I’ve had a very fortunate career path. I’ve been working in education since I was 24 years old, starting at Yale then moving into the public school system as an 8th grade teacher then launching my own edtech start up, then traveling the country coaching and training school districts, and most recently Chief Operating Officer at an education nonprofit.
Every position I have taken has always been a step up to try something new, which is where I am at my happiest. I love to build systems and infrastructure. I love to grow resources and people. I love to implement and evaluate; to track and to measure. Strategic planning and organizational growth are my sweet spot, and I’m fortunate that every job opportunity has brought me even more exposure and experience to help grow not only the organization, but myself, as well.
But last week, I quit my job for a very different reason than I’ve ever quit a job for before. I quit for my mental health, which was significantly impacting my physical health. I loved the work we did and I loved my position in the company, which allowed me to dive deep into the skill sets where I am most gifted. But the culture… oh, the culture. In the two and a half years that I was in this company, I gained 25 pounds, had more bouts of insomnia than I have ever had in my life before (and I get them fairly routinely), had stress-induced lockjaw twice, broke out in hives every work day for one month straight, and had a small stroke. Not to mention all of the illnesses like strep, flu, and Covid that I had seemingly all the time, and ended up in the hospital for at least four times.
Listing these things out makes me embarrassed that I stayed in a job like this for so long, despite my family and my doctors warning me for the past year that this level of stress was going to quite literally kill me.
I think my health issues this year have been blessings in disguise, though. If I hadn’t had my hysterectomy, I wouldn’t have been out of work for three weeks, which is when I realized just how much my work impacted my stress and family life. I went back to work for three weeks before I had a small stoke, which I had during a meeting at work. I was out of work for another three weeks for that issue. By that point, I knew I had to quit my job. I went back and forth over whose fault it was, but ultimately, it didn’t matter. The culture was toxic to me and therefore I couldn’t stay there any longer.
I looked for another job for several months, since my hysterectomy, actually. And with each opportunity that came along, I found myself growing more and more uncertain. Nothing seemed quite like what I wanted to do. It made me want to lay down and take one giant nap until this was all over. But eventually, I changed my job search criteria. I no longer cared if my title was Chief or Vice President or Director. I didn’t care if I was making a ton of money or no money at all. The only thing that interested me was doing work that I wanted to be doing.
That adjustment opened a whole new world of possibilities for me and I realized it wasn’t necessarily the education part of my career that I gravitated towards anymore. It was the operational side. It was the leading and the growing. I have always been out in front in my career, but honestly, I found myself gravitating more towards positions that were leading behind the scenes. Those were my favorite parts of all the jobs I’ve had. Why not make that my full job?
I finally accepted a position at the University of Central Florida as the Administrative Operations Manager for the VP of University Operations. I’ll work directly with the VP on building evaluative metrics and operational efficiencies for his team of 600. I’m excited to be working for a university again, particularly one where most likely at least one of my kids will attend. I’m excited to be in a position with a narrower scope of work instead of such a broad portfolio like I had as COO. But mostly, I’m excited to be joining a team of people that I hear from colleagues are just a great group of individuals who build each other up instead of picking them apart.
I’ve been bummed because I got fed up with my current job and quit two weeks before I had intended to, leaving me with almost three full weeks of no job. But the more I’ve prayed about it and thought over it, the more I feel God’s hand in that “rash” decision, too, because now I’ve had even more time to myself. All total, this year I have had ten weeks of time off out of 26 weeks total and while in the past that would have horrified me, what it has done for me has been to reset my expectations of work life balance. It has given me the time away to center myself again, to listen to myself again, and to take care of myself again.
I’m sharing this today as an encouraging nudge to take a look in your life at the things that keep happening over and over again. For me, it was illness. For others, it might be the same argument over and over with a partner. Or the same parenting issue over and over again with a child. Or the same frustration over and over again with a close friend. What is happening over and over again that you aren’t dealing with? What are you avoiding? What is happening that you’re scared to face?
Imaginary friends, let me hold both of your hands and look you straight in the eyes and say to you, “Face it.”
Face it in ways that don’t make sense to anyone else.
Face it in ways that are out of your comfort zone.
Face it in ways that burn the bridge. (Some bridges need to be burned, friends.)
Face it in ways that put you first.
Face it in ways that upset your stomach and make your hands sweat.
Face it in ways that keep you up at night.
Because facing something doesn’t last forever. Once you face it, you deal with it, and then this miraculous thing happens that we think will never, ever happen - we move past it. And we will be bolder, wiser, happier people because of it.
Cheers to new beginnings, imaginary friends. xoxo
I've seen this several times on social media and it rings true:
At 25: I want to be CEO!
At 40: Nah, I'm good.
I was previously in the kind of job that took over my life before I got laid off during Covid. I've since focused more on the idea that I work to fund the things that do give me joy.
Health is priceless and three cheers to you putting it first. It’s hard to “fail” and it took me years to realise that the only one who benefits from an employee who powers through is the company. Everyone else loses! Congrats on the new role!