I Quit My Corporate Job

How did I get here? As I sit writing this first blog post, I can’t help but glance at the time. 8:54AM, Monday morning. At this time last week, I would have been rushing into the office for another day in a corporate-ruling, soul crushing world. Instead, I sit in my bedroom at a newly-cleaned desk. Instead of my typical travel cup of water, I sip from a tall cylinder: a  household glass. 

My entire life, I knew that creating artwork was what I wanted to do forever. As a child, I would carry around folders of printer paper to draw on the bus until that folder was ripped and falling apart at the seams. I would doodle in the margins of every homework assignment and every test, (sometimes gaining extra credit for a particularly good doodle, thank you, Mr. Germain).  It was that one thing I never let go of. . . until I did.

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Self-doubt can be so incredibly powerful. Self doubt can cause you to apply to art colleges all over the country, then go to a state school and change your major to Political Science upon admissions because you’re too scared to commit to telling others you’re an art major. “What kind of job will you get with that degree?” you’ll be asked. Or: “So you want to be a teacher?”

After my first semester as a political science major, I went home for Christmas. I stood in my childhood bedroom, stepped on the dried paint splattered carpet, and felt the murals on the walls surrounding me like a warm blanket. I noticed that there was a blank canvas still sitting in the closet, and I took it down to start drawing. Immediately, I knew. This is where I belong.

I graduated college with my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2020, running full-force ahead at my dreams. Still, money talks. And the semester I graduated from college was the same semester I stumbled into the field of property management. For a year, I worked as a part-time leasing agent while selling my art at the side.

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Self doubt reared its head again. I was offered a promotion to full-time property manager, and free housing to accompany it. It was a deal I couldn’t pass up. I told myself that I will still create art on the side, though the reality was different. My job drained me more and more as days passed on, and my creative tank remained empty after the long hours. The nature of property management requires that you be on call for emergencies, so I was not committing to a 9-5. I was committing to a 24/7. 

I let myself get carried away by the allure of a stable paycheck, and stayed in property management for 4 years following graduation. It was only in entering a new relationship that it became clear to me how much I had strayed away from my passion. I painted for the first time after over a year, he told me that he’d never seen me paint before.
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Have I really let myself go that much? I thought to myself. How have you never seen me paint? Being a painter is all I know.

I remembered myself at 10 years old, bringing drawing after drawing to my sister for feedback. I remembered myself at 13 years old, selecting a bag for school on its ability to hold my sketchbook. I remembered myself at 16, seeing how quickly I could fill up all the pages of my sketchbook, sometimes drawing so frequently I would need two or three sketchbooks in one month. 

I remembered myself at 18, achieving a scholarship for college based on my drawings. My sketchbooks were passed around a table of 4 different judges. One judge approached me privately, holding a particular sketchbook in his hands. He handed it to me forcefully, and said, “Make sure that someone sees this.”

I remembered myself at 20 years old, day one of my figure painting class. My professor did his rounds, walking around and giving feedback. He stopped at my work, silent for a moment. Then he asked: “Where did you study before coming to this university?” 

Something about my work set me apart.

It came flooding back to me: that childlike, young ambition. Standing long nights at art markets in Ocala, FL at 16 years old. 

Passerbyers would ask about my plans for the future. I told them:

"​Artists exist today in the modern world. They do. It’s hard, but they do it. If it’s not me, it will be someone else. So I need to make sure it’s me."

At 25 years old, I sit and reminisce. What clarity I had before I had bills to pay. Maybe I could take a page or two from her book.

In October of 2023, I felt the pull to devote myself to my art again. I started waking up early, sketching daily, becoming more present on social media again. I purchased books to help educate myself on starting my own art business. Then, that momentum came to a halt when offered an opportunity to move across the country for my job in property management.

In December of 2023, I was offered to move from Florida to South Carolina by my corporate job as a property manager. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity, despite it feeling like an end to my pursuit towards art. When I signed that job offer letter, I thought I was signing another few years of my life away to this company. I had year-long plans sitting in my mind about the ways I would improve the property. 

As I packed all my paintings into a corporate-paid-for U Haul, I acknowledged that perhaps my art dreams will wait a little longer. I had, in my head, a new opportunity in front of me where I would be welcomed into a new property at a company who appreciates, recognizes my worth, and, as it is worth mentioning, which pays the bills. I believed that I was wanted here, in South Carolina, to bring a level of organization and success to an already functioning office. This notion, however, could not be further from the truth.

 I immediately found myself caught in a toxic work culture environment. My “lateral move” as described on my job offer was a fix-up job in disguise, and not just a regular fix-up. This was a fix-up from the ground up. I created a list of everything wrong with the current functioning of the office. Initially, my supervisors were happy with me, and told me that they learned more about this property in the 2 weeks that I had been there than in the 7 months they've owned the property.

I was told to come to this property and “be myself." Couldn't be too hard right? Wrong.

Very quickly, staff started quitting, and my corporate office changed their tune in regards to how they viewed me and my performance. I went from a perfect employee, an over achiever whose work is so great it's worth it to transfer me to another property to spread the love, to, in their eyes, an incompetent, burnt-out, problem maker. 

I found myself on the receiving end of daily bullying from upper management for personality traits rather than my work performance. My detail-oriented nature which brought them success at our Florida property is now a running joke and area of contention. I found myself on the receiving end of angry temper-tantrums where my higher-ups would blame me for the failure of their property. The problems that they put on my plate to solve became the reason they now despise me.

I was coming into work early, staying late, hated by everyone in the on-site office staff and by the corporate staff that brought me here. My supervisor began lying about my work performance to those above him to save face against his own failures, and threatened that if I disrespect him by going over his head, he will make my life difficult. He was emotionally volatile, and swung from "You are the worst" to "You're too perfect," over the span of 2 hours.

It felt like a rug had been ripped out from under me. I uprooted my life for a career move, and was now leaving work every week in tears due to mistreatment at the job. I was being cursed out by those I was meant to manage, and exploited and used by the management office that once treated me like an angel, the answer to all their problems. Despite repeated requests for help from corporate management, they told me, “they are helpless for me,” and have done “everything they can,” while denying my requests for extra employees to be hired, reduced on-site work hours, flying my Florida coworkers on-site for a week, and/or reduced expectations of perfection at a property that needs much more work than one person can handle. 

When I asked for a different management approach, my operations manager told me “that is not a realistic expectation.” She spoke to me with humor in her voice, and described herself as an “asshole.” I heard the sadistic pleasure in her voice, smiling as she described that she knew and understood the problems with their management style, but that this is how she managed for 10 years, and she will not be changing. It was then that I understood clearly how she delighted in my misery. In that moment, I knew that property management was a dead career to me.

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In a way, I was looking for an exit strategy. Before I made this move, my art career loomed heavy over my head. Just there, barely out of reach. Just needing time, attention, and a little bit of love. Somehow, I can’t help but be grateful for the three months of hell I suffered at that new property. Fate understood that due to my drive and determination, I would not leave a successful career willingly. I would need to be forced out.

The day I turned in my 2 weeks notice, I went on a walk around the property. I thought to myself, “Am I really doing this? This career provided me housing and stability for four years. If I leave, I will be required to move twice in three 

months. Pay moving expenses. If I leave, I face uncertainty. If I leave. . . what happens if I leave?”
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But a better question is: What happens if I stay? I will be investing more time into a company that clearly does not want me, and does not care about my success. I will be making money for the corporate machine that mistreats me. I will be showing up to work every day with people who would rather I didn’t show up. I will be working to improve a broken product while others try every second of the day to tear me down to make themselves feel taller.

And perhaps more importantly: Every second I spend making money for someone else is a second I could dedicate towards making money for myself. I could earn my freedom, if only I took the risk.

As my sister told me the day I quit my job: It is better to be uncertain about things you can control than to be stressed, beaten down, and uncertain about things you can’t.

So I sit here at my home office on the first Monday morning that I can remember having free in a long time. I look straight into the face of fear and self-doubt, and I do it scared anyway. I know that if I don’t give my own goals and dreams the same energy I gave to another company, I would never find peace. I would always sit there and think to myself, “Do you remember that dream I once had? I want to be a painter. I wonder what would happen if I could have given it more.”

So here’s to giving it more. Every day is a new mystery. What happens next? I have no idea. Maybe that’s the best part about it.