Leaving Without A Plan: 9-5 Edition
How & why I quit corporate (and the practical magic I’m using to design what’s next)
Here’s the tea I know all of you have been waiting for. I did it. I quit my corporate job—in the middle of a job market crisis worse than 2020 panny times. And while America is under siege by a rotting Cheeto, dismantling democracy and sucking the life out of our souls. (Someone friggin’ seal the Honmoon already because #47 is definitely a demon.)
So needless to say… I’m freaking out. Are you freaking out? I’m freaking out. But in the best way. I did this the same way I quit my marriage—without a real plan… living on matcha and a dream, FULLY trusting my intuition and the Universe.
Ok, that’s a lie. I kinda have an underpants-stealing-gnome type of plan, so let me lay it out for you.
Phase 1: Collect wisdom (Age 0-30)
Learn from all my life experiences (as a 6 line in Human Design—I know the first 30 years of my life were designed to be chaotic and filled with lessons).
Try everything on for size. Everything.
Practice listening to and acting on my intuition.
Recognize the signs of misalignment.
Build a community of supportive souls and learn from their life experiences.
Do anything and everything to decode health, wealth and longevity.
Phase 2: The Great Unknown (📍I am here.)
Break karmic cycles.
Use logic, strategy and magic to let the path unfold in front of me.
Prioritize health, wealth, joy and longevity.
Create my own reality.
Phase 3: Profit, prosperity, create a legacy.
I’m in Phase 2.
It’s week 1 of the rest of my life, and I recognize this is the hardest part of designing my future:
✨ Having faith while navigating the unknown.✨
In 2023, I broke a karmic cycle that completely interrupted a generational pattern of living life in the shadows. It was the first time I took a giant leap of faith in the direction of my highest-self without a plan. But I did have a strategy.
What I mean by that is I had a strategy for starting my life over that revolved around 6 core principles my Medium Bestie (@mediumbestie) had channeled from my Mom (yes, from the beyond). 😇
Emotional self-care
Physically align with your desires
Be bold
Sit with discomfort for empowerment
Speak your desires
Be in receptivity mode
I clung to these statements and explored every inch of their meaning. At first glance, they seem simple, but actually they were life-changing.
I pushed the boundaries of radical empowerment, energy healing, & quantum leaping so that I could exit the world of grey skies I was living under.
What I didn’t have was a linear step-by-step plan like:
Step 1: Move to Arizona.
Step 2: Find a new partner likely to take a wife.
Step 3: Write books and prosper.
All this to say, I am not a stranger to a grand leap into the unknown. I made all kinds of excuses for years about why this leap would be way scarier than leaving a marriage. After all, it’s my income we’re talking about! The gravy train coming to a halt! The revenue stream coming to a harrowing narrowing! 😅
But because of all the lessons learned in Phase 1, a steady 2-year rebuild of my community, and manifesting the all-consuming, enchanting love that fuels my wildest dreams, this leap feels like destiny… not destitution.
And just like leaving my marriage, I do not have a plan in the plainest definition of the word like: become Internet sensation, write 3 books, get 5 brand deals and prosper.
But I have my strategy and it’s already leading me to take some critically inspiring actions in the direction of my dreams.
If you need some coaching on blending strategy with magic to make your dream life a little bit clearer, let’s get together and plan total world domination…er… I mean… your future! PS I offer introvert-friendly coaching options!
I am Madame Introvert, at your service.
So what inspired this second karmic crash-out that lead me to quitting my job?
As Elyse Meyers would say: That’s a great question, I’d love to tell you.
A week before I put in my resignation, I too wondered, how I am going to sustain myself without a massive social media following or 100k saved in the bank? (Shoutout to Tori Dunlap—it was her financial feminist antics that got me saving my micro-emergency fund that is making this crash-out possible.)
Let’s rewind a few months so I can give you the backstory.
Italy, Kevin, and the Blood Moon.
This August, I manifested 3 weeks of paid time off to traverse Italy with the LOML, Kevin.
If you’re new here: I went through a divorce after a decade of push-and-pull emotional turmoil. So, la, la la, I get divorced, like ya do. Six months later, I am proposing to a man over his home-cooked meal because the moment we got together… it all made sense why nothing and no one else was ever going to work out for me. It was like my soul could finally breathe. I felt far more than love.
I felt enchanted. I felt seen. I felt understood.
Anyways, fast forward a year, la, la la, and we’re in Italy. Kevin and I are slow dancing as the Tuscan blood moon rises above us. Co-regulating with each other in this way is one of my favorite pastimes.
But then, all of a sudden, my stomach drops: This is going to end.
We were coming up on our second week abroad and had one more to go before I had to go back to the world of PowerPoints and Outlook agita.
I heard the pluh-DUNK! of Slack ring in my ear and the vision of organizational chaos dancing in my head. I felt dizzy. The peace I was feeling—not being a performative chimp in a machine, a cog in a corporate circus—was fading.
Going back to work was this aching sense of dread. I have the man of my dreams. When will I have the career of my dreams?
Corporate feels particularly gut-wrenching this year watching companies all across America slash DEI programs, cater to racist America, and promote AI without truly understanding the ramifications of its usage on culture. Even though to leaders it feels imperative to “survive” … it actually feels like soul-death to many of us folks on the ground.
And if there is one thing this lifetime has taught me, it’s that when the feeling of soul-death comes, especially for a sacral being in Human Design, it’s for your highest good to choose something different.
Want to know your Human Design and learn how your intuition presents itself? You can use my free chart generator to find out!
Corporate Safe Zone vs. Soul Death
I’d been with my company for 9 years, 6 months and 12 days. It was miserable and magical all at once. I was surrounded by champion-level, go-getter women who made it their life’s mission to empower me. (Love you, mean it.) But I was also chronically plagued by organizational dysfunction.
But it was safe. It was familiar. I believed in the mission. There were high highs and low lows. It mirrored another karmic relationship… And I had the same thought about corporate as I did about previous relationships. It’s not really hurting me. I’m physically safe. There are so many memories. No one escapes the frustration or the aching, - it’s just a part of life.
But this past August, underneath a sky full of stars with my guy, and enough distance from that single sign-on button, I could see how the corporate construct that once served me, protected me, even, was no longer aligned.
Deep in my heart, under years of energetic debris and social conditioning, there are remains of a dream life I storyboarded as a kid: a dream to be a writer, a business owner, a multi-passionate, complex diva with complete freedom.
Ideally, I’d be doing this life with my Mom. And since her passing, every time I thought about that dream, it felt stupid. Occasionally, I would get a seasonal burst of motivation and I would gain some traction on social media or get clients for coaching. But inevitably I crashed every time shortly after - swept away by the demands of my 9–5. The duties of being a good wife, sister, daughter of the patriarchy. The hope of running my own biz continued to collect dust in the depths of my soul—right there next to the rest of my potential and a mound of laundry.
The OG Plan (Mom + Me)
For me personally, I’ve been thinking about my career since I was in the womb. My mom didn’t sing lullabies—she read her What Color Is Your Parachute to her pregnant belly and took the Myers-Briggs personality test on my behalf the second I saw daylight. We talked about who I would be when I grew up nearly every day of my life. She wanted to make sure I was financially independent and fulfilled in my career above all else.
After years of deliberating on the color of my parachute, my Mom and I planned to go into business together. As you may have seen in my other post, one of her remission goals was to have a “wildly successful web business.” I didn’t know exactly how we were going to do it, but it felt exhilarating to think we could be business owners together. In 2013, I started getting more serious about this idea and attempted to minor in Entrepreneurship.
In parallel, my Mom was getting very serious. She had schematics and spreadsheets, drafts of proposals for angel investors—but then, seemingly overnight, she decided Heaven probably had a better coffee bar and faster wifi. Apparently Ensure and chemo just weren’t cutting it. (Dark humor is how we cope around here!)
Jokes aside, it felt like an abrupt severance even though she had been fighting her battle with cancer for years. And I wasn’t prepared to be a motherless daughter, let alone an entrepreneur.
Post-grad, surviving solely on bagels and Pepto on the rocks, I laid to rest my entrepreneurial spirit alongside the greatest woman I’ve ever known. A postmortem would show that grief and anguish greatly set me back emotionally, physically, and spiritually. So, half asleep, I followed the standard steps into corporate world.
Years went by and I fell in love with the company and the people I worked with. The safety of a steady paycheck and people who took care of my heart kept me inside the walls of corporate for nearly a decade.
During this time, I was always side-gigging with some creative or educational pursuit because my soul knew what I refused to acknowledge: corporate isn’t meant for everyone. And for me, it was only supposed to be, as we say in Corporate, a soft place to land.
It’s Time To Move On Frog
So, why am I telling you ALL of this?? Because I love to write. And because I feel so strongly that Corporate America is not the End Game for everyone. It can be for some people, but there is a world full of creatives out there who are meant for something much bigger.
Full transparency: I do not have kids. I do not have a mortgage. Those are two pretty big circumstances to consider when thinking about your future. And I will also tell you… I am facing hard decisions, grief, and financial complications in other ways.
No one is immune to hardship.
The reality we face is that America is not structured for wealth distribution or breezy living for non-billionaire folks. Dolce vita? Never heard of her.
It’s designed to divide classes, races, religions, identities, so that bare necessities are barely accessible.
But do you know what IS designed for accumulating massive wealth, health, longevity, peace and joy? The Universe and your brain. You are here on Earth with purpose and a mission that is far greater than the low frequency energy of corporate confines and America itself.
What I’ve found is that when you blend logic and strategy, with energy work, self-healing and passion… you have a recipe for dream chasing.
You are not at the mercy of the patriarchy. Or at least… you don’t HAVE to be. You get to elevate out and be someone who takes care of people who are devastated by these structures. You get to be the one who has so much money, joy, peace and love that you can share it HOWEVER YOU PLEASE.
Here’s what I consider crucial to finding a way out of the matrix…ahem… I mean the corporate grind:
Remember the core principles my Mom shared? I keep these at the forefront of my decision making. And, I have sub-bullets for you.
Emotional self-care
Physically align with your desires
Be bold
Sit with discomfort for empowerment
Speak your desires
Be in receptivity mode
A Daily Practice of Energy Work. Yes, every. day. (1)
EFT aka Tapping. It’s a form of energy work that uses acupressure to release mental blocks and reprogram your subconscious beliefs (aka the shit creating your reality) (4)
Future Mapping. Deliberately spending time to figure out what puts you in alignment. What is it that you actually WANT from your life? And how can you use your intuition and gifts to get it? (2) Which leads me to…
Understanding Your Gifts. Whether you use astrology, personality tests, or Human Design, knowing yourself is powerful. Combine this with LOVING yourself? Queen…you’re unstoppable. Understanding your superpowers will help you set boundaries, honor your sacred NO, and infuse life into your HELL YES passions that will inevitably take your life to the next level. I personally use Human Design to understand my soul purpose and it’s the most badass compass I’ve ever had. (2)
Protein, Fiber, Sunlight, Minerals, Sleep. Critical. If you’re in survival mode, I am sending you a big hug. Start here, incrementally. (1)
Consistent Access to a Mentor. Maybe this is a group membership, a paid coach, an influencer with the best TedTalks, or your grandma. Idc who it is but it needs to be someone who is FERAL about you achieving everything you want in life. Someone who believes in limitless possibilities and has made changes in their own life for the better. We draw energy and motivation from the people we’re closest too. And I know for a fact, you aren’t meant to be on this journey alone. And if you read this bullet point and thought, gosh, I don’t know anyone like this… ahem, allow me to introduce myself. 😉 (1-6)
A Relationship With Your Finances. Unfortunately, money matters on Earth. And the only way to elevate out of the matrix, into freedom, is to build a loving relationship with money. We have some pretty ugly narratives about being rich, making and managing money. And they are all worth challenging. (6)
Talk about it. Be about it. Act about it. I cannot emphasize the importance of talking about your dreams out loud. This is especially important if you have a defined throat in Human Design. Your words are SPELLS. The sooner you realize that the self-deprecating humor is actually a major energy block, the sooner you will prioritize talking about your most enchanting vision of the future over anything else.
Equally important is to act. Studies show that confidence is not built inside your mind. I’ve learned this time and time again. Confidence is built on the way down, not in the nest. You’ll probably smack into a branch as you figure out how to use your wings. But it’ll be a funny story to tell later and you’ll be all the wiser for it. (3) (5)
I’ve been working on all of these things for years. But what really catapulted me was blurring line between practicality and magic. For example, I never log into my bank account without setting an intention, and working through the anxiety that comes up first.
More recently, in order to make this leap from corporate, I did a deep dive into my finances but NOT before I did multiple tapping sessions. Not only was I able to figure out how to quit, and still sustain my life, I accidentally manifested a few thousand dollars (!!!) within 48 hours of doing these tapping sessions. Are you shook?! I’m shook. More on that later!!
In Conclusion…
Phase 2 of my underpants-gnome plan is all about embracing the unknown AND showing up. It’s those crucial elements I mentioned above that activate my inspired action. I know I cannot sit in my house and expect my hopes & dreams to knock on my door. I also know that if I don’t take care of my emotional health, my nervous system and my beliefs and my bowels, none of this works out.
I cannot HACK my way into a dream life. There is hard work, exploration, networking and lots of matcha ahead of me. And I promise you and myself, I will embrace every minute of this journey. That’s kind of what life is all about right? Enjoying the ride.
So, all in all, I’m not going to tell you to quit your job. Your job could be sacred for your longevity at this point in time. What I am going to tell you is that creative solutions are always available no matter what your situation is and what you want for your life…if you’re willing to believe they exist.
What I know is that you deserve more. You deserve better. Corporate doesn’t HAVE to be your future.
If you want some help exploring your next move, you know where to find me.
With Love, Light & Longevity
Paris
