Month: June 2020

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Get Out!

If you are in a job that ranges from mildly unsatisfactory to totally dysfunctional, get out!

Believe me, the longer you stay in an unhealthy situation, the greater the toll. You will not be aware of the damage over time as you numb yourself to constant pain, tell yourself lies and deceive yourself that everything is okay in a soul sucking job and/or with a psycho boss.

Pay attention to those red flags. They could save your life.

The more you excuse and tolerate a bad situation, the more contracted you become until you see no way out. You can see no options, no alternatives. You believe you can’t escape.

Until you do.

There is absolutely nothing worse than being in a place, or with a person, that preys on your insecurities, devalues you, or even just bores you out of your mind.

Get out!

Even if you have to take less pay, or be unemployed for a while, or do something totally out of your skill set and experiences, even at this time of record unemployment, it is far, far better than gritting your teeth and enduring something or someone who eats your soul. You will pay and the injuries may never heal.

And when you do get out, spend time with yourself and listen to your emotions without judgement. If you’re angry, sit with it, don’t act out, acknowledge that you have the right to be angry, that it is okay to be mad and truly feel it. You are NOT this anger. The anger is an emotion that needs to be seen and felt and loved. This is extremely important. Emotions have a lot of information to help you. If you have unresolved issues, you will leap from the frying pan into the fire. It happened to me, I went from bad to much much worse because I didn’t listen to myself.

A good book to read is, You Are Enough by Panache Desai.

Here is another truth worth sharing, people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.

Trust your instincts.

Believe in yourself.

Make your escape plan and get the hell out!

And love whatever you are feeling without acting it out.

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Pay Your Employees

Once again, the uber rich 1% look for new and clever ways to rip off their employees. The very same employees who work hard to keep these bastards rich.

So they announce that employees who work remotely should be compensated according to where they work. The more expensive the area the more pay (which I severely doubt would ever happen anyways).

Where a person works has got NOTHING to do with what you pay.

You pay a person for the work they do. If a job is worth $50 an hour, you pay them $50 an hour, whether they live on the Arctic circle or downtown San Francisco.

I have seen this argued before based on a persons age, race, gender.

NO.

You pay a person what the job is worth.

And if you have a very valuable employee, you pay them MORE.

You cheap bastards.

No one ever paid me more because my rent was high! HA! HA!

But I have been paid less because I am single. I have been paid less because I am a woman.

I get paid nothing now, because I am a senior.

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Silence

There is a lot of silence after quitting 15 years of work.

Good silence.

The kind of silence that gets in your head and makes you see the truth so plainly, that it is like a slap to the face, or a left hook.

That kind of reality check, that kind of clarity takes a lot of the fear away. It allows you to move past the past and into a brand new future.

Forced isolation, thanks to Covid-19 and lots of jobless time have made me see exactly what those 15 years were.

Nothing more than a puff of smoke, if even that.

Eckhart Tolle said our lives are like a dash on our tombstone. The only notable points are the date of birth, and the date of death. All that happened in between is summed up with a dash.

So to with my 15 years. June 2005 – June 2020. Ha! Ha!

This all sounds a bit depressing, but actually it is quite freeing. There is no longer any weight or meaning to those 15 years. There is nothing holding me anymore. I am untethered.

Some things try to pull me back, but I no longer have those heavy feelings of responsibility. It was a false responsibility to begin with. I was a fiercely loyal and caring employee, to a fault. This was never valued or appreciated, and that is okay. No regrets.

In truth, I believe that if I had of been the real me, then I would have been valued and appreciated. I wish I could have been more of a free spirit then.

I can now.

I am now.

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No Plan, Much Guilt

There is never a perfect time, but, arguably, some times are better than others to quit your job.

Like a few other departures in my life, (ahem) this lacked a plan. It was something I might do someday, way off in the future. You know, when things are perfect for leaving. Never mind how much suffering is going on in the meantime. Life fortunately, did had a plan. So, suddenly, here I am, happily, yet fearfully, unemployed.

If you are lucky, and paying attention, you can make a plan to leave your work, your lover, spouse, parents, whatever, but I suspect a lot of the time it just happens. The moment suddenly appears. A window of opportunity opens up and you duck out. Or you reach a limit, a line gets crossed and you’re outta here!

Only much later you may realize how much you wanted out. Unconsciously, we have had enough.

I just reread the story The Book of Eve (Constance Beresford-Howe), where the woman leaves her husband, no plan, no nothing, one day she hurriedly packs a few things and just walks out. She learns to live and love again. It was interesting how this not only benefited her, but many other people too. There are many great messages here.

So even when it looks like a big mistake, it isn’t. If your heart is in it, then you’ve done the right thing. Everything logical may tell you that you are a fucking idiot, but your heart just sits back, sips a margarita and chills. It’ll all work out. God will use whatever road you are on.

I feel immense guilt for writing about my decision to quit at this time, because many people had no choice, it was swift and without mercy, and now all their money is gone and they are facing enormous hardship.

I am very fortunate to have been able to make a choice and I realize that. So many others have been left destitute because of Covid-19. So I do know that although this pandemic forced me to make the change I longed to make I am extremely lucky.

At least, until my savings run out too. And, they will.

I may develop a taste for cat food.

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You Are Here

Remember the good old days when we went to shopping malls?

There would be, somewhere in the facility, after a lengthy search of going in circles until exhausted with no place to sit, a directory, and it would say “You are Here.”

You’d look at that map and wonder where the fuck you are. It would then take a half hour of titling your head from side to side, to practically doing a headstand to figure out where here is. Once you did establish it, you’d spend another half hour trying to find the store you want, then orientating yourself as to, do you go right, left, up, down, back where you came from? Or worse, discovering the store is no longer. Get us to the food court please, surely to God there will be some much needed bathrooms there!

Airport directories are way worse.

Welcome to the abyss. This is where I am now. At that infamous directory saying “You are Here”. Only in the abyss, there is just sky, clouds, the odd bird. I don’t want to look down. It might give me an idea of how far up I am, and, hmm, is that ground getting closer?

I am referring of course to my recent decision to quit a 15 year soul sucking job.

It was a huge leap into the abyss, especially during a pandemic, into a future unknown. However, I will tell you this, it is way better to have a future unknown than the future known. The future that repeats the past, day in and day out of misery and predictable boredom.

So even if the ground is fast approaching, maybe I’ll figure out where here is and where I can go before the final splat.