At some point after I quit my job, I was chatting with my grandpa and he shared the rule of the monkey with me: do not let go of one branch until you are holding on to the next. He said it in the context of careers, but it applies to life generally.
In retrospect I think it is great advice, even though he shared it with me after I had given up my ability to follow it…
My old job served as the foundation around which I built the rest of my calendar. There was never a question as to where work ranked in my priority stack. Basically, employment anchored my life such that I never had to grapple with a lot of questions and uncertainty that I now face daily.
Do I regret quitting? Absolutely not – by the end it really sucked. Do I wish I had approached it differently and been more deliberate in planning my post-job life? Yes, I should have firmly latched on to my next branch before letting go of my job.
Anyways I don’t think a job has to anchor my life, but I am beginning to see the tremendous value in anchoring my life with ~something~. An array of small, side projects isn’t going to accomplish that.
Noah's (Life) Ark 