(I'm really busy this week. Stupid busy. So I'm taking a shortcut today and re-posting something. Technically, considering that I didn't post it here, it's new. At least to here, it is.)
My very first blog post wasn't on a blog, per se. At the end of February, 2009, I made a choice. A big one. I felt so good about it that, sans blog, I posted it as a Facebook note. One day I may grow up and migrate everything to a fancy blog-site with pages and stuff. Until then, I thought I would save this for posterity.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
I quit my job today...
The scariest part of any climb, for me, isn't going up or coming down. It's that moment in between when you have to lean back and trust the rope and let gravity have it's way. When you let go and just hang there. I've been on the edge for months now, clinging to the lip, afraid to let go. Today I finally leaned back all the way.
It's a good feeling, overcoming that little fear in the pit of your stomach and fully leaning back into the rappel. You never really know until you do it whether the rope will hold you, no matter how careful you are, so the trusting is like a small victory. It's the commitment that feels good -- knowing there's no going back and doing it anyway.
It was a long time coming, the letting go, certainly longer even than the two years I worked at River Cree. I'd be lying though if I tried to say that RC didn't make the decision that much easier, or that it didn't expedite the process. It would also be tempting to say that I quit in response to my boss being fired, but that also would be a lie. It may have affected the timing, but not the decision; That one was already in the bag.
I've had problems with the casino industry for a long while, and made a promise to myself back in 2004 that I'd be out of gaming within five years. I promised myself I'd finally write that novel I'd wanted to write for forever. I promised myself I'd do something better. Until the last six months I thought I'd be breaking that promise, but here I am. I guess somebody or something was watching.
I am finally and fully disenchanted with everything that makes a corporation tic: The disingenuous leadership practices; the ties; the duplicitous peer interactions; the utter lack of concern for the well being of employees; the legally-mandated disregard for everything except the bottom line; all of it. All of these things make me more than a little queasy now, and every day spent having to make compromises to get the job done in even the best work cultures felt like a day lost. RC exemplifies the worst of these characteristics in every way I can think of, so my experience there amplified my profound sense of unease and dissonance. Right now, sitting here, I'm fucking thrilled to be free of the morass of ineffective leadership that typified my experience at RC. Absofuckinglutely thrilled.
But there are drawbacks to leaving without notice as I felt compelled (released?) to do today. The worst is not being able to say goodbye to all of the truly terrific people that work there who didn't happen to be handy this afternoon. I wish I hadn't made people go in on their day off. I wish I hadn't messed the schedule up. I wish I'd had the chance to speak to everyone that I respected and appreciated, to say thanks and goodbye, but that didn't happen.
That said, I'm still glad that I'm gone.
I appreciate everything that the last nine years has taught me, about the world, business and me. I appreciate knowing that I'm off to a better whatever, and that the worst day after today will still be better than the best day I spent making compromises. Even more, I appreciate getting out alive and truly understanding how much that world simply doesn't fit for me: How uncomfortable it felt, like a cheap suit or a tie.
I like an adventure, and turning my world inside-out like I plan to do over the next few months or years will qualify nicely. I'm feeling excited as much as anything else, like everything is about to get scarier and shinier at the same time. I told my brother today that turning my frown upside down seemed like too much work, so I thought I'd try inverting my life instead. This is my life-inversion. This kind of change can be damned fun.
I will not, will not, miss the ties.
(Thanks for joining me in this jaunt down memory lane. I'd love to hear your life-inversion story if you have one you want to share. If the world doesn't end, I promised a friend that I'd *gulp* post a poem later this week as another escape from writing a new post. I guess it would be a bit histrionic to wish for the end of the world, yeah?)
