schedule with a heavy heart and thinking of all of my responsibilities.

And I realized, I wasn’t prepared for this. None of it.

I have all of the textbook reading assignments stored in my brain, and lectures on meaningless nonsense…but nobody ever told me that you’d feel like someone was pushing you into a dark tunnel with no light, forcing you to find your way to the end.

But the fourth day, I came back. My new boss asked me “Why the sudden change of heart?” And I really had no idea how to answer that because in my head, my brain was screaming no still, to get the hell out. But as I’ve come to realize in my short twenty-something life, you have to do a lot of things that you don’t want to. I know, how cliché. But seriously, there are a million things you’re not going to want to do, and growing up is going to be number one before you know it, it certainly was before I knew it.

No matter how much you want to dig your heels into the ground and turn back to what’s familiar, you have to push yourself to keep going.

You’re probably going to resent a lot of your friends that still have free time because they haven’t graduated yet. The ones that can still go places and ask you. The nights you’ll get texts to come out at 10pm but you have to stop yourself from going because you work in the morning. You’ll be scared, but what’s even scarier is staying in the same place because you didn’t try, and you didn’t try and see what you’re capable of.

The world isn’t going to fall out from under you, I promise. If you fail, so you’ve failed, but you keep going, and that’s what I’ll do right now, just keep going.