u/Square_Custard8729

A few months ago, I posted here for validation for some of my decisions. I hated my job and wanted to hear people encourage me to keep grinding. Instead, I got a ton of good perspective and advice. In the past couple of months, I spent a lot of time working on myself and figuring out what I want from life. I wanted to share my journey and thank everyone for their valuable advice.

Some things that I had to work on before I pull the trigger:

* I decided to sell my house and downsize. One of the things that was keeping me in the workforce was my house. I had a large mortgage that ate up a lot of my income and made up a substantial portion of my NW. Having peace in my life is more important than a nice house.

* I found something to look forward to in retirement. I was running away from my job rather than towards anything - all I did was think about how much I hated my job. It actually made it much harder to let go because I was thinking about my job all the time, and it was consuming my identity. I'm now planning on slow traveling for a year and then going back to school. I love learning and aspire to become a lifelong student. I've started planning my gap year as well as looking into interesting programs to apply to.

* Actively start adapting my finances for FIRE. I'm nearly 100% in equities right now. I'll be taking some time to sell my house and put the proceeds into bonds, so I'll have a hedge against SORR. I'll need to figure out my health insurance situation and how to optimize my withdrawals.

In the meanwhile, I've stepped back at work and focused on training my team to work without me. I'm trying for a team transfer to a lower level position. I still need to work for a year while I sort everything out - there's actually a lot of prep needed to pull the trigger, but I'm optimistic for the future.

I still get days where I wonder if I'm doing the right thing. I'm making more money now than ever and I have a lot of opportunities for advancement. As an high achiever, walking away is one of the hardest things I've ever done. Leveling down is definitely a ego-bruiser. But at the end of the day, I've done the work of soul searching and figuring out a plan. I'll just take a deep breathe and keep moving towards my goal.

This is just me venting - need a bit of support and affirmation that I'm not crazy.

I hate my job. Every day I wake up dreading going to work. I yearn for the weekend, and feel existential dread on Sunday. While at work, I'm so unproductive because I hate doing it so much. This means that I have to work a lot of overtime to complete my tasks and they aren't even done well because I just can't be bothered to care. My job hours are stupid, I wake up at 8am to respond to messages and people are still pinging me at 8pm. I'm not even getting positive feedback because it's pretty obvious that I'm phoning it in. My coworkers that seem to be doing well are productively working much more than me, and I don't think I can work at that level, which is demoralizing as someone who identifies as a high achiever. The worst part is, I can't even leave work at work. My job is more of a "mental" job, so I'm always thinking about work even when I'm not working. If I don't, I'll fall even more behind.

The worst part is that my boss really wants me to succeed. She wants to put me up for promotion and have been supportive of my career. But I'm honestly so burnt out - and trying to "perform at the next level" feels so difficult. I don't think I have what it takes, which makes this whole thing worse. When my previous boss left, my current boss kept my boss's role open so I can step in and backfilled my role instead. But I'm not stepping up enough - which is not only disappointing to me, but also to the team. I can't even fully check out and step back without feeling like I'm letting people down.

I want to quit, but this is the most I've ever made. I feel like a sucker if I don't milk this job for all it's worth (I have 3 more years of vesting). I'm fully funded for retirement if I can just keep this up for 3 more years. 3 years is nothing - many people work much harder than me for way longer.

I feel like this is the FIRE mentality - we suck it up and we save. Then we can reap the benefits of our hard work. My friends who are not FIRE don't seem to understand. They think I should just look for a new job and take lower pay. That seems short sighted. I'll have to work for longer just to save the same amount. 3 years isn't even that long, and my hours aren't that bad. On paper, my job is a lot of people's dream job. And honestly, if I didn't have a ton of pressure put on me to deliver on KPIs, the actual work itself is pretty interesting. My friends are also telling me to quiet quit, and just wait for them to fire me. But I think that would just make me even more miserable. I've always gotten good reviews, and the current lukewarm feedback is already killing me. If I truly started slacking off, I think the mental damage would kill me.

I just want to sanity check with other FIRE women - am I thinking about this the right way? If you were in my shoes, would you also suck it up for 3 years?

Sorry for the brain dump/word vomit - appreciate everyone for listening :)