Anniversary

I realized today that I completely forgot about my one year anniversary of quitting being a corporate drone. The last day of my five years at the bank was July 9, 2008. It is so funny that just one year later my whole old life seems like so long ago. Quitting my job was terrifying. I wanted to quit for years before I actually did it, and even after I gave my notice I kept doubting myself. Steadiness and security are pretty important to me. Trading my good-paying full time job (with benefits and 401k) for a not-so-good-paying part time job with no benefits, plus going back to school full time, seemed almost impossibly risky. I knew that I was doing the right thing, but I was really scared about what would happen.

I'm still a little worried about what's going to happen, because I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to do when I am officially a Master of Creative Writing next June. But I know for absolute sure that my frame of mind is infinitely better than it was before I started this whole irresponsible lifestyle. I love getting to experience summertime - reading outside at coffee shops, obsessing about summer salads, knowing I can go out of town for a week without it meaning that I won't be able to take a single day off at Christmas. There is flexibility and give in my life now; I'm busier than I was a year ago, but time can expand and collapse without regard to the boundaries of my old 8+ hour days of dissatisfying work. I still feel kind of ominously unsettled, but now it's because I want to be a good writer and I don't quite know how, instead of before, when it was because I wanted to live a fulfilling life, but couldn't do that with the job I was too scared to leave. I don't really know what I'm doing with my life, but I'm not disappointed with myself anymore.