Striving for experiences instead of satisfaction

A few years ago, I decided to ‘quiet quit’ my job.

It felt counterintuitive. I’ve always been one of those high-achiever types – trying hard to get good grades, perform well, to please my superiors, to ‘progress’. I’d labelled myself as ‘smart’ from an early age and academic/career progression validated that narrative.

But after a couple of years of trying hard at my job, taking every training opportunity that came my way and going above and beyond, I realised I’d plateaued. I think many of us find that, as our careers progress, that hard work doesn’t automatically convert to opportunity (as we assumed it would).

There’s a ceiling to this job. It would stay the same for however long I was working there. Yet this is one of the best jobs I could possibly hope for in my small hometown. It’s stable, pays well and comes with the subtle clout of working behind-the-scenes in politics. I’m so incredibly lucky to have it.

So ‘quiet quitting’ felt wrong to me on a deep level. It felt ungrateful. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about doing a good job. I still hugely care about that (perhaps too much) but I’d also begun to grow more interested in my hobbies and passions outside of work.

I chose to see my job as an ‘investor’ for other areas of my life, funding a comfortable lifestyle, periods of travel and allowing more mental energy for hobbies like writing, art, fitness, therapy training and relationships.

As I developed my life more outside of work, I didn’t need my job to tick as many boxes as it did before. I relied on it for funds, structure and routine rather than a sense of ‘fulfilment’.

Which is great! Except… that only worked for a few years.

Comfort comes at a cost

No matter how much I poured into my life outside of work, I was still left with a lingering, gnawing feeling of frustration about my job, a pervasive sense of misalignment that I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t deny that I still had a sense of curiosity and ambition. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to expand. I had stability, but at a subtle cost. I could feel myself slowly losing confidence, losing my zest. My partner noticed it too.

I couldn’t deny the feeling. It was always there in the background, like a low hum. When I couldn’t ignore it any longer, I tried to apply for other jobs in my hometown, of which there were few, and ended up feeling uninspired and dejected. I also applied for dozens of international jobs online and was ghosted by pretty much all of them. As the years went on, the itchy feeling didn’t go away. It only became more acute.

It was this that drove me to take this sabbatical, to move abroad, and give myself a year to find other work by networking with actual people, rather than wander the corporate wasteland of LinkedIn as I had been. I still have no idea where this year will lead. Maybe I’ll end up right back where I started. Maybe not.

Do our jobs need to fulfil us?

But all this got me thinking this week: is it possible to simply accept an unfulfilling job as a means to an end, or will the lack of fulfilment eat away at us eventually?

I think about my parents. Working class backgrounds, stayed in the same job/field since their early twenties. Their jobs don’t set their world on fire, but they pay well enough to afford them a nice house with a garden, financial comfort and a relatively simple, wholesome lifestyle. And they’re fine with that. Fulfilment isn’t a career requisite for them. They have a much more pragmatic approach to work and honestly, they seem happier for it.

A core premise of stoicism this is that contentment is about presence, acceptance and perspective. With this in mind, I tried so hard to accept my job for what it is and be nothing but grateful. But even then my intuition still had me jumping out of my skin to leave, itching to change and try something new.

Reading other people’s experiences on here, this doesn’t seem to be uncommon. Even in my own circles, there seems to be a perspective shift that comes after a decade or so in the working world. People are reevaluating their careers and priorities in life, contemplating leaving their corporate jobs in search of something more ‘aligned’ with their personal goals, or even deprioritising their careers (if only temporarily) to start families instead. Either way, a shift is happening.

Prioritising growth over stability is a privilege

The balance of stability and growth is one of those core human dilemmas. We’re hardwired for both, but often one comes at the expense of the other. The option to choose growth is a privileged one – if you’re lucky enough to have stability baked into your life, you have more freedom to contemplate existential issues like potential, learning and expansion.

I think this is something that’s becoming more pronounced with each generation – we have more privileges, more options, and therefore more licence to consider how we can optimise our one precious life. As our expectations for our lives get higher, so does, perhaps, our proclivity for discontent.

My parents certainly never thought about living in different countries, working for impact-driven NGOs and travelling. My existential problems are not the practical ones of my forebears – they’d probably tell me to get a grip if they read this. But nonetheless, these are problems I and many others are facing today.

That inescapable itch

As a privileged, growth-seeking person, this yearning for novelty, challenge and ‘expansion’ remains. I’m starting to think I’ll never be free of it. No matter where I live or whatever job I do, I’ll never be truly ‘satisfied’.

I’ll always want a challenge. I can make moves that feel more aligned with who I want to be, as I am right now, which will act as a temporary salve. But that itch will remain, because there is no end point. No nirvana, no pinnacle of total satisfaction I can arrive at, no point at which I can sit back and say: “Life? Completed it mate.”

But maybe I can accept that fact for what it is. The itch, the seeking, the striving - it’s a part of me. It keeps me curious, keeps me engaged, keeps me experiencing. Even if it comes with a heavy dose of discomfort at times.

Prioritising experiences over satisfaction

In saying all this, there’s a kind of comfort in knowing it’s probably not something I can fix about myself.

Maybe this urge for growth isn’t an affliction. It’s fuel. Not to strive for satisfaction, attainment or whatever my particular metric of ‘success’ is, but fuel for experiences. Something I can dispense anywhere, at any time, at any age, whether it be in my career, hobbies or relationships. Something I can reflect on at the end of my days, and rather than saying “I achieved that”, saying, “I tried that. Nice!”

There is something to be said for pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to attain those new experiences. For balancing stability with a healthy dose of risk. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained. That said, life is seasonal - there are seasons for rallying and seasons for rest and recovery. Energy is finite, after all.

Still, I’d like to believe that there are a million tiny ways to grow and to have meaningful experiences in life, no matter the season. Even if it all inevitably comes, at the end of the day, with yearning for roads not taken.

Maybe I can learn to be okay with that.

Rose :)