Anyone who’s been following this blog knows how miserable I’ve been working in a call center.

Friday was my last day, and today I started my new job in a feminist bookstore I can walk to from my house.

I feel like a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders. I can feel the tension melting out of my neck and shoulders.

I imagine this is what getting out of jail feels like.

All those things which have been previously relegated to some imaginary far-off future can actually happen now. This week.

I want to write and sew and clean and write and learn to ride my bike and crochet and learn to knit.

Even though I worked half a day today, I’ve been more productive this Saturday than any in recent memory.

It’s brilliant to be able to work but still have energy afterward. To not want to stab anyone’s eyes out, including my own.

I don’t think it was possible to know just how terrible I felt until it was over.

I am going to be very poor, but just now, that doesn’t matter. I have a freelance writing gig and a few possible leads for housecleaning and the like.

I will apply for a student loan forbearance and eat PB&J every day for lunch.

Because it means I get my soul back.

I don’t have to be a person that I hate 40 hours a week anymore.

And when someone asks me what I do, I can say I’m a writer and I work at a feminist bookstore.

No qualifications. No this is what I do for now but this, over here, is what I WANT to be doing.

I have a theory.

That God, energy, the Universe… whatever you want to call it.. that if you know what you want and you put it out there unequivocally and without ambivalence, it will come.

But you have to be sure.

It isn’t enough to know what you don’t want. It isn’t enough to wish for something you aren’t sure you can get.

You have to know what you want with no hesitation or qualification and to be sure that nothing will stop you from getting it.

After I went to visit my sister over Christmas, I decided that I was finished, once and for all. That I was going to find another job no matter what. That if I didn’t find a job by February, I was going to quit anyway.

Here it is February and I’ve got one.

My therapist called me out on what I was doing in November. I was saying I wanted another job, but was afraid of what would happen if I had to get up earlier or work weekends. I wasn’t willing to actually let go of the status quo. As much as I hated my current position, I was afraid to lose the good things I perceived I had in spite of everything.

But at some point, I’d actually had enough. And whatever changed it was going to be better than the present. So it didn’t matter anymore. Whatever job; any job. But I actually got a great one.

Once I was sure of what I wanted, it fell into place. But when I was sending mixed signals, nothing could happen.

Fortune favors the bold.

When I decided I was going to graduate school no matter what I got into A&M fully funded. When I was sure I wouldn’t be working at a call center much longer I got out.

It is difficult to know what you want unequivocally and without ambivalence. But if you can articulate it and mean it, it will come in its own time.

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