My last day with my lunch bag and why I don’t feel guilty about quitting my job.

I used to obsessively watch my BlackBerry.

I was certain that, if I stared long enough, I could will the little red light to flash with some good news: An email from a magazine wooing me to write profiles on famous people; a publisher deciding that my thoughts on personal reinvention deserved a deeper look; a job opportunity to top all others.

But none of those messages ever came. And the flashing light never told me what to do.

Most days I just got junk mail about penis enlargements, cheap brides from Russia and texts from my mom: “Hi its mom you never call me love you”.

Eventually, I got tired of waiting for things to come to me.

For months, I stayed on at a great job doing what I know and “sticking with it” as I had been urged to do so many times. “You should appreciate that you’re a working journalist”, they would say (who is this ‘they’ anyway, am I right?). And I listened, because they were right. Technically.

But screw technicality when you’re trying to find the right answers – nothing well deserved was ever earned by accident.

For months it felt like I was trying to walk through a door where the ceiling was too low. I just didn’t fit. I tried hard to change my way of thinking, to be less ‘me’ and more of what a good employee should be. But I really suck at pretending, which is probably why I never became an actor. Or real estate agent. Or a psychiatrist . When something sucks, I’ll be the first person to say so, which has it pros and many, many cons that accompany that mind set. But that’s just who I am.

But then, a few weeks ago, I read something that turned my light bulb on again – made it fire up. I ingested one big fat lesson that lifted any guilt I had about wanting to leave my stick-with-it-good-gig-for-a-journalist job:

“It’s hard to appreciate what you have when you don’t want it anymore.”

Forget feeling guilty about wanting to purge, I thought, about wanting to reinvent my way of thinking. About wanting to make the opening to that door a little bigger. Because if there’s one thing I wish I knew years ago (take note, my lovely 20somethings) there’s no need to hate something in order to walk away from it. Walk away when the time is right, not when the mood is wrong.

Ask yourself: Why wait until something is horrible to move on?

Sure, it’s hard to walk away from something great, I get that, but it’s only hard to walk away until you realize that it’s the only way to get to where you really want to be.

Maybe it’s because I’m feeling sentimental about leaving my friends here at work or maybe I’ve been drinking? (um, save that for later). But this is the post I want to look back on if I doubt my decision to pull up my sleeves, take my coffee cup, Burberry knock-off lunch bag and a shit load of office supplies and walk in the other direction.

No flashing lights necessary.

Tagged as: checking emails on blackberry, how to quit your job, last day of work, life decisions, magazine editor, moving forward, not feeling guilty, Oxygen magazine assistant editor, Sandy Braz, sandyb blog