My Christmas gift to myself was one of the most important gifts I could ever give to myself: peace and happiness. Life is not worth living when you are unhappy. I’ve done some soul searching before, as described here. It took a lot of reflecting for me to understand why I was so unhappy. It was my job.
For the last year or two, my job had us track our health using the Virgin Pulse program, which monitored our steps, medical assessments, and other health-related metrics. One of the metrics was happiness levels. I began realizing that the only days that I selected happy or ecstatic were on days that I was not working.
Your intuition tells you about a situation early on, but of course, we ignore it. I wasn’t happy with the job from the start, but it was with a great company that had great benefits. I’ve always worked at companies that had structure, and this one had none. On top of that, there was a lot of catty behavior and disrespect from the beginning. Being optimistic, i held on, hoping things would change. I waited through several management and supervisory changes and nothing improved.
I also worked while completing my master’s, doing the job of two people as well as training other people. It was too much, but when I complained, I was told I was not being a team player. We were short at the time and other people were working overtime.Their complaint was that I wasn’t helping out covering shifts disregarding that I was doing 3 jobs in one shift if you include training. I should have left after I completed my degree.
When the pandemic hit, I thought working from home was going to make things better. Well, it did for a moment because I wasn’t surrounded by the negative energy or antics of my coworkers. The job itself was stressful, but when you have people within your department working against you as well as out of it, it can be downright uncomfortable and irritating. Dealing with this stress and chaos began to be too much for me.
Realizing that my only option was leaving the department, I then began to apply for jobs in different departments. I would apply for jobs that I was already performing internally but wouldn’t receive as much as a phone interview. After applying for numerous jobs and not getting them, I began thinking that it was time to leave the company all together. This was in January of this year. The month of July was jumping out as well, so I decided to quit July 2021.
I began looking for jobs externally but to no avail. I was being told to jump, to just quit. This scared me. Since I’ve been living on my own, I always have had a job and a plan. This is totally different from my younger years when I would quit a job as soon as the weather got pretty outside. July came and went. I still was there, fighting the urge to jump, hoping there was something new for me. Yet there was nothing. I felt myself being more and more snappy, and I knew it was time to go.
Still afraid, I looked at my finances and realized that I would be fine. I waited until I received my annual bonus the end of November and put in my 2 weeks’ notice the first week of December. I don’t remember ever being so excited to leave a job. With that being said, my last day was December 17, 2021. I was able to enjoy my holiday season without the stress of a job. So, my Christmas gift to myself was quitting my job and choosing peace and happiness. As always, talk to you later ladybugs.
