The most interesting aspect of quitting my job was the kind interrogation from my co-workers about why I was quitting.
Where are you going? How did you find out about the position? Why are you leaving? What job searches did you use? How long did it take? Where else did you interview?
For those that read this blog, you'll know that I came to the decision three months before I actually gave notice. But I had been unhappy for much longer. I struggled with the fact that while I love the people I worked with and had many close co-workers that supported me, I didn't have a good work-life balance and I didn't feel challenged in the right ways.
I had been thinking about moving on for over a year. During this time, I kept going back to the fact that I loved the people. My best friend worked with me. I had lunch buddies and bitch-fest buddies and stay-till-midnight-to-finish-a-deadline buddies. I valued the people more than I valued myself or my needs. That's how awesome the people were to me.
But the scales were tipped so out of balance that it was hard for me to do my job. I gained weight, I slept poorly at night, I gave up some of my own happiness to get the job done each and every day. My sarcasm at work reached a critical point. I was jaded. I was burnt out.
I did a little searching for reasons to leave, deciding to quit, and all that. I stumbled upon Penelope Trunk's post on having a good job. So I took the test.
In my heart and now in my head, I knew that it was time to move on. The long commute, little control over outcomes, and incredibly challenging work without clear goals were the deciding factors. While the amount of work I was doing wasn't totally out of control, the type of work made it exhausting.
And all the wonderful people that I worked with and lunched with and gossiped at the water cooler with couldn't change that.
I can spout off a dozen "what if" scenarios that would have changed my decision to leave. But none of those what ifs were real. None of them were what was happening in my life or at the company. Like many relationships that go bad, our timing was off. I wanted more. I needed more. I deserved more.
In all honesty, it was one of the hardest decisions of my professional career. I probably made it harder than it had to be. And while it is too soon to tell if the grass is greener over at this new company, it is certainly different. And on terms that work for me.
