Why I Decided to Quit My Job and Hit the Road

In October of 2019 I was so depressed that I decided to quit my job. I felt defeated and ashamed. Depression was once again writing the terms of my life and I was just along for the ride. 

I often describe my last job as the opportunity of a lifetime. When I was first offered the job, I felt doors opening that I had never imagined possible. I felt like everything that had happened in my life, good and bad, had led me to that moment. I was grateful beyond measure and inspired beyond belief. 

I never thought having a great job would suddenly make me immune to getting depressed, but I did think that I was fulfilling an important aspect of my life and thus, I’d be happy. Inspiration gives us hope and you could say I was drunk with it. In other words, yes, I was being a tad naive. 

So when I got hit hard with the worst depression I’d experienced in over 5 years, I was devastated. I continued working until I realized that I found no joy in anything that I used to love, I was bringing all the people around me down, and the obligation of work was the only thing that was getting me up in the morning. 

Still, quitting my job was a hard decision and it felt like closing a door that I was so grateful to have ever been opened. I felt angry for letting my life be determined by depression and overall resentful at my mental illness. 

In addition to the regular, get back on your feet after a major depression routine, I also did some serious reflecting, trying to identify patterns that led me to such deep depressions throughout my life. This brought me to two realizations:

First, by all standard, societal norms, I had been doing it right. I was on track to doing exactly what everyone tells us we should be doing. Go to college. Get a job. Buy a house. Work more to pay off that house. The only problem was that I kept getting depressed. Go to college. Get depressed. Get a job. Get depressed. Find a nice place to live. Get depressed.

I realized that the life plan I was following no longer lined up with what I actually wanted. Over the past several years my interests and passions had begun to shift and the choices I had been making for my life no longer reflected what I truly wanted and I just hadn’t noticed.

Second, I felt like my whole life story could be broken into a bunch of before’s and after’s of some major depression, that my life’s timeline was defined by the major depressive episodes of my life and all the life changes I had made were just reacting to getting depressed. Quitting my job felt like I was just following that same tired pattern.

I felt an overpowering sadness at this realization. I didn’t want to live my life waiting for the next depression to hit. I wanted to live my life the way I wanted and if I got depressed, I’d be prepared.

So how to address both of these? Well, it came to me while reading one of Brené Brown’s books, as things often do, titled Daring Greatly. And it was a brief section on intention. She concludes that it’s less about what we do and a lot more about why we do it. I feel defeated and ashamed because I quit my job. Why did you quit your job? Because I’m depressed. No, Chelsea. Why did you really quit your job? I quit my job to take care of my mental health. Bingo. 

Yes, I was reacting to getting depressed but I had also been making choices with intentions to help myself get better and I just wasn’t seeing it that way. Depressed thinking had once again rewritten my history and shaded the choices I had made in negativity rather than fact. (Side note: I had even told my boss that I’m quitting because I’m so depressed and need to take care of myself and focus on my recovery. Thanks, depressed brain, for blurring that part out of my memory for a bit.)

So, the first thing I did was acknowledge depression had changed the narrative of my history and decided to take back control. When I start getting down on myself, saying “look what happened before, Chelsea, your depression has decided your entire life,” I actively tell myself that I’m not indulging those thoughts because they’re just not true. Here’s what depressed thinking is telling me but here is what actually happened. From there, I do my best to focus on the facts. Step aside depressed thinking— I’m telling my own damn story.

Then, I decided to pay attention to the intentions behind my choices and to make choices with intentions that get me to what I actually want in life. What choices am I making for my life and why? 

When I finally asked myself what I really wanted, the answer came easy: I wanted to live on the road. Why did I want to live on the road? I wanted to travel, visit all the places I’ve been dreaming of for years, and spend as much time as I wanted in my favorite places climbing, exploring, and living.

This new discovery didn’t cure my depression. It did, however, motivate me, which if you’ve ever been depressed you know motivation is hard to come by. That bit of motivation led me through the build out phase of our trailer and to where I am now: full-time life on the road. 

It has to be acknowledged that none of this came without privilege. The salary from my previous job is what made this dream immediately possible and my partner’s mom let us live in her house rent free for 6 months while we worked full time on the trailer.

As I sit here writing with the backdoors open of my homemade trailer, in one of my favorite places, I feel more inspired than ever to write and read and explore and climb. Every day is not void of feelings of depression and I don’t expect they ever will be. But this choice was mine and mine alone—I took the terms of my life into my own hands and out of the hands of my depression, and that, my friends, is liberating beyond measure and belief. 

*main photo is in so-called Indian Creek, an hour drive from Moab, Utah, on the climb “Scarface”