I left my job because I was unhappy, but now I realize that I was too hasty

This test also filed is based on a transcribed conversation with Jay Wallace, 34, from England. The following has been modified for duration and clarity.

I am enthusiastic about the world of sales when I won a recruitment job in 2013.

I spent years in sales roles, both as an independent sales entrepreneur and as an employed company. I really liked to speak with people and make sales that were directly correlated with my income.

I started a new job as an independent sales entrepreneur in June 2023, but I quickly became frustrated by the role. As an entrepreneur, I would tell the company my available hours and they would share avenues of sales with me. I would make sales and get the product commission installed.

I felt that I had too much freedom and not enough clarity. Because I couldn’t say if I succeeded, I felt like I was failing.

After three to four months of frustration, I decided to leave the post in March 2024.

I didn’t really know what to do afterwards. I had always wanted to go solo while traveling and I also had a loose plan for new businesses in content creation and coaching.

But hunting freedom did not reveal itself as I hoped. Since then, I have had trouble navigating the job market and finding work that I can do to support myself while developing my business and my YouTube channel. I realize that I left my job too in a hurry.

Spending time abroad did not go as planned

I had planned to leave sales before in 2020 because I no longer felt in challenge. But Covid felt like a bad time to move careers.

When I left my job in 2024, I had planned to spend a few months in Southeast Asia, mainly living in my savings and passive income from an investment property that I associated with my father in 2020.

I hoped that the cost of living in Thailand could help to considerably reduce my bills while I was working on my business idea.

The loose plan was to devote more time to the YouTube channel that I have been running for a few years and also facilitate a kind of coaching business.

Thailand was not as I expected. It was good for about two days, then I sat there, thinking, “”What am I doing? “It was alone – I had left my family and my girlfriend to travel.

I was not in the right head space to manage a business, so I ended up getting home after a few weeks.

Back in the United Kingdom, the labor market was difficult

I went through a period of real darkness. My last sale role struck my confidence, I failed to find freedom in Thailand, then I felt like I failed my relationship on my return.

I was not mentally in a good place, so I did not make a concerted effort to develop my YouTube channel.

I still had savings because I came home earlier than expected, but I didn’t want to go back to sales. I appreciated manual work before my sales career, so I started applying for commercial jobs.

The market was more difficult to navigate than what I expected. When I was younger, I easily passed from one job to another. I do not know if it was my age – I was in their thirties, trying to do commercial work – or the current economy, but I applied for hundreds of jobs and I only heard of a handful.

At the end of 2024, my savings ended and I needed more income than my property provided it. I found a job at the Royal Mail post service at the end of 2024.

Previously, I was trying to find a new career, I now focus on paying my bills, so I have space to develop my channel on the side.

I work five days a week through an agency as a factor. I do less than what I did in sales and I feel like I have to work on weekends because it pays more.

I am in a much better place than when I went on a trip. I was putting myself a lot of pressure to succeed. Now, I learned to remove this pressure and like to explore different ways.

I would plan to return to sales, but I realized how important the community is for me. As an entrepreneur, you spend a lot of time on the road or alone.

I was too daring when I decided to leave my job

With hindsight, I was too rushed to leave my last position of sale. I should have tried to clarify the business, so I felt happier in the role.

Being self -employed workers, I had enough money and time to build my coaching company and channel parallel to work. I could have waited for the income of my business to be equaled to my sales income, then the transition slowly.

Before leaving sales, I saw so many people doing content on social networks to leave their jobs, saying that everything would work. Many creators encouraged people to go full -time on YouTube and point their own courses on how to do this. I did not know their history, like the way they supported themselves financially.

It made me think that leaving and starting a business would be easier than I found it.

If you are determined to leave your job, nothing prevents you from working on your CV and / or requesting interviews during employees. If you start a business, work on it in the evening and the weekend.

According to my experience, the stress of not having money prevails from a distance on the stress of being in a job you don’t like.

I want to warn others to really consider what they do before committing to leaving their jobs. There is a lot of online content that can make you believe that the grass is greener on the other side, but it is not always true.

Do you have a story to share on the release of your job? Contact this journalist at ccheong@businessinsider.com