Quitting My Job

Time to throw bread at ducks

A few months ago, I read an article by Via Mediaevalis here on Substack about the condition of quarosis, from the Latin quare meaning “why? for what reason?” and the suffix -osis denoting a degenerative pathology.¹ Essentially, the article tries to answer the question: Does this busyness I occupy myself with matter? How is it truly forming me as a person? How will I react when I look back on my life, and is this current reality all I can offer myself?

“You Are Here to Look at the Stars”

The author, Robert Keim, began his article with a quote from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which stopped me dead in my tracks:

“She was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents, and at the same time a grown woman coming to her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, “This is what I have made of it! This!” And what had she made of it? What, indeed?”²

Ah, yes. The age-old early-twenties crisis. What, indeed, have I made of my life? Have I become a slave to ‘the man’ to strive forward without any apparent reason? Was the busyness I consumed myself with worthy of the life God has created me for? Have I forgotten the luxury of being able to throw bread at ducks? The author of this article appears to identify a lack of this despairing outlook in the medieval ages when people knew that they were created simply to gaze at the stars. He suggests reading the book The Island Without Seasons by Robert Lazu Kmita, who attempts to “sketch the interior landscape of a human being who is lost in the maze of postmodernity’s inhuman vanities.”³ There’s also a search for the fabled city of Atlantis if dealing with inner turbulence isn’t eye-catching enough. Essentially, the book explores a man’s journey to find a cure for his modern quarosis malady.

This article came to mind when reflecting on my last day of work at Holy Apostles College & Seminary, which was almost two months ago. After that last weekend in April where we helped celebrate graduation for the Class of 2025, I packed up my car and drove home from Connecticut for at least the next year until I return for my graduation in Spring 2026 (God willing). The week was filled with bittersweet goodbyes, lots of hugs, and plenty of pictures with friends.

While the article by Via Mediaevalis describes this modern quarosis as a portrait of a contemporary man sitting forlornly at a digital workstation, vacantly weighed down by vain labors, or “the crushing burden of nothingness,” that had not entirely been my experience at Holy Apostles. I forged incredible bonds with people worldwide and grew professionally and relationally. I connected with new students just starting their college journey and helped others cross the finish line. I met a community of monks from Wyoming who make the best coffee ever (plug for Mystic Monk Coffee), connected with other women who share an autoimmune diagnosis, heard the joyous confirmation of many seminarian and sister’s vocations, navigated phone conversations with new parents juggling kids and their college education, learned choppy Vietnamese to sing in a choir, and shaped relationships with coworkers that felt more like family.

Yet, despite all of these unforgettable memories, I knew that I could no longer keep up with this kind of fast-paced, mostly remote position. While recovering last summer, I stopped attending school, worked part-time hours, and then stopped working altogether for some time. As I healed, I decided that I wanted to go back to school and finally jump through that hoop that kept moving further and further away from me. After all, I have started and stopped my graduate degree three times. At some point, it just needs to be finished. This past spring semester, I returned to full-time work and school, and I started to feel the onset of exhaustion and burnout again. I realized that I couldn’t physically and mentally sustain this level of effort as I had before. The job began to make me feel cut off from the world as it was 90% remote, and everything seemed to move around me while I was stuck in a digital landscape, living as a background shadow in life.

As soon as those feelings of quarosis began to sink in, I knew something needed to change. It’s not natural for someone to feel like a shadow in their own life. I desperately needed to reconnect with God through a lived sacramental life and active participation with my family. By quitting my job, I was choosing to experience the luxury of “throwing bread to the ducks.” In other words, I will be able to intentionally focus on my schoolwork and discover which path God has in store for me to follow. There will be space and time to go on retreats and pray about my vocation. For as long as I can remember, I have been laser-focused on job searching, job attaining, and job excelling. Focusing entirely on this can, at times, suck any joy out of the life God has intended for me (and everyone else) to live: connected and enjoying the world filled with ‘God-moments’ that demonstrate His love for us. For example, the other day, I was driving with my mom and sister when we saw a man stop heavy traffic to help a mother duck and her numerous ducklings out of the road and onto the sidewalk. It was a beautiful, perhaps cliche, moment of natural cooperation (plus, aren’t ducklings the cutest things?).

Thankfully, my parents are incredibly supportive and encouraged me to quit the job so that I would have the freedom and time to discern and study. It is a beautiful gift to spend an hour with Jesus in Adoration during the day when churches in our area desperately need volunteers. It is also a gift to redevelop my prayer life, which has been essentially non-existent since I filled my life with emails and phone calls again. To take the time and space to discern the vocation God is calling me to instead of trying to fit it into the spare hour or two I had on the weekends.

Some of you may think that this is a fiscally irresponsible decision. That may be true. However, based on my upbringing, relinquishing control over money has never been a reality for me. When I was young, the man our mom was married to would choose to spend our last few dollars on a can of tobacco and a Mountain Dew for himself rather than food to feed the family. We often shared a can of green beans and waited until the end of the month, when the local food pantry could give us another box filled with donated food. Yes, the Church could provide for us, and family stepped in at times. Still, there was a constant instability that programmed my brain to reject any form of dependency because it meant being an 11-year-old girl again, holding all of her belongings in a trash bag and moving in the middle of the night. It has been ingrained in me to work my butt off to create financial security for myself so I would never have to relive what that little girl did. And I did. I checked the “I can live independently as a woman, watch me break the cycle” box.

Yet, I need to acknowledge that I am no longer living in that kind of situation. Right now, I live in an environment where we don’t have to worry about food on the table or where we will sleep. There is a peace provided by my parents that was not a reality for me for most of my young life. This stability has the potential to cultivate a vulnerability and trust I never had the luxury of experiencing before. It reminds me of the verse from the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus is teaching the crowds to trust in the Lord’s Providence:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Mt 6:25-34)

It was terrifying to make the decision to quit a job I had worked hard to earn and excel at, a decision I had wrestled with for months. I left behind a great community and an incredibly flexible work environment. Left behind a team that has supported me through so much and generously covered part of my tuition expenses. So naturally, as soon as a priest asked if I would be interested in helping out at the local Fatima shrine a few days a week as a secretary, I immediately said yes.

Okay listen, I don’t have the best sense of impulse control…I am aware of this and am working through it. I recognize now that it was not the most prudent idea to quit one job to focus on my health both mentally and physically, to then just jump right back into another job. And surprise, surprise, it backfired. The symptoms that I usually experience only at the end of a long day were an all-day affair that left me utterly exhausted. So, I had to have an awkward conversation with the priest, who is also a friend, that I had bitten off more than I could chew. After only four days, I needed to step down and actually stick to my word that health and school would come first. Thankfully, he was graciously understanding.

I am going to spend this year volunteering for the Church (in small ways folks, no jobs for a while), writing, and studying theology. It will be important to actually prioritize spending quality time with friends and family. I will work on building a healthy and balanced lifestyle, prioritizing prayer, sleep, and beneficial eating habits because, apparently, subsisting on honey buns and coffee is not a healthy choice. Most importantly, I will take this time to discern which vocation God is leading me towards.

This process is already bearing sweet, small fruits, as just this week, I was able to spend several hours with two of my sisters and our mom, painting mini art pieces to hang up as magnets. We spent most of the time in silence, listening to Lofi jazz while we crafted to the best of our ability. It was so peaceful, and it took me aback how creative we all were with just a few colors and time.

Can you tell that Le Poisson Steve is popular in our household?⁴ And yes, that is a Pop-Tart Glock with the caption "pop pop," my sister Makenna is quite creative!

With this newfound free time, I’ve been keeping track of all the books I’ve read this year, especially once I relinquished job responsibilities. I’m up to 25 so far, and I will post the complete list and review of each at the end of December. It has been wonderful rediscovering my love for casual reading rather than just slogging through the books required for classes. I’m even venturing into some genres like psychology, which I usually avoid thinking they are pointless, but they have been quite enjoyable.

This year while I finish grad school will be spent hitting the reset button on life, building on the habits and virtues that will serve God, myself, and my future family. If I can’t learn how to be a healthy child of God, how will I be able to serve my future spouse, whether that be Christ the bridegroom or a man of God?

So, please say a prayer for me as I step off this ledge into the world of unemployment. I am a bit of a control freak, and this is like completely letting go of the wheel, and letting Jesus take it instead. This will be a year of growth, goodness, and providence, and I look forward to sharing with you all how it unfolds. I might even send an update about all the ducks I’m throwing bread at.

Talk to you soon,
Ryleigh

1. “You Are Here to Look at the Stars”

2. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/71865/pg71865-images.html

3. Via Mediaevalis article again.

4. https://youtube.com/shorts/V4ygI1MzwFA?si=fPK1xQlsYJrDhknh