stella6.com

I finally did it. I quit my job. I couldn’t be happier.  granted, i still have about three weeks left till i’m officially unemployed, but i’m so psyched, excited and optimistic about what this will mean for me.

i know, it might come as kind of a surprise after my previous fawning over my  job and declaring how i *did* want to be a corporate business woman. well, a lot has happened, and my attitude has changed a lot since those postings.  in part toward my company - although i still really do believe what in what it’s doing and think it will be a catalyst for change - but mainly toward my job, and the rest of my life.

i’ve been writing about this a lot, just not on my blog - lest somehow someone from my work accidentally stumble upon it before i had made my severance official. i’ll post those entries at some point in the future (probably after i’m actually gone), but the basic jist of it is that i am not a desk person.  this has been my first real desk job, and it has come to really grate on me in these past four months or so. i couldn’t imagine the rest of my life spent this way - even if i did climb the ladder, have more authority and more reign to do what i wanted. i couldn’t imagine that for the rest of my life, my “life” would be someone else’s property.   i realized that if a company as basically good as the one i’m at (although of *course* not with out its flaws - and i’ll post more on that later) couldn’t satisfy me, i would never be happy to work for someone else, and give them my time, my life. for what? in exchange for two weeks of PTO a year? i work weekends, nights, 12 hour days … blahblahblah … and i get TEN DAYS in exchange?!!  now i’m ranting - and it’s not a rant necesarily against my place of employment, but more against corporate America in general.  i may sound cliche - as i’m by no means the first to realize this - but it was stealing my soul.

i think that as more and more people in my generation come to the realization i have, the face of the corporate world will be forced to change to a certain extent. or at least i hope it does, for the sake of the people trapped inside.  we were brought up to know what we want and go for it, to demand nothing less than perfection from ourselves *and* our employers.

anyway, back to my original theme of it being a lot of work to be unemployed.  it’s probably obvious from my above tirade that i will not be proffering my soul to another company.  i’m going to be a freelance writer, and while i know that sounds ambitious (and also kind of cliche) i have high hopes for the future.  it’s been so much work to get to this point, because i wanted to be at a relatively good financial spot with freelance work, before i just jumped without a safety net. so i’ve been working my ass off, getting blogging jobs, article writing jobs, PR jobs, publicist jobs, researching jobs, and on and on.  i’ve been working on the weekends, at night, over my lunch break, and before i go to work in the morning to try and make this happen.  right now i’m not in love with all the jobs i’m doing, but for now they’ll pay the bills and i can refine as i go along, have more time, and become more experienced at the game.

back in the day, the reason i got into journalism was to write. and as the years have gone on, i’ve gotten further and further away from the writing aspects of my jobs until now i have absolutely no writing duties at my current job.  true, that gave me more ability to write in my spare time, but i’ve always wanted my passion to be my job, not my hobby. so that’s the road i’m going down.

i’ve enjoyed my day jobs for the most part - a few years ago i couldn’t imagine doing anything but producing news - but for now they’ve run their course.  i know myself well enough and am not naive enough to think this is it for me.  i won’t be surprised if in a year or two, i’m off to try something new, but at least i will have given this a try - which is what i’ve said about almost everything i’ve done.

ryan’s quit his job also and we have great plans for this next phase in our life.  we’re going to enjoy the sunny days instead of watching them go by from our desks.  we’re going to work from wherever the hell we want to, whenever the hell we want to - at 10 am or 3 am. we’re going to live in japan with my parents for a few months.  then maybe try house swapping (we still want to keep our home base) so we can live in some of our dream cities - new york, london.  who. frikkin. knows.  and if you know me, then you know that those three words make all these sense in the world to me.