The year I quit my job: Two years on
Two years ago I quit my job (One year on story here).
I thought that this story would always be defined by that opening scene.
There are many times since making that big decision, where I’ve had to make bolder ones. At the time, you don’t imagine that there is anything bolder than an act of leaving. That making a stand or offering a piece of yourself will feel bigger and bolder than the moment you slap the resignation letter on your bosses desk. Boldness becomes a habit that, in the end, doesn’t define you at all.
Leaving became an obsession. Assuring others I was smart /sane /right /impervious became a pursuit. At the beginning, it was necessary to anchor myself to new versions of the old horizons and took reassurance from the steady way that the sun would always rise and set in the same predictable way.
A radical simplification of life was the only way to get comfortable with vacating the psychological home and carefully composed life that took three decades to build. It began by downsizing possessions, handing back keys and leaving contracts that promised a level of certainty that was no longer reciprocated. In being dangerously inexperienced in this act of unravelling, I was clumsy in my explanations. Words had been a faithful ally, soon even they became scrambled by the pace of change.
That first year was like a badly written story. Not because it was a bad story, but because each chapter was written on the fly. There were pages added in transit at airport lounges, words scribbled drowsily in bed whilst on the edge of burnout and illustrations slipped in during the throws of creativity. There was no consistent voice, no clear path and no narrative destination. Which in the end, made that first year such an excellent story.
By the beginning of the second year, there were signs affirming my direction of travel. The first was a surprising gift from the streets of Berlin. I’d just moved there and was looking for work. When nothing looked imminent and in the midst of doubt, a gust of wind literally blew €1500 in to my hand (see maybe it’s time to think differently about money). It was an incredible gesture from this forgiving place.
Berlin was a wonderful pause, a time to reflect on the multitude of experiments in the world of work; coaching, facilitation, innovation, branding, illustration, design, business strategy and entrepreneurship to name a few. I was like a market trader flashing the bulging waistcoat beneath my jacket filled with new skills and a catalogue of 21st century tools.
I met other peoples growth challenges with a symphony of enthusiasm, creativity and compassion and witnessed a new version of myself emerging. A new northern star began to shine, but it wasn’t ahead, it was within.
Then, the road offered up an unexpected diversion. On the threshold of autumn and armed with curiosity, the woods in central Germany called. I was to take part in a week of nature-based workshops. I was about to learn that going further on this journey, first meant going deeper (in to the forest).
It was so uncomfortable to hear the darkness in others’ stories. This confrontation with their grief shone a light in to the pocket of pain I’d only experienced as a child. In being taken back to a period of formative change in my own youth, grief came rushing back. Which was so surprising considering the lifelong campaign to police any loss, grief and sensitivity in to hiding. It was a remarkably effective system that kept me safe for decades, but had stopped me growing.
On those balmy evenings in late September as the leaves turned from green to orange, the forest was in transition. And so was I. Sensitivity had never been experienced as a gift before, it was always the curse of connection not the fuel for creation. The changing forest provided clarity, vision comes from insight and insight comes from a deep connection to everything around and within. The police abandoned their posts, flooding my mind and body with a lifetimes supply of unprocessed endings.
It wasn’t pretty. For the rest of autumn, I could grow no more until I was up to date with life. Imagine never saying a real goodbye. How many might you clock up in a lifetime? Strange things were happening; lucid dreams that came to pass, changes to my body and a general sense of fogginess. I met a boyfriend in Athens where we experienced the ruins of a fallen empire as the backdrop to our own goodbye. The patched up Parthenon was resisting what I was just beginning to embrace.
I was glued to the conveyor belt of my own stories, watching to see what would get pushed along next. Though this was completely foreign, I kind of enjoyed it. I experienced a rare kind of grounding that is required when you must return the dying to the soil.
By christmas, the stories had stopped showing up, leaving me exhausted. I was left in peace to sleep and recover from such an epic goodbye. During that long slumber through winter, there was only one thing that penetrated the cocoon. At first it was whispered to me in poems, then anecdotes from strangers and stories from friends, until the volume became so loud that I took it as an instruction.
El Camino de Santiago.
The thought of a 900km pilgrimage filled me with dread. I’d been in a metaphorical coma for some time and didn’t feel like bounding out of bed to hit the road. I’d spent the first night on my own in the Pyrenees berating myself for such a dire lack of preparation. What made me think I could walk across an entire country without a map and in trainers?
My body groaned through those first 10 days, meeting my resistance with the petulance of a teenager who had been dragged out by his parents. My blistered feet and sore legs strode on, if this was only a game of survival then I was ready to play.
A journey always starts with survival, it is our natural response to the unknown. It took me a while to see that the struggle for survival was a mirror back to the beginning of my two year journey. It meant that I was about to encounter the rest of that journey in microcosm, speeded up and intensified.
The physical landscape that I carried myself through did in fact echo everything I knew about journeying. There is an epic climb at the beginning that demands to know if you are ready. Then the resistance from the flat, empty plains of the Meseta. It asks whether you can endure the emptiness of a place that you clear out while you build the new.
The heather filled mountains offer new and elevated perspectives before giving way to the descent in to rocky valleys. They remind you that going down is never as easy as it looks. The warm hug from the Galician farmland is the comfort you need to affirm your path. Nearing the coast, the end of the earth seemed to drop away to reveal the majestic Atlantic Ocean. If this wandering has taught me anything, arrival was much more important that the destination.
Each step was surprisingly easy and mundane. After 40 days on the road it became clear that a purposeful journey is rarely made of anything all that special. The steps are in charge, the task is to slow down to meet them. I came back with the kind of perspective you might find at the top of a cloudy mountain. In rare moments when the clouds part, you experience a view so breathtaking that you are buoyed by the knowledge that everything is there waiting for you.
I thought I was looking for a passage back to the world that I used to live in. I was sure that the pilgrimage would grant me permission to want what everyone else wanted. It didn’t. Instead it offered up a new kind of opportunity. It promised to offer an endless supply of creativity to continue this design project of a lifetime. It asked one favour in return. I must accept that my difference can serve others.
So here I am, on the verge of accepting total responsibility for my life project. In the periods of clarity when the clouds part, I recognise the irony. The moment we decide to take full responsibility is the moment that it is no longer about us. It is the place where our self interest meets the world. We will be granted agency to meaningfully contribute to this world when we become healthy agents of it.
You don’t need to go dancing in the woods or hand over your keys to become a responsible agent, that was just my path. All you need is the courage and curiosity to answer your call. That is, you realise it is time to inherit a greater life. If it is wanderlust that tempts you, then follow it. After all, maybe we need a bit of romance to convince us to begin this wildly dangerous but deliberate journey of a lifetime.
Note from author: I love to hear about journeys, I so look forward to hearing about yours if this resonated.
