“Fear will make you stagnant.” These are the words that popped into my head as I gave in my two-weeks notice to a job I held onto for over fives years, without any true back up plan. At this point I’m broke, slightly nervous about what my next move is going to be, but I refuse to allow fear to control me.
For the past five years, I went to school; I partied, made friends, lost a few, but one thing that remained constant was my ability to hold on to a day-to-day job. I loved the company I worked for, it tied into my passion for the love of sneakers, but it got old fast.
The tedious management, the contradictory messages they gave the staff and the lack of personal growth started to drive me crazy. I reassured myself that once I graduated from school I would focus on landing a job with a magazine, or a radio station, just something in my field.
So, here I am, a year later, 25-year-old female with a Bachelor’s degree and I’m doing remedial tasks like measuring an adult’s foot. (I never understood how grown ass people didn’t know the size of their own feet.) Clearly having my degree was not the master key I thought it was to unlocking my success.
I applied for EVERYTHING!
I applied for positions I was over qualified for, under qualified for, I applied for jobs that was just in the vicinity of what I wanted to do. I was desperate. I never understood how an entry-level job asks for so much experience; the title is entry-level, not expert-level.
My love has always been writing. When I struggled to find a new job, I tried to bring that passion to my current job, even started an internal newsletter. Politics eventually got in the way and that little creative writing stint ended. I tried to find other ways to occupy my time, but the results were always the same, I had reached the end of my journey with this job.
I had gotten too comfortable using a discount as an excuse to barely cover my expenses. I had gotten too comfortable with the relationships I had built with the people I worked with. I had simply just gotten too comfortable with the routine of my life. How could I possibly expect growth while hiding out in my comfort zone?
That realization struck fear in me; the fear of not being able to pay my monthly bills, although my job barely covered a metro card and lunch in midtown Manhattan anyway. Just that thought process and self-doubt hindered me from gaining experiences that could’ve propelled me further in my career. I allowed that fear to dictate my ability to try new things, to push myself. I became wrapped up in my daily rat race; the amount of hours I worked in a week, I stopped blogging, I lost my passion for writing, I wasted away a lot of time.
I guess if you can’t make decisions on your own, God will force you into a predicament that makes you choose.
After months of just coasting through my rat race, my manager called me into the office, to discuss my time and attendance for the billionth time. Subconsciously, I didn’t want to be there anymore, and was late to almost every damn shift! As he was talking about the company’s expectations I mentally checked out from the conversation. Somehow, my mouth started moving before I could really take the words back. “Who do I talk to about giving in my two-weeks notice?” At that point I had given this company a significant amount of my time and effort, it was time to exit stage left.
Might be one of the scariest things I have ever done. But when God closes one door, he opens another. I’ve been writing more, I am working on a few projects that don’t require me to know the other person’s shoe size, so things are looking up, lol. I may not know what is about to take place next, but I know that the fear of failing cannot hinder me from trying.
