Best Birthday Ever
Two days ago I did what I’ve been dreaming about for years.
I walked into my managers office and said “I quit!!!”
Yahoo – starting May 9th I will be a full time professional artist.
Goodbye cubicle!
I have to admit there is a part of me that is sad about leaving – I like the people I work with and we do have fun (in between all of the soul sucking horrible corporate stupid-ness episodes).
Making a Commitment
But it was time to commit to my art in a real way. Even though everyone tells me I get a lot done – I have huge plans for where my art can go and as long as I’m still working at my day job I’m not ever going to have the time to make a serious go of it.
With the day job – my days start with me making a list of the things I want to do for my art and I get started on the list making good progress. Its exciting and I feel energized.
Then 9am rolls around and I have to switch gears and that’s it. I rarely make it back to my todo list for my art because once I’m in the land of software there is much to do and by the end of the work day I’m tired and there is nothing more to give.
It made me sad. Sure I had a steady paycheck and I did get huge amounts done in the morning and weekends but it’s just not the vision I have for my art.
Always there was the safety net of my job. I used the job excuse often for all the opportunities I missed as I was to busy to pursue them.
“Some day I’ll pursue these things when I’m a real professional artists but right now I don’t need to do X, Y or Z because I still have a paycheck.”
I wasn’t all-in. I wasn’t fully committed.
Evolution of a Plan
Last fall I realized that if all I ever did was think about quitting my job I would never actually do it. And I would never be the artist I wanted to be.
So I picked a date to quit – end of January 2015. It was far enough in the future to not feel too scary but not so far away that it felt like forever.
I created the above count down sheet and I’ve spent the last 4 months crossing off days. I told a few key people about it. People that I was sure would be 100% behind me and not plant a single seed of doubt.
I told my coach about this plan and she questioned me about it some but we didn’t talk about it much (as in I ignored her questions on why I didn’t just quit immediately.)
This all worked great until my coaching call a few weeks back when some how the conversations came around to my fears around quitting.
She of course jumped all over these comments and suddenly I had homework to explore the fears and do some number crunching.
On Monday I met with her and told her the outcome of my work – that I moved the quitting date forward 1 month.
As if that is a big deal. Ha – no.
She earned her fee by calling me on it. We argued and I defended my position and we ended the call.
And a few hours after I talked with her I decided that quitting NOW sounded much more appealing.
I made an appointment with my manager the next day (which was conveniently my birthday – how cool to quit on my birthday).
And that is that – I’m done!
Health Insurance
Well almost – because this wasn’t exactly planned out in advance I have a lot of research to do on health insurance options.
In the meantime, I’m using my current fabulous corporate sponsored health insurance as much as possible before it goes away. Acupuncture twice a week, chiropractors, new contact lenses.
I’ll be buffed and polished on May 9th and ready to take the art world by storm!