The first thing you should know when you read this post is that I've never quit anything in my life, ever. Except for maybe ballet and piano, but I was like, six so that doesn't really count. I mean, I think I've dropped a grand total of maybe three classes during all my years of education combined. I've never downright failed at anything either (though the way this has affected my tendency to not try new things for fear of failure is for a new post altogether). All my life, I've been an above-average student -- until law school -- and a pretty damn good employee.
But I guess there comes a time in everyone's life where that just isn't going to fly anymore. Enter my current job as an Executive Assistant.
At the start of May, I officially gave my boss notice that June 1st will be my last day at our organization. And though I've been thinking this through for a while, talking it over with Nate, making plans and preparations so I'm not left wallowing in a pit of unemployed misery, let me tell you, I really thought I was going to puke for the entire week leading up to that conversation.
But the meeting went as well as can be expected I guess when you blindside your boss during what's probably the busiest two months of our year and tell him that he'll be left high and dry and assistant-less in a month. He asked if there was anything he could do to make me stay. I said no. He said that while he wasn't happy about it, he understood. I said thanks, and I'm sorry.
Truthfully, on some level, I am sorry. And there's definitely a fair amount of guilt I feel, but that's more because I'm just the type of person that will feel guilty for the fact that it's raining rather than because I should feel guilty about something. This job just wasn't a fit for me. It wasn't a fit in ways that a size 3 shoe isn't the right fit for a size 7 foot: so, it wasn't a fit in colossal ways. And that made it an unhappy place, a draining place and, in the last few months, a pretty toxic place for me. I came to despise everything about my job and who I was while I was at it and the fact that that person followed me home and became the person I was here in my safe haven too. This job made me feel like I had nothing going for me, nothing to look forward to other than a paycheck every other week. It didn't require me to use any skills I thought I possessed, it gave me no indication of what value I held and it just made me feel...useless.
So I finally got up the courage -- and put enough plans in motion -- to quit.
And since that day, I've felt so...liberated. Scared, yes, definitely. The fear factor is pretty much through the roof at all times. After all, how will I survive once the money I've saved runs out? I can't rely on Nate forever, and there's no telling when I'll find another job. And what about health insurance? What about paying off my credit card debt? What about paying my student loans? What about being a responsible adult, sucking it up, and sticking this job out? What about all the millions of things you need a paying job to do???
So I'm really, really scared.
But still, nothing compares to having a set date when this job will be over, when the stress of the everyday drudgery will be done, when I won't have to wake up in the morning wondering how I'm going to fail at something or forget something else today. It's truly like a physical weight is slowly being lifted from my shoulders. It's incredible. I finally feel like my life is starting to move again.
And at this point, movement is all I'm looking for.
