Quit With No Net? Hard Work But Worth It — Tess Vigeland Simon Constable

Quitting the job that’s killing your soul! It’s one of those seemingly ever-present fantasies of office workers. But to leave without a net that’s unnerving to the vast majority of people. Yet it’s what long-time radio host Tess Vigeland did. She recently wrote a book about her experience: Leap: Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want.

Unlike many confessional books, this one won’t tell you how easy it was. Or that the post-quit euphoria just kept on going for months. Or that everyone should do it because, hey, what the hell. No, the story here is quite different. If you believe Vigeland, it’s hard work, and there will be loads of anxiety. It will upend your life in ways you never imagined.

Things like that make this book more believable than some self-help books urging you to make your way in the world — it’ll be like riding a bicycle, as such books seem to promise. Except they gloss over the time when you scrape the skin off your knees. Or they seem to leave out something that you can’t quite put your finger on. For instance, who’s paying the mortgage while all this quitting is happening? Or where did all the money necessary to sustain eating every day come from?

In some ways, Vigeland’s work is the antidote to “the easy route to happiness” books, which imply you can do everything (wealth, harmony, and relaxation) if only you’d follow a few simple rules. Such promises are chimeras.

The worries about money, career, and leaving what, for many, would seem like a dream job are what Vigeland focuses on. It is her self-perceived shortcomings that make the story so much more realistic and so much more relatable. She becomes something more than the voice we remember from the radio — a three-dimensional individual, just like the rest of us. On top of that, the willingness to open up, in a warts and all way, is a sign of herculean strength. Have you ever noticed that the people who never admit to their failures are, deep down, the weakest? She’s the opposite.

I’d say after her experiences, leaping and then writing this book, Vigeland will be unstoppable.

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This is an edited version of a story first published on Forbes.com in 2015. Copyright CONSTABLE CONFIDENTIAL 2015