It was just over a year ago, the day after work ended for the season. I took a walk after the first autumn snowfall. The streets were only wet. Snow barely clung to the trees as it warmed, though the air remained damp and chilly. I was nervous, phone in hand waiting to make the call.
I called. He answered. We chatted for a minute before I came out with it. “I think it’s time for me to move on,” I told my friend and employer. “This has been exactly what I needed these past five years. But I know in my bones it’s time to leave.” It was a mutually gracious parting, full of gratitude. The weight I had been carrying partially lifted. Anxiety still hovered, but excitement appeared. I was full of both fear and nervous anticipation.
Five years at that job gave me what I needed for whatever would be next. I wasted no time. That very afternoon I signed up for all the outdoors-oriented courses I had been considering. I booked a cabin near the Crazy Mountains for three nights; something told me to. I planned for my Te Araroa thru-hike in New Zealand’s south island, which was coming up in less than two months. I was entirely free and completely terrified.
Most of all, I wanted to start working on that elusive book. Leaving my too-good-to-be-true job was my way of going all in, showing God and the Universe—and myself—how serious I was about it.
There was a small spark. I’m doing it. I’m really doing it. I’m listening. This is all going somewhere, and it matters. I had little clarity but leaned in all the same. My tiny steps were small acts of faith.
I was afraid, nervous, and uncertain—exactly what I needed. I placed myself in a position where no excuses held water and I had to do something about what I wanted rather than simply think about it. I did what I was afraid to do—which, as it often goes, was what I most wanted to do.
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I left an impossibly well-paying, heavily perked, six-month-a-year job on a hunch. I knew what I was giving up. I did it anyway.
Is it worth it? Am I right? I asked myself. Who can say. Is it wise to give up so much on a hunch? To so recklessly follow your heart with no plan for future employment or career? Probably not.
But sometimes you just know it in your bones—you have to do something that doesn’t make sense.
“Follow your heart” is no doubt a cliché. And sometimes it is indeed unwise or even destructive. But sometimes it is exactly what you must do.
So I left.
It was a show of trust. I had grown comfortable and complacent. Leaving an employee position of the kind I’ll probably never have again was a way of challenging myself and backing myself into a corner. I had learned enough of what I truly loved and who I truly was in those years between leaving my job at the church and my job of five years as a seasonal worker. I complied with this awareness in a trust both reckless and timid.
Write that book or album. Paint that canvas. Climb that mountain. Travel to that country. Start that business or nonprofit. Quit that job. Go back to that school. Buy that house. Marry that person. Or whatever it is for you. It is not always a clear or costly action or change. But the smallest ones mean something—or everything.
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I quit my job and went all in (mostly), hoping it would get me somewhere. It’s been a year—yes, over four months of it spent in New Zealand and Samoa or Canada and Alaska, plus some time in the PNW—and in so many ways I’m only just getting started. Still no finished book (I’m getting there), and the only things to show for are the tiniest of steps towards what I care about. None of them, I might add, have provided me with any assurance of success or a livable income. You just hope that, eventually, a few things will fall into place after putting in lots and lots of time and doing lots and lots of work.
Not everyone must (or can or should) make a rash choice or drastic alteration in order to change their lives and orient themselves towards a work or a life they desire, to follow a calling or even lifelong vocation. However, if you can’t do everything to make a go of it, you can still do something.
I told you what it took for me. What would it take for you? Some of you, I am certain, are already doing it or have already done it.
Here is my only advice: start failing, right away, and eventually you might succeed. It is the only way—through.
