Why I quit my safe, secure and well paid job

I love riding the bike. I love travelling. I love writing. I love taking cool pictures what others love. To bring this together, I thought why not go on a big cycle ride taking a little camera, a notepad and myself with me, pushing the peadls permanently.

For this, I had to quit my job. There were versions of the trip what I could manage to take in some weeks without quitting my job, but that would be a complately different issue, that would be a holiday. The situation is way more complex and different. Don't stop reading!

I am a programmer - but this is not true. I had never been a programmer. I was working as a programmer. There is a huge difference. Anyway, I was earning money by taking care of software running in banking environments. Playing with the computers was fun when I was a child and when I was a school-boy. I loved the endless universe hidden inside a little machine with measurable dimensions (definately not endless). I loved giving commands and see the results. I loved the unambiguous communication between man and machine. It was quite different than between man and man. It was clear, definitive and it lacked any agression. It was not a question why to deep-dive into this world.

So I deep-dived, so deep, it drew a straight line in my life, in my carrier. Computers. Black-green screens. Programs, programmers. Numbers, codes, algorithms, low-level languages. Distance of man, closeness of machines. Machines what could be trusted - so kind of machines what runs 24/7, 365 days in a year. Stable iron monsters. Amazing. And dull, after a time.

There was another love of mine. When I didn't have the computing time (sometimes I couldn't persuade my parents that it is good for everybody if I sit in front of the screen) I had the pedaling time. Another kind of endless freedom. A complately different kind. Whoever rode a bike understands this, it is useless to explain.

So a time came, after spending ten years sitting in offices in front of the monitors, when I said: this is not that magical world I used to live in when I was a child. It is only something I do for earning money. It doesn't take me (and the world) to a fine direction. Instead, it takes everything into the wrong direction. Ok, what is wrong and what is right is a deep question what I don't want to discuss here. I just began to feel bad about what I am doing: keeping the banking system alive, helping the endless money-earning monster-mechanism grow. Well, I had a nice, calm, easy-to-do daily job in the last years. I had a salary what I couldn't dream about 6-7 years ago. From many aspects it had been a dream-workplace. I didn't even had to go to work to 8 or 9 am, the working hours were so flexible I could get to the office at 11 am, sometimes at noon. Isn't it like in the fairytales?

Then what happened? I began to read more on the Internet in my free time (as we were not overloaded with work in the last years, only periodically). I was reading about lucid dreaming (what I have a big interest in). I was reading a lot about healthy habits and foods, about what and how to eat. I was reading a lot about the raw food movement. I was reading Living Counsciously (and many more) from Steve Pavlina. Also I was reading the news every day, following roughly what's going on in the world. These readings began to turn my thoughts and feelings to the direction of something-is-not-ok, or more like something-has-to-be-changed. It began to be more and more uncomfortable for me to take a huge salery home while working with low power and at the same time seeing that I'm earning ten times more than my literature teacher sister. Also I met more and more people who stucked in the mud with a huge debt for the banks. I began to feel if I keep on supporting this system, I became a part of the blood-sucking, everything-for-profit machinery. After a time I realized that I was actually a part of it, in the last ten years. I didn't see this as something to be changed before, because most of my surroundings were working more or less between the same circumstances and because I my aim was the same as the system's: to get more and more of money, of profit, with less and less effort. The bad feeling of these issues were upcoming again and again, till a point it turned to action.

The main change had been brought to me after going on a Vipassana meditation course. It was one of the biggest life-changing experiment I had. Also the insights I gained on these courses (I attended two of them) gave me the power and the courage to take this step, to stend up from my comfortable, easy to handle, calm, quiet and extreamly well paid job. Of course there were several other things what helped me to take this decision, but the main empowering experience was the ones I went through during the meditation courses.

Now I'm more free of this bad feeling of earning for my living by taking money from people abusing their lack of knowlage how the system works (not complately free as my little economies now is based on my salery earned from this job). Now I'm free of the abusive methods on which the whole banking system is built on. At the meantime I have to face many things: I have to find the way to finance my living (now the bike-ride, later the every-day-life). I have to find ways in which I won't take part in any abusive system just to take much more than I need. I have to find ways I can help people improve their life circumstances in any meanings. This will be a journey of exploration, first outside, riding to Turkey, than (and also during) inside, finding the ways of mine.

I hope these words can explain the decision why I quit and I also hope it can give courage to others who are thinking about something-need-to-be-changed. Let's begin the change in the self!