This is a story that begins with an ending.

I ended four years of a job I had once imagined staying at forever. Because that’s what dedicated people did. They stayed.

I’m not a quitter. In fact, I often continue to pursue and drag out friendships well beyond their prime. Sometimes it’s loyalty. Sometimes it’s self-abuse, fear of losing something that once resembled friendship.

In the case of this job, there were many reasons I eventually left. For many months before that point, when I’d start to think about leaving, I would journal about the reasons I would leave, contemplate them with my pen.

What finally pushed me over the fence of staying/leaving was when I asked myself, “Ok, so you know the reasons you would leave. Why would you stay?”

I stared at the notebook page until the blue lines blurred together. The only thing keeping me there was a sense of guilt when I contemplated leaving, the thought that I’d be abandoning my community.

The community offers sabbatical after six years of service, in reality more like eight or nine years. I had served four. If I could last through another two or three years, I could take sabbatical.

This was how I’d been bribing myself to stick around, besides the guilt. When I finally listened to what I was saying, I heard, “I just have to survive for another two years.” I realized how ridiculous this was. Why put myself through that? And if I needed to leave, the work I’d be doing would suffer, and that would not be good for the community.

So I put in my five months’ notice in June and completed my service in November.