I'll go back to 2012. Things weren't going great at my full time job.
1. I wasn't growing
2. Nobody, not even myself, acknowledged the value of my work.
3. I stopped laughing about my own jokes until my stomach hurt.
4. My strongest coworker relationships began to crumble.
5. I was desperate.
So I did what any other person would do, I started looking for another full time job. It didn't matter where. I needed to find a purpose. Months rolled by. I wrote many cover letters, perfected my resume, updated every work-related profile, wrote thank you notes, met with recruiters, created a nice online portfolio—all to no avail. Bye the end of 2012 I was a little beyond desperate and you could smell it from miles away. To make matters worse, my role at work had shifted to the point where I no longer enjoyed what I was doing. I did things automatically. I even tried to push further and make great things, still nobody seemed to notice and I stopped caring.
Stopped caring—what a sad little existence.
By December, I was in talks with a company in the Midwest. They were dead-serious about the whole thing and even flew me there for an interview. But there were two problems. The first one was trying to convince my husband that leaving New York would be great for both of us (ha!) and the second one was getting the actual job. After months of interviews, talks and long hours awaiting for THE call, I did not get the job.
Did. Not. Get. It.
At first, I felt like an imbecile.
Who was this other person and why is he/she better than me?
Then, extreme pain, frustration and a feeling of inadequacy.
I sunk into depression. There is no other way of putting it.
Every night after I came back from work, I would just stare at the ceiling and cry. Then dear husband would become extremely worried because he thought something had happened.
What happened?
I would stare at him with puffy eyes...
Absolutely nothing.
I would say, before turning into a faucet again. This went on for a few months. I felt like I was digging a whole I didn't know how to get out of. I felt trapped. I knew I needed to stay at my job because both our health insurances depended on it. To put it in other words, health insurance was keeping me in my current job. Who would, in their sane mind, jump ship into unknown waters just because they're a little sad?
But then something happened.
I began to realize that this was the only life I had and I only had one chance at it. Crying my eyes out at night was not the life I fantasized about when I was a child. So now what? I already had a bunch of freelancing gigs on the side, which I managed to do along my full time job. This system can get a little crazy, if you ask me. Towards those last months at my full time job I had to struggle hard to keep my sanity. I was in the middle of an extremely hard project at work and accepting EVERYTHING that came from outside on top of that.
My idea was to take the exit door on Friday evening and have a million gigs waiting for me by Monday morning.
Be careful what you wish for.
I was working 12 hours a day, including weekends.
Stress was taking a toll.
One very fine day, I was sitting in one of those dreadful meetings at work when I turned around, almost like my soul had left my body to take a stroll, and realized how detached I felt from all of it. The voices, the swiveling chairs, my pen pretending to take notes but instead making stupid drawings on a pad full of gibberish. After we were dismissed, I went back to my chair. Inhaled deeply and knocked on my boss' door.
Hi.
Hi.
Well, I think you probably know why I'm here.
No, I don't.
Ok, well, I'm leaving. I wanted to give you my three weeks' notice.
Is that your final decision?
Yeah.
Do you have another offer?
Actually, no. I'm going to freelance for a while.
Nice. Well, good for you.
Thanks.
HAD I JUST DONE THAT ON A WHIM?
Granted, it wasn't done a whim. It took a lot of soul-searching, head-scratching and snot-pouring to pull the plug.
And just as I had wished for, I did have work waiting for me on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, the week after that and the month that followed.
This month will mark my first year as a full-time freelancer and what better way to celebrate than with a blog?
J.S.
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