The Journey of a 1000 Miles

This is what I did: I resigned from a job that was killing me at a time when everything else in my life was killing me too. Or I was killing my life, depending on the way we want to look at it. This answers the question about what I did, which a blog post raised a year ago.

I didn’t want to write about it then because:

1. I wasn’t sure.


2. I was feeling great, but I wanted to feel great within, not feel great because I was cheered on.


3. I wasn’t sure I was feeling great or that I would continue to.

It hasn’t been easy. A day before I handed in my resignation from a high-flying career (many will keep considering me silly even if I become the richest woman on earth), I scanned my body mentally. It felt tired, bruised and almost broken from the pressure of a life I did not love anymore. I remember lying in my parents’ room staring up at the ceiling… counting the troubles ahead on my path no matter what the decision. Measuring the value of my life and happiness vis-à-vis the raise in salary that had been given to bait me.

I finally asked myself: who was I doing it for, if I wasn’t happy? And I said so many names, I had so many reasons. And nowhere on the list was I.

So then I made that which was perhaps the most sane independent decision of my life. I have made tough decision before, but those were of a beneficiary nature to all around me. So it was no problem getting cheers and good wishes. But this decision was different. It was something to do with what people did not call success. But with my cold, numbed body and a rapidly-sinking heart, I had to redefine success.

I wrote what must have been one of the strangest resignation letters – in that it sounded like an encyclopedia of reasons to leave. And I hadn’t put the most original reasons in. Such as, oh I want to do what I love.

Obviously, such an absurdly full resignation was seen as an attempt to escape to greener employment  pastures – and I was offered a near double salary and what not. It took me a couple of days to readjust my mind to my new number 1 priority: Me.

I waited to write about it until a year had passed – for I knew I will be tested. What has happened in this one year, I am ready to write about.