Knowing When It's Time to Walk Away

Dearest Gentle readers, I must first offer my sincere apologies for my extended absence from this modest publication. While one does not wish to burden you with trifling excuses, let it be known that life's obligations and various professional and educational entanglements have kept your correspondent quite thoroughly occupied. Rest assured, however, that my observations have continued unabated, albeit silently, during this interlude. Today, I return to society with reflections on a matter that has been plaguing me: the art of knowing when to gracefully exit one's employment. (I’m sorry, I just had to channel my inner Lady Whistledown🤭)

In the past few weeks, I’ve caught myself zoning out during work meetings and mentally drafting resignation letters instead of taking notes. Those imaginary letters range from politely professional to dramatically cathartic, though I doubt I'll ever send the ones where I enumerate exactly how soul-crushing our weekly status reports have become. There's something about that particular daydream that feels like a warning sign - like my subconscious is sending increasingly obvious smoke signals while my conscious mind pretends not to smell the fire. I sit at my desk everyday, staring at my computer screen without really seeing it. I've been having the same feeling for months; this low-grade heaviness that I kept dismissing as a phase, a rough patch, just another case of the Mondays (that somehow lasts all week).

These days, I find myself living entirely for the weekends, with the workweek feeling like an endless slog toward those precious 48 hours of freedom. My Sunday evenings have become progressively more anxious; there’s a knot in my stomach that grows tighter with each passing hour, dreading the new work week.

I’ve slowly become the office cynic, rolling my eyes at every little thing. Everything annoys me. I do honestly feel like my growth has plateaued, and I can't remember the last time I learned something that genuinely excited me. All I do during my lunch breaks is mindlessly scroll job listings. These quiet revelations have accumulated slowly, like dust on a bookshelf, and one day I noticed just how thick the layer had become.

What kind of person walks away from a perfectly stable job? What about all those people who would love to have my position? What if the next job is worse? What if I'm actually the problem? What if I'm just being entitled and ungrateful? What if I don’t even find a job and I end up in a worse situation? I mean, as long as I stay where I am, I don't have to confront the expansive uncertainty of what I might become elsewhere. I can remain comfortably uncomfortably, if that makes any sense. I’ve replayed these questions in my head over and over and I honestly do not have an answer to any. It doesn’t help that some of the people around me think I’m being foolish about wanting to quit, which sorta makes sense 'cause I actually do not have a next course of action. I just know that each morning brings the exhausting performance of pretending this job still fulfils me, when in reality, I can barely stomach another day of this elaborate pretence and I WANT OUT! Walking away shouldn’t even be a problem for me, as I don’t particularly like my colleagues …Just kidding! Or am I? 🌚

The unknown carries no guarantees. Sometimes I try to have conversations with my future self, asking what she'll regret more; staying or leaving. Will she wish I had moved on sooner? Or will she look back fondly on this period, wondering why I was in such a rush to change? I don't have a crystal-clear answer yet, but I can feel her gently nudging me toward courage rather than comfort. She seems to be whispering that growth rarely happens in spaces of complete security. The edges of discomfort are where we often find our next evolution.

I haven't handed in my resignation letter yet. Maybe I won't. Maybe writing this is just my way of processing the possibility. But acknowledging these feelings feels like an important first step toward whatever comes next, whether that's recommitting to my current path or charting a new one entirely.