A Shift Has Been Made

I quit my job today, in favor of what now feels like a risk. I verbally accepted the offer this morning, and sat at my desk with my signed letter of resignation all day, cringing every time my boss walked by. Because I just hate that part. Even when I worked in an incredibly hostile environment for a man who made me miserable, I still hated to tell him I was leaving. He, as is his custom, did not handle it professionally. But even then I felt guilty and vaguely deceitful.

Conversely, today involved a teddy bear of a man who baked us all pumpkin bread at Christmas and who is not exaggerating when he says he has done everything in his power to keep me here, even when others had to leave. He was gracious and sad, asking what he could do to keep me. He patted my head when I confessed that I felt guilty. He told me he understood and called me kiddo.

I will miss trading stories with my neighbor, the other blonde—the one I pray will be me in 25 years. And I'll miss teasing the Army vet who never knows I'm joking. I’m nervous about working from The Home prematurely. I fear that I’ll have trouble keeping myself in line. Delineating work and personal time, professional and private. I fear.

But, over the course of this endeavor, I resolve never to conduct conference calls in my jammies. Unless they occur at 7 am. I resolve to join a gym and go as often as possible, not only to achieve that perennial premarital fitness goal, LBN (looking better naked), but also so that I do not become an interaction-starved stay-at-home mom, minus the kids. I resolve not to tackle The Boy when he arrives at The Home just so he will pay attention to me. I will schedule lunches with my friends. I will buy more suits like the one that got me this job. I will invest in real shoes. I will not say, to those of consequence, that I fear I have oversold myself. And in every case, I will do my best to make my voice stop shaking. I will thank God for blindspots and blindsiding by opportunity. I will be proud that I’m doing what feels like the right thing, even if it’s not the safe thing. Because, as Ann-Margret and Jack Lemmon taught me in Grumpy Old Men, I’ll only regret the risks I don’t take.