Quitting a Job is Bittersweet Yet It Is Time for a Change

The nightmares should have been a clue that it was time to think about quitting a job. I’m not talking about my primary occupation as a Sacramento Realtor. That job is as strong as ever. Still closing a couple of homes a week or so on average and turning in $30+ million in sales on an annual basis. With all of that action going on you would not think I would have time for a second job, but being an overachiever tends to come with the territory of being a top producer in Sacramento real estate.

In fact, some people are shocked to learn I even held a second job. They see I often rank in the top 10 agents in Sacramento and wonder how I do it. It was a passion for me in the beginning. I had to interview by doing the job for three weeks, back when About.com was owned by The New York Times. It was a prestigious and exciting place to work, and the experts were pioneers. We each had our websites to run and populate with content, as well as monitor a discussion board, write daily blogs and a weekly newsletter. My husband pooh-poohed the idea when I first mentioned it to him, but I was eventually hired and was totally shocked when I received my first paycheck.

It paid very well back then because we were the creators of everything. One could easily earn six figures freelancing on the internet. We held About.com meetings all over the country. But since 2006, other companies have jumped aboard. There’s been plagiarism galore. Thieves today swipe content and publish it on their own websites. The company has been sold so many times I hardly know who owns it now. Yet, I stayed onboard for 12 years, loving most of it. But there is a downside.

Obviously, I’ve been thinking about resigning. Even my dreams have been telling me to let go. But quitting a job does not come easily to me. Being a content writer is very demanding, and you’re on a tight schedule every month. Many of my weekends were devoted mostly to writing for About.com, and now I suddenly have my life back. It’s a strange feeling. When I pause, I recall vacations overseas when I desperately sought internet connections to update my articles on About.com. I was always in a panic about that job.

However, when I looked at the time expended in exchange for compensation, it just didn’t add up financially anymore. I kept writing even though my income over the years got slashed to about 20% of what I had originally earned. It became a point of diminishing returns for me. We could not come to an agreement on compensation so the contention morphed into a valid reason to resign. I’ve contributed a wealth of information on that site, which will hopefully continue to delight and inform readers as time marches forward.

I’m also not ruling out the possibility of entertaining other offers that are less demanding of my time. But for now, my full-time Sacramento real estate job is quite enough for any human. Quitting a job is like releasing an enormous amount of stress that I didn’t even know I had until I let go.

I wish the company well, but so glad I’m off the hamster wheel.