On Taking The Leap

A year ago I made a very risky choice. I left a stable, good-paying job at a large financial institution for a small startup company a friend worked at. I left behind a promising future, friends, great benefits, and a decent amount of pay. I also left behind a rigid corporate structure, inflexible management practices, and tons of stress. Looking back today it seems like an easy choice, but it wasn't at the time.

I'd been unhappy in the corporate environment for a while. My first job right out of college was a call center for retirement plans. After a few years I transferred to payroll processing, trying to find the niche that would bring me personal satisfaction along with professional success. While I did end up finding the latter, the former never materialized. After three years of ever-growing stress, I decided I needed to make a change.

My friend Kelsey started at the retirement call center a month after I did. We both transferred to payroll at the same time, and stayed in touch after she left to join a small social media startup in a suburb of Saint Paul. About once a month she'd send me a text or a Facebook message telling me I really should submit an application, that I'd love working there, and that I would be a perfect fit. Each time I'd respond back, making some sort of excuse about pay, or benefits, or the future I had at my current job. After all, I had a growing family, a mortgage and a car payment, and plenty of student loans to pay. Leaving my job meant risking all of that. But each time she sent me a message, a little voice inside of said that I should do it. At the same time, I was starting to realize how deeply unhappy I was at the job I had. 

Finally, in October I decided to go for it. I sent in an application and had an interview the week before Thanksgiving. Afterwards, I still wasn't sure what to think. The pay was less than what I was hoping for, and little doubts kept popping into my head. "What if I hate it after a few months like my other jobs?" "What if the company fails?" However, things had become so unbearable at my current job, I decided I'd have nothing to lose by taking the leap. My worst case scenario would be going back to my old job, tail between my legs, because my big risk didn't work out.

But you know what? It worked out like a dream. I'd always heard or read about people taking a leap of faith and having it change their entire life. I'd never experienced it myself before. Most of the time my biggest risk was choosing a different haircut, or going for the second highest heat level at an authentic Thai restaurant. But this? This was something completely different. I loved my job. I loved waking up each day of the week, not just Saturday and Sunday. Now I'd be lying if I said there wasn't bad days. Days where I questioned what I was doing. Days where I wondered how I would pay the bills that particular month. But it was just that- individual days, not a constant state of being. The result is that I became a changed person. Less angry, less stressed, more big-picture. This change did not go unnoticed by friends and family either. I kept receiving compliments on how much more relaxed I seemed. How I had reverted back the person they had known back in college, or even earlier.

It's been a year since I made the leap. A year since I decided to risk it all in the pursuit of happiness. And it's been worth it each step of the way. Can't wait to see what the next year brings.