To New Possibilities.

Raise your glass and solute, “To new possibilities.”

That is how I have been feeling lately. This overwhelming sense of freedom washed over me when I said to myself, “Just walk away.”

I have been hitting my head against the wall for the last 2 years. My anxiety reached its peak and for a while there I couldn’t decipher the cause of all these haywire thoughts in my head. Suddenly it dawned on me. I remember the exact moment. It was January 2nd, 2023 and I was in bed dreading going to work in the morning. The culture at my company has become stagnant and it started rotting. Plus cost cut downs were keeping people with unfair pay while more and more work was pushed on them. So, every morning that I got up to work I felt my life energy being drained little by little. The top management stalled on any company or employee growth and there were no cues that any change to that management mindset will happen. We are all stuck in someone else’s decision not to prosper and grow.

The depletion of my life energy hit empty that night of January 2nd. I had no more to go on in this work environment. The first three weeks of January were the hardest. I ended up in the hospital twice with a panic attack where I felt that I was suffocating and that no air was entering my lungs. In February I took action to talk to my boss and see if anything is being done to this new approach. The answer was a loud and conclusive NO. I was disappointed. Angry and disappointed.

I needed change. I needed progress and some type of plan. If not from the management, then from me about my life, my purpose, my passion, and my growth. I could not stay still, be in this repetitive loop, and have no new destination. I needed change. I craved it. I decided to start looking for new opportunities within other departments in my company. I knew that it will be tough because good and interesting positions are few and far in-between at my company. So that wasn’t enough.

March. The employee yearly target setting. I skipped my first meeting with my manager and reflected on what my manager proposed as my new targets. Nothing new stuck out. No new opportunities. No increase in pay to gain the fair pay that I have been asking for. Nothing was changing and the management wasn’t budging. I got fed up. I wasn’t empty anymore. It got worse. I was in the negative.

By the time I met up with my manager, two weeks later from the date of the initial meeting I postponed, I decided to append to my plan. I am no longer looking for other opportunities within the company but I am also looking for work externally. I realized that I can be putting my efforts and energy towards a new job. That decision has motivated me. Started to fill my life energy back up little by little. Every time I search for new opportunities now, I get a jolt of life back.

The sad part of the whole story is that I love the team I work with. The people are amazing. But just like I, they are stuck and they know it. I know that not everyone can decide to jump off the boat and take risks. People have obligations. I will miss the team, but I raise my glass and say “To new possibilities,” because that gives me life, and that gives me the motivation to live again. With that decision, my anxiety has also regressed and I have stopped hitting my head against the wall. My lungs are receiving the air again.

No more dead-end job.

Signs of dead-end-job. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/11/08/how-to-tell-if-youre-stuck-in-a-dead-end-job-and-what-to-do-if-you-are/