Want to leave it all behind? Some millennials are.
Posted On September 14, 2018
Ever wanted to just quit your job, leave everything behind and move to an island? Most of us have, at some point, fantasized about it.
According to the New York Post, however, many aren’t just daydreaming about it. They’re doing it.
The Post interviewed several twenty-somethings who have quit their jobs, some of them quite lucrative, and left it all in search of peace, adventure or fulfillment.
Sarah Solomon was a publicist in New York until she quit and moved to Hawaii, where she now does freelance work in between trips to Guatemala, Indonesia and other exotic locales. Gracie Halpern quit a high-paying job as a copywriter at a creative agency and went to Bali in search of peace before settling in California, where she also freelances.
They aren’t alone, the Post notes, citing a 2018 Deloitte survey of millennials that found more than 40 percent of them planned to leave their jobs within two years. Part of that may be stereotypical millennial restlessness, ditching jobs that don’t fulfill them or don’t give them the work-life balance they seek.
Part could also be a hot job market at a time when unemployment is at historic lows. It’s easier to leave when you know you have a solid chance of getting back in the working world if and when you want.
Some of it, however, may not be a purely millennial trait at all. Burnout has always been an issue in stressful or tedious lines of work, for employees of any generation. And if there ever was a time to leave everything behind and just go, it’s while you’re young.
“I said, ‘Why am I going to spend my 20s sitting at a desk?” Solomon’s boyfriend, Tim Mason, told the Post. He left a six-figure software sales gig in New York and traveled to more than 30 countries, meeting Solomon at a hostel in Nicaragua. Now he’s a scuba instructor.
It must be nice, some of you might be saying, to live so carefree, with no responsibilities, able to take off and go wherever you like whenever you like. You’d have to be crazy, others might say, to leave those high-paying jobs with no guarantee of how you’ll support yourself (although they must be doing OK to do all that traveling).
You both are probably right, but here’s the thing: You only get one, short life on this earth. Living literally in the moment may not be for everyone, but if you’re going to drop it all and go off in search of adventure, with no plan beyond the next day, it’s a lot easier to do when you’re single, with no kids, and little in the way of responsibilities in the first place.