Let me get the facts straight: I didn't quit. I was fired. In fact, I was fired on New Years Eve.
It was like a rude slap in the face coupled with a "Happy New Year."
I was actually thrilled, but also scared and nervous too. I had been sick of going to that job for months, but the fear of the unknown crippled me and prevented me from quitting.
So, I tolerated the 9-to-5 grind (or 6-to-4 in my case), day in and day out until my numbers dropped below quota so they had to let me go.
For you non-sales people: I didn't make my boss enough money.
My boyfriend, Prince, had been working for himself for the past six months and was encouraging me to do the same, but I was fearful.
How would I make money? What about my stable paycheck every two weeks? What about health insurance? All these questions were constantly running through my head.
Then, the alarm would sound at 5:15am. My heart would sink and my chest would cramp. I'd slowly peel back the covers, while enviously glaring at my sleeping boyfriend, thinking about how lucky he was to work from home.
He was actually excited to get up in the morning. He actually enjoyed what he was doing.
Why does this surprise me? I'd ask myself.
Shouldn't we all be doing work that we're passionate about?
However, if you take a look at the 2013 Gallup report, my boyfriend's love for his career should come as a surprise. The harsh reality is about 70 percent of Americans hate their jobs or are completely disengaged at work.
70 percent!
Meaning: Prince is a complete outlier.
I don't know when we lost sight of choosing a meaningful and exciting career, but somehow it happened. By the time they fired me, I wanted more out of life and I knew I was ready to give entrepreneurship a try.
3 Reasons Why I Made The Switch
1) Freedom
Ahh, freedom... Even just the word freedom has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
But, while working at my last job, I didn't truly know freedom.
I knew freedom when my manager was on paternity leave for just shy of two weeks and I wasn't being micromanaged.
I knew freedom on the one day our Internet crashed at the office so we were asked to work from home.
Three-day weekends... I knew freedom.
However, besides that, I had lost sense of what the word really meant.
Nowadays, I work from home whenever I want. I don't even have to change out of my pajamas if I don't want to.
We have the flexibility to travel, and with a stable Internet connection, work from anywhere in the world. In the past three months alone, we've worked from the beach in LA, an Airbnb tree house in Northern California, and bustling coffee shops in Denver, Washington DC, and New York... and we have plans to go abroad soon.
The world is our office; we know freedom to the core.
2) More Time Together
Prince would be eagerly awaiting my return every day at around 4pm. But I'd be exhausted logging 10 hours on someone else's punch clock. I'd give him a kiss, hit the gym if I could muster up enough energy, cook dinner and tuck myself into bed.
It sounds crazy now, but I used to give away five days of every week to work, only to receive two painfully short days during the weekend with my loved one. Consequently, this means I spent more time with my manager than I did my boyfriend.
Now, I don't know about you, but that 5:2 ratio simply wasn't satisfying.
I was sick of living for the weekend.
With entrepreneurship, I didn't have to. Mondays feel like Saturdays. And I get to spend every day with Prince.
3) Couples Who Create Together Stay Together
I believe that humans are meant to create.
However, somewhere in life, we lose our creativity and begin to consume more than we create.
If you ask a room full of kindergarteners how many of them consider themselves artists, the whole room will raise their hand. If you ask a room full of adults the same question, virtually no one raises their hand.
Why is this?
Why don't we continue to see ourselves as artists as we grow into adulthood?
When do we decide that we're nothing more than our job description - putting our daily life inside a cubicle, our ideal life into a two-week vacation, and life's other precious moments on the backburner?
If you as me, we have no use living this way.
We're meant to live and create. And having the opportunity to create with someone else is even better.
Not only do I have my boyfriend and a robust relationship, but we're also building a community of like-minded entrepreneurs. According to another Gallup study, people who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged with their job. We're passionate about what we do because we're working for ourselves, not someone else.
We're excited by and engaged in what we do because we're invested in each other and we want to see each other succeed.
Deciding not to go back to the corporate world after I was fired wasn't easy, but it's by far the best decision I've ever made. If you're looking to live a more limitless lifestyle - one filled with freedom, friendship, and an abundance of creativity - I'd encourage you to try the entrepreneurial route too. The risk involved is easily outweighed by the rewards.