Experiencing the great resignation firsthand - 5 March 2021

When (luckily) money piles up…

I had a salary that for my life standards and expectations at that time was pretty good. I was making around 1800€-1900€ net. I rarely drank alcohol, I've never smoked, I rarely ate out, I barely did anything besides working, no gym subscriptions… nothing (but Persian classes). Even before the lockdown.

When the lockdown came, my life got even more "Calvinist". I was looking at my bank account regularly and seeing with pleasure that there was plenty of money I had no way to spend. After all, yes, I went to Law School, but it was actually a branch of a business school and along with the family environment I was raised in, the idea of using money meaningfully was luckily quite natural.

I saw certain initiatives being taken in Italy and I was quite proud of what I was reading. It gave me a dash of energy and motivation to start thinking I needed to do something with that money, but I didn't see how I couldn't contribute in that sense. I wanted to do something cool with that money. I was saving around 1000€ a month, which was a lot.

Pondering the options

With my first or second salary, before Covid, I bought a course about personal finance. I had a clue about what to do, but I still wanted to build an "emergency fund" first and enjoy my life a bit. Hence, when Covid started I didn't have much to invest, which would have been my first option.

Second option: saving to buy a house? Upgrade my room to a studio? Naah… I didn't need it. My room was still okay and anyway every month more you couldn't see the end of the pandemic. Too vague, too long-term.

However, in that course about personal finance, there was a line saying:

When you have not enough money to invest, invest what you have in yourself.

Around mid-April, I started receiving messages on my Instagram profile for Iranians I mentioned here: "Do you also give classes?".

At first, I was a bit intimidated. In the weeks before I had also organized some free calls on Skype, just to know my followers better. It was exhausting but amazing, I had like 10 calls one day.

Nice side-effects

I agreed to give my first class and it was fantastic. I was very stressed about my job because the disorganization was so crazy that I couldn't stand it at all as someone very insecure and anxious.

But, during and after the class, I felt the muscles of my neck and shoulders relaxing and releasing all the tension. It was physical. Teaching was again what I loved.

I went on giving classes over the rest of the month basically for free just to train myself. I had no social life. Instead of spending hours playing video games like my roommates did, I had a second job that wasn't interfering at all with my main one. Rather, I'd say that the side hustle was giving me the energy to retain my sanity in the main one…

Spending review

Around the end of March, I started reviewing all my expenses. Brussels is still nowadays a relatively affordable city compared to Amsterdam or London - and I would say even Milan. So, when I was calculating how much I needed to survive and multiplying it by 12... it sounded surprisingly achievable.

2nd April 2020: I made a rough plan of how much I needed to save every month. There was no way back at all. I refined it then on Excel (and I still use its base to keep track of my expenses and my earnings!).

I spent months counting down the weeks and then the days. It was a horrible feeling actually, because everything was a matter of "waiting to set yourself free". I felt very passive, because anyway I still had my job to do.

In November I told my manager that I wanted to quit, well ahead of the needed notice, because she was not the problem at all, but rather a reason to stay. But, I couldn't take it anymore and teaching was much more pleasurable. I didn't want at any cost anybody to have the least doubt that she had a role in making me leave.

5 March 2021

My last day at work was really weird. It didn't feel real until the very last minutes :)

When I put my foot outside for the last time I started walking towards home because I felt I needed to walk to release the emotion… I started crying helplessly. I couldn't stop it in any way. I also received some gifts, and the farewell messages from my colleagues were very sweet. It was like blowing a balloon.

But no regrets. It was a liberation. The first time that in my life I took my own path, my plan A and not B, C, D, E while waiting to see if something better could happen. Nope, this time I was the one in charge for real.

The recovery

After that day I started dreaming about work every night :) It went on for around 3 weeks. The last 10 days of these 3 weeks I had a total meltdown.

I read a lot of psychology articles and so on, the more I read the more I cried, so I also went to see a therapist. Hearing some words from a stranger who didn't know anything about me was beneficial. Exactly after that day, I woke up and I had forgotten everything. The work anxiety I kept having over the weeks had disappeared.

Over those three hell-ish weeks there were even some days where I had to force myself to eat because I was constantly skipping dinner. I lost 7kg in a matter of weeks. I was feeling bad, but felt no hunger whatsoever, the idea of eating made me feel like throwing up. I was worried about myself and that's where I decided I needed some help.

However, it was not the only side effect, because I had an extremely heavy bruxism which caused me to wake up with a completely blocked jaw in May. Can you believe I couldn't open my mouth enough to eat a spoonful of chickpeas? I had to cut strawberries into slices to eat them.

Needless to say, it was all a matter of stress - which luckily also got solved thanks to some meditation, besides at least 10 sessions of (painful) physiotherapy.

I don't have these problems anymore because now I see things work and can improve, but I'll hardly forget those moments.

While I was living them, it felt like it couldn't be any better. Now, I see the way I've gone and I just think about myself with some empathy and pity, because I had no clue about what a beautiful life I was going to build for myself.