Becoming Heather Untethered:
- heathre04
- May 6
- 8 min read
Why I’m Quitting My Job in 1,800 Days
I’m a sober, single mom by choice, working full time as a payroll coordinator with a mortgage and a teenager. I’ve been stable at the same position for almost 12 years. I genuinely like my co-workers. I enjoy my job and I’m good at it. But I’m not staying. In exactly 1,800 days, I’m quitting.
For Christmas a few years back, I received a bag my mom gave me that I can’t look at without tearing up. It says: "Heather—she believed she could, and so she did."
For a long time, the thing I "did" was survive. By God’s grace, I survived a fifteen-year descent into alcoholism that should have ended in a jail, an institution, or death. I survived a battle with infertility that nearly took me back to the bottle. And then, I did the thing I wanted most—the only thing that had never been negotiable, my lifetime dealbreaker: I became a mother.
When Zion walked into my life on October 17, 2018, it felt like the first page of the story I’d been waiting my entire life to write. He was the answer to every whispered prayer—that rare, quiet moment where your soul finally exhales and says, 'Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.' It sounds wild to say your soulmate is a seven-year-old kid, but in that moment, I knew.
I finally had the life I’d dreamed of, but I quickly realized all the foster parent classes and trauma-informed training in the world couldn't have prepared me for what came next. I was finally a mother, but I was about to learn that doing it alone in the middle of a pandemic, while navigating the heavy logistics of 'the system,' required a version of me I hadn’t built yet.
When COVID hit, Zion and I were only 17 months into our journey. We were in the thick of it—therapy sessions, foster care visits, and the endless obligations that come with a childhood in "the system." He still carried plushies EVERYWHERE, and he was attached to me like glue. He’d literally follow me to the basement just to swap a load of laundry. It was frickin’ intense and hard, but looking back now, I realize how much we both needed that closeness.
Working from home wasn't just a convenience; it was a lifeline. When your world is built on the required presence of trauma-informed care 24/7—which basically means being the constant emotional anchor and safety net for a child who has lived through the unthinkable—you don't just need a paycheck. You need time.
Remote work gave me back the hours the commute used to steal. It gave me the flexibility to navigate the appointments and the emotional heavy lifting of those early years without the constant fear of a "time-clock" reprimand. It was the first time I felt I could actually take a breath as a parent.
I had a generous six-month window of "planning," but all I felt was the walls closing in. As the only adult in the household with no co-parent to lean on, I was already the one cutting the grass, fixing the drywall, and trying my best to hold a safe space for a scared young child—all on a solo income. I was barely staying afloat. I knew right then: adding a commute and a cubicle back into the equation would be the weight that finally sank us.
I didn't need a new job. I needed an escape plan.
The socks, the nursery prep, the 'hope' globe—these were the paper plans I made before life taught me that freedom isn't found in a perfect schedule, but in the guts to pivot when everything shatters.
The Frantic Search (And the Pivot)
When the RTO hit at the end of 2024, I went into full-blown "overdrive" mode. I was a woman possessed, frantically trying every door marked Freedom to see which one would budge. I was collecting certifications like they were souvenir magnets: real estate investing, "how to host retreats," self-publishing, and I even became a certified Intuit Tax Pro. If it promised a way out of the 9-to-5 grind, I was signing up.
I dug up the past and relaunched my dog training business, All Star Animal Training. After being a trainer at Sea World, I’d spent twenty years in that world before hanging up the leash to focus on foster care, but when I stepped back into the ring, the spark was gone. It felt like "work" in the heaviest sense of the word. My heart wasn't in it anymore.
Then, I started playing with an idea that actually made my pulse quicken. I knew travel. I knew sobriety. I knew how to navigate the world with limited mobility and the high-stakes logistics of trauma-informed travel. I realized I had spent years drawing a map for a very specific, complicated type of journey—one that many women are currently trying to navigate without a compass. I knew right then, to the core of my soul, this was my new purpose: to hand others the map.
At first, I signed up as an associate for a travel franchise. It seemed safe. But within a week, my "fierce independence" started itching. I realized I was just building her dream, her site, and her empire. I also started noticing the cracks in the "shiny" side of the industry—the agencies that look like travel dreams but function more like pyramid schemes, where the focus is on recruiting more people rather than actually booking quality travel. I wasn't looking to join a "hustle" or build someone else's downline.
Look, I’m the kind of woman who would rather haul the entire refrigerator up a flight of stairs alone than wait ten minutes for a "helping hand" that comes with strings attached. I wasn’t about to trade one corporate cage for another, even if the new bars appeared gold-plated and chock full of travel discounts. I pivoted. Again. I went entirely independent. No host agency, no "upline" taking a cut, and nobody to answer to but myself. Just me, my own official travel credentials, and a vision that was finally starting to come into focus.
The Power Move: Mathing the Math
If you want to see a physical manifestation of what "Untethered" looks like in the real world, it looks like a Neptune Blue Kia Seltos.
Buying a car as a single woman is notoriously intimidating. You’re practically coached to expect a certain level of "mansplaining" or to worry that you’re being taken advantage of because you don’t have a "co-pilot" to check the fine print. But I didn’t walk in looking for a white knight to save me from a bad deal. I walked in wielding a spreadsheet and a pre-approval, armed with math more solid than steel. I wasn’t there to be 'sold'—I was there to execute a plan.
I had paid off my last car three years early and drove it into the ground, but I never stopped "making the payments." I just redirected them into a high-yield savings account. When the repair bills started to pile up and safety became a concern, I was ready. I had enough to pay cash for a new car. I wasn't just a shopper—I was the architect of the deal.
I had done the research. I had the pre-approvals. I played their game strategically: I accepted their financing to snag an extra discount, then turned around and paid off the bulk of the loan a week later to kill the interest. I even put the down payment on a new credit card just to harvest the sign-up bonus, then wiped the balance the second the statement posted. Because I had been 'making the payments' to myself for years, I had the cash ready. The car was paid off entirely in just outside of 90 days.
I wanted Zion to see that. He already has three savings accounts to his name and just earned his first $125 sign-up bonus with a Chase teen checking account—but I wanted him to see that knowledge in motion. I wanted him to watch his low-mid income, solo mom walk into that room with the confidence of a woman who knew exactly where she stood. I felt like a millionaire that day—not because of the balance in my account, but because I was the one holding all the cards. I wanted him to know that you don't need a massive salary to have a seat at the table; you just need a plan and the guts to execute it..
The 1,800-Day Clock
When I tell people I’m quitting my job in June 2031, they laugh. They think 61 months is a lifetime away. They really laughed when I said 78 months back in January 2025.
But "tomorrow" is the killer of today’s dreams. That logic kept me drunk for 15 years. In recovery, we live "One Day at a Time" because "tomorrow" is a trap. If I say I have six years, I’ll slack off. But when I say I have 61 months, I feel the fire. Every month I track is a reminder that I’m building a bridge to a life where I’m not just a payroll professional—I’m a woman who can take off on a 3-month cross-country road trip, camping my way through a butt-ton of National Parks.
After our first international trip to Cancun in Fall of 2024, I asked Zion where he’d go if he could go anywhere. He said Paris. That felt like a gut punch because my knee-jerk reaction was "not an option." But in recovery, we learn to practice the pause. I meditated on that "No way, Jose" until it turned into a "How can I?" Four months later, we were standing under the Eiffel Tower—not because I won the lottery, but because I travel-hacked and saved our way across the Atlantic.
I’m not in a victory lap yet. I’m in the thick of the build. I am working toward a goal: living my digital nomad fantasy by June 30, 2031. Do I have every single detail figured out? Not yet. I’m still mathing out the big questions like health insurance and long-term sustainability. But I’d rather be 61 months out, mathing through the unknowns and getting laughed at, than standing at my son’s graduation five years from now starting from scratch and asking myself, 'Now what?' That is the ultimate weightlessness—knowing that you are actively building the door you plan to walk through. But I’m no longer afraid of the weight. I’m untethering, one month at a time, and I’m here to show you how to start your own countdown.
Becoming Heather Untethered: The Countdown is On
This is Feature 1 of my new series, Becoming Heather Untethered. I’m not interested in showing you a finished masterpiece; I’m inviting you into the messy, calculated, "math-heavy" build. Once a month, I’ll be back with a new feature—sharing my real-time updates, the travel-hacking tips that are getting us closer to the horizon, and the hard-won lessons of a sober, solo mom refusing to settle for a cubicle.
The clock is ticking. 61 months to go.
If you’ve ever felt the walls closing in—if you’re tired of "tomorrow" being a trap and you’re ready to start mathing your own way out—I want you here.
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