Episode 1: I Quit!

Well, last week I resigned from my job.
Been there about 15 years, something like that.
A little more, a little over 15 years.
Long run.
It was really my first career-oriented job.
I had come out of grad school.
I had done a little bit of contract work.
I've done a few smaller things here and there.
And this was the first place that I really, it was a career-oriented full-time, you know, end-to-end kind of role.
And, you know, kind of worked my way up.
Went from, you know, some lower positions up into management after a while and eventually to leadership.
Been in leadership about eight years, but the organization about 15 overall.
So, and last week I walked in and left.
So, let me tell you what I'm not proud about.
What I, what I, I don't know if I would say I did it wrong, but at least wrong by conventional wisdom.
Um, I gave no notice, right?
I, I literally walked in at 4 p.m. on one day and said, here's my resignation.
It's effective immediately.
Packed up my office and left.
Uh, not a particularly professional move.
Um, not one I would recommend that people generally follow.
I, I don't think that's a good form.
Um, I was in the middle of a fairly large, long-running project.
Um, that honestly was the reason I was sticking around as long as I had been.
I was trying to finish this thing out, which is now, of course, something that I will not
be able to do.
So, you know, leave a little bit of a gap there.
Um, but, you know, question is, if I am not proud of those things, if I don't like the
way I left, then, then why did I do that?
Um, I mean, some of the reasons are pretty simple.
Uh, it had gotten to a point, uh, where it almost had to kind of be torn off like a
band-aid.
Um, I felt like I really didn't have a choice at that point.
Um, I had considered resigning a couple of times before, floated that by a few things
where I would have said, you know, give it more notice.
But then as the notice, you know, you're into it for a while, kind of get pulled back
in.
Some people ask to stick around, end up doing that.
Um, at the end of the day, I had gotten to a point where I could no longer function in
my role.
There, there had been some, some leadership changes and some cultural changes and whatever
else.
Um, and it just wasn't an environment that was allowing me to function in a way that felt like
I could make a difference or he really even felt like I was doing my job anymore.
Um, which is not a great way to proceed, you know, to, to, to live day to day.
Uh, so I kind of had to get it out for my own mental health, uh, my own mental well-being
and my own just sense of, you know, I've got to move on to something else, which really
is the other core point of all this is I've watched.
It's interesting being in the same organization for a long period of time like that.
Uh, when you first come in, um, there's all these things to learn and all these people
to meet and all these things to do.
Um, and it's all very interesting at first.
Um, and then you learn those things over time.
And, and, and I would say that working in an organization for a long time has a long tail,
right?
So you, you, you kind of in the beginning, you ramp way up.
There's all these things to do and learn and experience.
And then it starts to taper down as you, as you learn more and more and year after year,
there's a little bit less to learn, a little bit less to experience, a little bit less to
engage with that's new.
You start doing more and more of the things that you've done before.
You learn the patterns and over time it kind of trails out.
Um, uh, meanwhile, I've watched people around me, friends, family, uh, experience many different
things in their careers where they have moved from company to company.
And, and to be clear, this is not a salary thing, right?
There's that kind of adage around, well, not an adage.
I mean, it's a, I think it's a well-researched, um, fact that people who jump between organizations
tend to make more salary, um, more quickly and more over time and all that kind of stuff.
That's not what this was about.
The, the, what I'm talking about more is the, the interesting part, right?
The interesting part of, um, working a job and learning about organizations and getting
to experience new things and attending new conferences and making new networking opportunities
and all these things.
There wasn't a lot of that going on anymore.
Um, it felt very stagnant after a while.
So, so what I'm looking forward to and, you know, in the future here is some new experiences,
something new, something different, um, something that I never thought that I would find, uh,
anymore where I was just from simply longevity.
It's an interesting thing though, um, to think about, um, cause I, I think for a long time
I was waiting and I was waiting and I was seeing it through and I was gutting things out and
trying to almost wait for the perfect time, right?
Uh, what would the perfect time be?
It would be when all of the projects are wrapped up and I feel just perfect about walking out
the door and I feel like I've done all the things that I need to.
And, um, I don't owe anyone anything.
And, and then you could walk triumphantly out the door and move on to your next thing.
And I don't, A, I don't think that will ever come, right?
If you're waiting, if you find yourself in a situation where you're kind of waiting and
waiting for the perfect time to leave, that probably in and of itself is the information
or the, the push you need where you should probably leave now or soon, right?
Um, if what you're doing is sitting around waiting for the perfect time, that's probably
an indication to yourself that you're waiting for a thing.
You already know what you have to do.
Uh, and you're, you're, you're making excuses to stick around.
Um, I know I did that for quite a long time.
Um, uh, but that perfect time may never come.
Um, and there are a piece that I would say is that, and again, I don't feel, I don't feel
proud about if after 15 years at a place, walking in and leaving that day, it's not something
that it's something I'm going to live with, right?
That's something that I'm going to have to digest and be okay with.
Um, in my future, right?
But with that said, it doesn't invalidate all the things that I did up until that point
in time.
It doesn't take away, this is what I would say to anyone thinking in these terms, that
doesn't take away from what you've done.
It doesn't, it doesn't remove the accomplishments that you've done in the past, the improvements
you've made for an organization over time or for whatever it is you're doing, they can't,
those can't be taken from you.
They can be unraveled maybe over time, but they still had an impact at the time and they still
had an impact for, for the years that they were in place and all these kinds of things.
So just remember that if you're circling around to something like this, just because you leave
and can't continue doing whatever it is you're doing, that doesn't invalidate all the things
that you did up until that point in time.
Uh, and that's something that I, I think it's so easy to focus on the end, the end note, the
last thing that was done, the, the, the, the, you know, what have you done for me lately
kind of mentality? What, what's that recency bias, um, of, of where you are? And that's not
necessarily the most important thing. If you look at it, you zoom out and you look at everything.
That final piece is probably not as important of all as all the things that led up to it.
And if, if you feel good about all of that, and if you're sitting around waiting for that
perfect moment to exit, you probably have your answer. And I hope that you find the courage
to do whatever it is that you hope to do in the future and, and can wrap things up in a
way that works for you, or at least you can live with moving forward.