here is a quick rant and i hope it helps someone…
i was sitting in a meeting at work when i made the decision that changed everything.
my boss was talking. i don’t even remember what about — something minor, some non-issue being stretched into a conversation because that’s what meetings are. and i was sitting there half-listening, the way you do after enough years, and i just looked at him and thought it so clearly. i cannot do this anymore. not another ten years. not five. not one.
which sounds dramatic maybe. but i’d done everything right. two degrees, years of showing up, taking on responsibility, being the person who got things done. i did what you’re supposed to do. and there i was in my 50s, still just making it month to month. still waiting for something to shift.
i walked out of that meeting — not stormed out, just quietly left — got a coffee, sat down with a notebook, and wrote one sentence.
i am never, ever working for anybody else as long as i live.
i had no idea how i was going to make that true. none (it turned out well) but that almost didn’t matter, not right then. what mattered was i meant it. fully, no asterisk. and i knew i wasn’t going to talk myself back out of it the next morning like i probably had before.
i wasn’t going to sleepwalk through my own life again. that part i was sure of.