Resignation

I apologize now for not blogging in a long time.  Life has been busy.  Excitingly, draingly busy.

I put in my resignation a week and a half ago.  I have prayed for months and months and months about developing myself inside and outside my job.  Door after door after door has shut.  FBI?  Hello sequestration.  Working for our Child Advocacy Center (where kids who are abused are interviewed for criminal investigations)?  Filled on it's own.  Doing a childhood obesity initiative?  The supervisor approved the grant too late to even try.  Asking for opportunities to do policy work?  There are none.  How about creative interventions?  They are expensive and time consuming.  How is that fitness initiative for employees coming?  They are working on it.  Teaching full time?  Not now at least.  Community development organization against domestic violence?  Position has been filled (and would be difficult to do with my current job).  Getting paid to travel to other countries and do clinics with med students?  They went with someone else.

One final prayer and fast finally convinced the heavens to have the doors swung wide open for me to leave.  I jumped on the opportunity, but the emotions that followed were mixed.  I am leaving the only career I have known (minus teaching a few classes at the community college) to pursue teaching a few more classes and other opportunities that may present themselves.  I am giving up a full time job with benefits and a few more jobs on the side for some part time work with no health insurance, retirement account, or paid time off.  It is a risky move and has caused me moments of regret, fear, and sheer wonder if I know what I am doing (I don't).  The day I did it, my thoughts were something like, "Okay God, I have stepped out of the boat, now what?"  However, I am past all that and now know that this is the right move.  The fear is not paralyzing and the transition feels natural.  As soon as my resignation letter was submitted, opportunities started coming out of the woodwork.  I am so excited for the possibilities of straddling a few part time jobs and expanding myself professionally.  I am just amazed that there are so many possibilities for employment with my experience and degrees.  My last day as a therapist in my current position will be September 6.  I will give up an office, work computer, and burnt coffee.  The benefits of my bold move are yet to be known, but I am firmly convinced that this is where I am supposed to be and it will all work out in the end.  And that, my friends, is enough to squelch the hanging in the balance anxiety.