I'm a burnt out Black woman so I quit my job with no plan

They gave me an ultimatum, so I left

Hey y’all,

I woke up today with so much gratitude. It was one of those days where my thoughts were on flow, so much so that I had to open up the voice recorder app and press the red button (you know it's serious when you have to open up the voice recorder app lol).

This week's newsletter came right on time because I have been in a season of rest and restoration when it comes to my career. I’m a brand marketer by day, and there’s been a huge gap between my life right before I quit—where I hit peak career milestones back to back—and my life now. However, I quit my job last year knowing this would be the case. I’ve been working, but ya girl is way more low-key than I usually am.

Steeped in that feeling, today I had to remind myself of who I am. I popped open Google Photos and scrolled through old photos and videos from career achievements, birthdays, fun trips with friends, and beautiful time spent with family. I realized that the same people in all of those videos and photos are the same people that are still in my life today. The same woman in those memories, is the same woman typing this newsletter. I haven't lost anyone, I haven’t lost me. I have only gained.

As I was recording my voice note earlier, I kept repeating, “Same people, same me.” It grounded me in the fact that even though I'm less visible in my career or online, I still have the same support, love, and community around me. I still hold the same values and I'm still me to my core. And knowing that just brought me so much gratitude and peace. Cheers to being the same me with the same people, hopefully forever.

PS - Happy Pride Month to all my Black girls, gurls, and gworlssss!

This Week’s Story

When you let someone know you’re thinking about quitting your job, you’ll most likely hear “In this economy?!!” paired with a face full of judgement and confusion. Holding down a job that you absolutely hate “in this economy” is many of our realities. And while the necessity of doing so is obvious, some of us are still out here taking risks. Enter this week’s author, Dinorah Prevost, who was given an ultimatum at work and decided to choose freedom.

While there was no ultimatum for my situation, I too chose rest with no regrets. It takes months (at minimum) to years to recover from burnout, not just a quick one-week stint on vacation, so if that’s how you’re feeling, sometimes going out with a bang is the only way to get your life back.

Take care,
Anayo Awuzie
EIC of Carefree Ma

I Quit My Job With No Plan: On The Importance of Rest

by Dinorah Prevost

I started working my first job at 17. My high school years were coming to an end, and I wanted to be on my way to what I considered “financial freedom” at the time. 

I thought I wouldn’t ever stop working, at least voluntarily, until a much older age.

This will be a big part of my life now and I will learn to tolerate it, I thought at that still impressionable age, Only rich people can afford to stop or slow down. 

That changed last September. I was almost a decade into securing and maintaining some sort of job when I walked away for the first time. All I had to sustain myself was a vague plan of a possible future, some savings in the bank, and a cash payout for hundreds of hours of unused vacation time.

It took me over a year to make that decision to leave and then act on it, even if it didn’t go as smoothly as I wanted. It started with a Linkedin post I wrote and posted on a random Sunday and ended with my employer asking for my resignation letter the next day. .

I knew the risks both financially and socially, but I needed to take a chance on myself. I have spent my life so far unwilling to take many risks around working, dreading any gaps between jobs.

It has been thrilling to give myself over to a new world. One where I’m carving out the time to get more comfortable with who I am now and what I want from my life.

It all makes sense to me now. However, I blame assimilation and one particular long-held belief for why it took so long.

For 22 years, I grew up and lived in an immigrant home with a West Indian parent who managed to make a way for himself in spite of the systemic issues working against him. He always said it was his hard work that carried him through the difficult times so his belief in it as a necessity was law in my childhood home. My mother was no different in many ways because she also arrived in the U.S. with little money and few long-term opportunities. 

When I was a child, that mindset showed up often. "You need to have chores. They keep you busy." I believe there’s some truth to that but not when it becomes an extreme.

As I got older and took college classes while living at home, it morphed into, "You always need to have a job. Something, anything, to make some money." The concept of rest dangled over my head as a luxury that can only happen once the day is over and all chores are done. I operated like that for all of my teen years and most of my 20s. 

Coming from that home life, I learned to trust in the dominant—and, let’s admit, white—model of career success. Y’all know the “bootstraps” saying, the 10,000 hours theory, and the idea that hard work always wins, even if you are from a marginalized community. If it worked for dad and mom and afforded them a middle class lifestyle at one point, there’s a high chance it will work for me too. 

I finished college, collected the crisp piece of paper that is my degree, and immediately went to work full-time in an industry that gives few breaks physically and mentally: the news media. 

It was drilled into me that the media industry is competitive, draining, and unforgiving at times. What I didn’t realize until later is how much the heavy hand of “the neutral, white perspective” reigns over most outlets, from the local newspapers to the revered national ones. All the professors in the journalism and media department at my small, state university were white after all. 

I struggled to make life and work bearable week after week as a young black woman in overwhelmingly white newsrooms. To add to my feelings of isolation, I worked jobs that made me somewhat invisible to most readers and listeners of the news outlets I worked for. 

I was first a social media and website editor at a regional newspaper. Toiling in the early mornings and late nights, I rarely received credit for my work or the bylines that most journalists covet as reputation and career building. But I wasn’t bothered then because I worked with a team of other young, quirky people who were fun to spend time with. 

It wasn’t until I became an audio producer for a local radio news show that I felt the invisibility settle in. As audio producer Sujong Laughlin notes in her essay on “ghostwriting”, hosts are the most visible people associated with a radio show or podcast. On the other hand, the producer,  she writes, “graciously fades into the background…unless you are incredibly lucky.” 

I was working at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, adapting constantly with few resources as journalists are now used to. I ran on that hamster wheel five days a week, constantly seeking rest and a way forward. 

How the hell am I going to get out of this? I would ask myself. 

I finally reached the point of burnout last summer. I decided to write a post on LinkedIn announcing that I was seeking a new direction.  The next day, my manager asked for my resignation letter. In the moment, I wasn’t upset because I realized it was time for me to keep that promise of a new direction to myself.

Free of my full time job now, I live a frugal existence while searching for new ways to make an income, while also updating my relationship to work and the idea of productivity. 

Is full time work at one job manageable for someone like me? Could a few part time gigs satisfy my income needs and help me be less tied down to one employer? Could freelancing be part of the alternative? 

But most of all, I’ve thought about trying out this idea I first learned about years ago: work to live, not live to work. I want to resist the urge to make work the center of my life and work just enough to get my needs and wants taken care of, whether it’s building my savings account or saving for a vacation or a home of my own. 

I'm also learning how to create a life of more balance and consistent rest through the work of Tricia Hersey. Listening to her talk about her Nap Ministry on an episode of NPR’s Life Kit was refreshing. 

“We're not resting to get ourselves more riled up to be on capitalism's clock,” she says in the interview. “We're resting simply because it's our divine and human right to do so."

It was one of the few times in my life when I’ve heard someone genuinely say that rest is valid and, most of all, necessary, even when time is scarce. Skipping chances to rest only makes life’s situations harder to handle when they come our way. 

That hit me hard as someone who is constantly looking for tasks to do and can’t rest until they are all done, just like when I was growing up at home. 

Add a history of forced labor inflicted on our ancestors across the world and the exhaustion passed along over generations, Tricia says in that same interview. It became clear to me that choosing a more thoughtful way to live can be a revolutionary act. 

I know it’s going to take some practice, but I’m excited to rest for once and embrace caring more for myself. My current plan is solely thinking of my needs before working on someone else’s clock.

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Dinorah Prevost is a Florida-based audio editor, producer and writer. She worked for news outlets in the Tampa Bay region for 6 years but has recently decided to try a new, (mostly) independent path as a freelance writer and editor. In her spare time, she seeks out new hiking adventures at Florida's state parks, listens to endless hours of music on NTS Radio and heads to the beach when the weather is just right.