The Woman at the Wedding with Pretty Hair and a Cattle Prod

7/19/17

How do I give up something that should be amazing? This work from home trial was the answer to my prayers. It let me reclaim my time. I mediate more, read more, eat (slightly) better, sleep well, write more. Every facet of my life has changed for the better.

I’m afraid to give this up

But my soul is hungry. So very hungry.

So why am I still unhappy?

The environment has changed but the job hasn’t. It’s still monotonous and menial, and I still have very little power to create change. It’s still customer service. I’d probably have the same chief complaints anywhere someone with a limited skillset like mine could get a job. I used to consider myself valuable to employers. Now I realize my qualifications—the kind I could list on a resume, at least—are strikingly average. What’s the difference then if I put these “office skills” to use here or elsewhere?

And is leaving worth giving up working from home?

This question starts the cycle I find myself in every few months when the drudgery of another day monitoring freight and training new hires that get paid more to do less than I do saps my will to live.  When I tiptoe around this rabbit hole, the usual fears of finding a new job creep in: will I have to work shitty hours? will I take a pay cut? is there anything really out there? By the end I always reach the inevitable conclusion that leaving this job would only be trading one evil for another, so what’s the point? At least here I get to work in close proximity to my open patio door.

Then something happened that changed everything. Or, rather, someone.

I had met Lori before but only in passing. She was married to a curling chum of my husband’s, and we found ourselves at the same table at the wedding of a mutual friend. She was beautiful, a little older than I was, and the physical definition of what I wanted to be. When I got over my intimidation at her striking presence, I found that she was as involved—if not deeper so—in spirituality and alternative healing as I was. After sharing titles of our favorite thought-provoking books, we landed on the dreaded topic of jobs. She worked with her husband in his business but otherwise had no “skills” (sounds familiar) and was long-since done doing menial office work for anyone else. When I told her that’s exactly what I was facing, she asked what I do to feed my soul.

What do I do to feed my soul?

Aside from the surprise of being asked such a defining question after several cocktails at a wedding reception, it was a little embarrassing that the answer didn’t come easy. Or was simply, “not enough.”

I left her knowing we were brought together for a reason. Our energies put us at the same table and our beliefs fostered an endearing and eye-opening conversation. This wasn’t chance. Her words, “I’ll never work a menial job for someone else again,” reverberated off my brain for days. I wondered, “How can I do that?” Would I have to wait 10-15 years to work my own life’s mission? I didn’t think I could hold out that long.

The following week I contemplated the timing of meeting Lori and the discontent with my job that was nearly impossible to ignore. She ripped the lid off a can of worms I’d been toying with for the past four years. Well, the past decade, really. And now that it was off I needed a plan.

I came to the idea—while mowing lawn, of all things—that the universe is full of jobs, and just because I haven’t thought of the perfect one for me (that I dared to imagine with no weekend hours, good pay, chances to be outdoors or work with animals, or be in some kind of alternative healing field) didn’t mean it didn’t exist. There were an infinite number of jobs out there. Why not let the universe find one for me?

Little did I know that it actually would.

Shortly after that, without provocation from me, my hubs came home and said he wanted to look at alternative ways to make money so that I could quit my job and be happy. Since I supported him through his own career moves a few years before, he wanted to return the favor. It was then that I confessed I had already decided my days in transportation were numbered; that I had a feeling that within months something big was going to happen. Maybe I would even get to stay home and write.

As we talked I was overtaken by a sense of awe. Somehow we made it to the same page without even trying. I wasn’t going to tell him my thoughts on quitting my “day job” until I had a solid plan, lest he have any negative feelings about it (husbands can be so damn rational). But that wasn’t the case at all. He arrived there at the same time I did, which makes me all the more certain that something is coming.

Something big.