For me, fear is at once a great motivator and a cause of paralysis. When I first left my family, two jobs, and my comfort zone of California for Seattle, I luckily had the wonderful distractions of my boyfriend, Adam, and my dear friend and sometimes-roommate, Stacy, as well as the task of the move itself. While I had saved as much money as I could for the life change, I still needed to find a way to support it. I had only two familiar faces for hundreds of miles among the constellation of unfamiliar lights that was my new city-home, and suddenly, I needed to become an urban astronaut (or an adult, as some might more commonly call it).
I found a job with a Seattle-based bank less than 2 months and hundreds of resume-attached emails later – out of fear, out of simply needing money. I am grateful for the lessons learned and the enormous amount of growth I experienced over nearly 3 years, as well as the invaluable friends I made. But after all that time, I couldn’t work at a bank anymore. That’s not who I was when I started, not while I worked there, not who child-version of Kait ever wanted to be (in fact, she was probably sitting in a corner somewhere with her head in her hands, moping that she wasn’t Indiana Jones, or at least, a teacher like she’d always wanted as a close second to adventurer/archeologist). So I couldn’t do it. I had known it for a while, but I was terrified of the change it would bring if I actually acted. With enough nudges – both patient and frustrated – from friends and family and my incredibly supportive boyfriend alike, I finally left.
I could barely recognize the old writery, canvas-wielding me obscured by the gray pencil skirts and numb talk of debits and credits, but with a trusty pair of jeans and a few sketches later, I think I see her in there. But she’s scared. She’s terrified, seeking refuge in a stairwell because she doesn’t know what to do. No longer with the trappings of standard “success,” I am now voluntarily without job and income. For someone growing up crying if she got less than an A (that first B from my high school chemistry class will always haunt me) and who always knew what came next, not over-achieving or even just achieving by choice is a lot to swallow. But I have to keep reminding myself, when I catch own my unemployed eye in the mirror, that while I may not be considered successful by convention, what I am doing is allowing myself the opportunity to find my own version. And that in itself can hopefully be considered a success in some small way.
