Starting Again, Part 3: The Knowing Arrives

A series outlining a career gone bad (and the eventual changes made to begin setting it right)

This is part three of an ongoing series on career misery and changing direction. To read part two, click here.

Months meandered on and the year unfolded with much less strain and stress than the one before. Even with the last dredges of burnout still darkening the corners, I wondered if it’d be better, smarter to just make my situation work. The intensity had lessened. So why couldn’t I just be happy?

Early summer brought a warning as I vacillated between staying and going. In a meeting one day, I was struck by seeing an older woman who, despite her many successes, still couldn’t push past the fear to do the thing that was calling to her. I knew I’d be her in another 10 years if I kept waiting on time and age to give me the courage to start putting serious energy into the creative pursuits I dreamed about. Her story spurred me forward (even if only to avoid ending up like her) and I made a second vow to myself to finally start sketching out plans to give my personal writing a home.

Putting intentional energy toward my own project provided a balm on days when the urge to flee became overpowering but it wasn’t enough. My misery begged to go, to start over, fighting against my fear as it tallied the risk and worried the what-ifs? paper thin. Fear won every time.

Then the height of summer came, bringing with it a post-dinner conversation that reframed my fear for me.

We sat on the back porch of a friend’s house, bellies full from a grilled dinner as a sunny July day shook out its heat and turned toward dusk. My friend left to tuck in the kids while J and I talked through bits of life with her husband, waiting to pull out peach cobbler and ice cream until she returned. 

The conversation turned toward my work. I briefly unpacked the years-long saga of being unhappy and the realization I had uncovered earlier in the year that going toward marketing/PR work was perhaps what had doomed my career from the beginning. I shared how enlightening it felt to uncover that information but also how impossible it felt to act on. I had gotten comfortable with my title and salary even if I was miserable doing the work that earned me them. I told my friend’s husband that it was simply too scary and too risky for both my career and our financial stability to start over. 

He sat quietly, listening the whole time, and then said, with a complete sense of calm, “But isn’t the alternative even scarier?” 

I blinked. 

He continued, “You already know the outcome if you don’t change. You’re living it.”

I said nothing so he went on.

“If everything stays the same, you’ll continue to be unhappy and miserable. Isn’t that scarier than trying something new?” 

My mind scrambled. 

Oh. 

Oh, oh, oh! 

It took me a few minutes of mental hurdles to leap around his reframe and see it from the other side. When I got there, it seemed so simple. Of course. Of course! 

Where I had only ever thought about what I’d lose by opting for a change or starting over, his question helped me see what I was losing by staying the same. The other side of my dilemma, seeing that I was choosing the same outcome over and over, an outcome I already knew, an outcome I already hated, was indeed scarier, much scarier than the open-ended possibility of something new. 

That conversation followed me into the fall to my annual reset—the three-week period each employee at the firm got to unplug completely from work. I had high hopes for what the time away would yield given all the searching and planning I had already done that year. I was ready to honor that second vow I made in early summer and put all my writing planning into action.  

I didn’t expect a third and final vow to materialize along the way. 

Only it didn’t start as a vow but as a knowing. Or perhaps it was a vow born from a knowing that I finally had the capacity to hear and accept. 

My reset unfolded similarly to the one I had the year before. By the second week, all of the work jitters left and I settled into a new albeit temporary routine of nourishing myself through daily movement, time in nature, reading stacks of books, getting enough sleep, and writing regularly again. Happiness returned. Vigor followed soon after. I became peaceful and quiet yet propelled to create. I wrote and baked and then wrote and baked some more. I launched this newsletter and started outlining a baking dream. Somewhere in the midst of honoring the self’s true desires, all the noise around my career quieted and a knowing came to me that it was time for a capital-C change. It was time to leap toward something big and new and allow 2024 to be the year for that drastic shift. 

Planner that I am, I wanted specifics. Did that mean going part-time to have room for experimentation in other industries? Did it just mean a shift in responsibility so I wouldn’t be tied to a daily schedule? Did it mean fully resigning? 

No answers came to me beyond the persistent knowing that it was time and that the change would be big. The knowing came carried on an earnest hope that seemed to beg my thinking and doing self to honor its truth, to listen and follow through. The hope felt like its own kind of warning: that my true self had rallied one last time to push me toward a new path but couldn’t keep doing so if I refused time and again to follow it. 

Somehow I knew that if I kept betraying my true self and choosing the safe way, it would soon dim and resign to my choices. Feeling that edge was horrifying. I had already lost so much; I didn’t want to lose myself too.

From that knowing, I made a vow to myself. It built on the previous two to promise that in 2024, I would pursue and welcome that capital-C change.

On Jan. 2, 2024, the very first day back at work after the holiday break, our team digested some news that set in motion a decision that would later eliminate the need for full-time employees at the firm. By the time we reached the end of January, I had my termination date. Despite how bittersweet and difficult the decision was, I was at peace. I was ready. 

In the midst of processing the change, wrapping up projects, and saying goodbyes, I felt the future, that wily unknown thing, yawn in front of me but this time it did so deliciously. I had no idea what I’d do next. I had no idea whether I’d keep writing professionally. I also had no idea what else I’d do if I didn’t. While all the uncertainty (and prospect of no planned income) would have terrified me a year earlier, this time it thrilled me. I was ready to be free, to change. I was ready to explore and find the new thing. 

A few weeks later, sharing the news with my beloved stylist during a routine haircut, she asked me another question that created what felt like another cartoon lightbulb moment. Just like the question from my friend’s husband, it sent me on a path that inspired the work I’m doing now.

Next week: that story + a real-time update on how I’m finding my footing.

To keep reading, click here for part four.