10 years into her 9-5 job, Harvard-IIT graduate quit to question life’s meaning

Beyond the daily grind

She revealed that this was not the first time she had quit a job, but said this break felt noticeably different. One of the biggest adjustments, she said, was no longer receiving her monthly salary. “There’s something very comforting about watching a number show up which indirectly tells you that you’re doing fine,” she wrote.

At the same time, Kapoor discovered that stepping away from a job came with a sense of freedom she had not experienced before. “Not having a calendar is liberating. I spent the first few weeks waking up and figuring out on the go how I wanted to spend my time. I also started trying things I never got to do with a job, just to see,” she added.

For Kapoor, leaving employment did not mean stepping away from work altogether. Instead, she began choosing projects based on curiosity rather than deadlines or a pay cheque. She worked on personal projects that had been waiting for her attention and helped friends who were building companies.

Her time away from a full-time role also pushed her towards interests outside her usual work. “Got curious about design outside screens, in physical spaces. Started working out every single day. Ran a little mango toast delivery in the city. Hosted many friends who stayed with us for months at home. Tried to give more of my time and energy to giving back, in whatever ways I could,” she wrote.

Read the post:

✍️ Thoughts on leaving a 9-5 job as someone who always found a lot of meaning in work.

It’s been a few months since I left my full-time job. I’ve worked for about a decade, had the savings and privilege, so told myself that was reason enough.

Last time I took a few months off,…

— Charmie Kapoor (@charmiekapoor) August 11, 2026

“What surprised me is how much of a job I never noticed I was doing just to get through a job,” she wrote.

Kapoor said commuting, meetings, and the time spent moving between different tasks had quietly become part of her everyday routine. “You don’t feel that structure while you’re in it. And once it’s gone, you start asking questions about things you never used to think twice about,” she wrote.

‘Nihilism, existentialism and absurdism’

The break also gave Kapoor an opportunity to think about a much larger question: how people find meaning in their lives. She explored three philosophical ideas — nihilism, existentialism and absurdism. As she explained it, nihilism argues that life has no inherent meaning, while existentialism is about creating one’s own meaning and taking that meaning seriously. Absurdism, meanwhile, accepts the lack of inherent meaning and focuses on living despite it.

“I had spent most of my life as an ‘existentialist without knowing the word for it’,” she wrote.

She described herself as someone who would choose a goal, become deeply invested in it and try to “win”. “That’s probably what made me ambitious in the first place,” she said.

But that mindset appears to be changing. Kapoor said she could now feel herself moving closer to absurdism, something she described as “a strange thing to watch happen to myself.”

“I’m going for a swim at 2pm, working when I actually feel like working, having long conversations with friends over breakfast, building things purely because I want to see them exist in the world and learning to make design content and putting it out there,” she wrote.

Her resolve to stay away from a traditional job was eventually put to the test when what she described as one of the “hottest startups in the world” approached her about her work. “I ended up travelling, meeting the team. It sounded like the perfect thing to do on paper – a few years ago, I would have wanted that job so badly I’d have talked myself into anything to get it. And yet, it didn’t ignite me the way I expected,” she wrote.

Despite the opportunity matching what she might once have considered an ideal job, Kapoor found herself more drawn towards continuing to build and create independently. She questioned whether she was simply avoiding structure or whether her priorities had genuinely changed.

“I’m at this newfound balance between existentialism giving me happiness and absurdism giving me peace. I still don’t know how much of one I’ll have to give up to keep the other,” she wrote.

‘Welcome to the club’

Her reflection struck a chord online, with several users saying they could relate to the uncertainty, freedom, and search for meaning she described.

“Welcome to the club. Once you taste freedom, you can’t go back,” one user commented.

“Very relatable Charmie. I myself travelled the arc from existentialism to nihilism to absurdism last few years. Not sure which camp I belong to completely (maybe I’ll lean towards absurdism only). But I have realised it’s okay if not all is figured out. Find something you’re excited about, spend enough energy doing it to reap some returns and if it fails or you get bored of it, pick something else do that with same motivation and energy. Important key is to stay adaptable and discover something new about yourself in the process. And hope one day it will all make sense,” another person wrote.

“This feels so good to read. I don’t know why but it is so relatable in the sense of the kind of life I want to get to. Thank you for this write up. Looking forward to your next write up on your journey,” a third user commented.