Make A Choice|Make A Change
 
Exactly four months and six days ago it was one of those mornings again. No matter how much I inhaled through my nose and exhaled out of my mouth, I felt as if I were suffocating. I focused intensely on planting each foot on each step as I walked up the stairs leading to my artificially lit, dully painted office. I swiped my access key against the door and looked towards the windows.  I suddenly realized why the windows were so very little; almost non-existent...they (every freaking employee) would all jump.

As I sat at my desk, I reigned in my thoughts of running away from the office park as if it had been swarmed by killer bees, I tidied up “my” desk and repeated my Buddhist chant, "om mani padme hum.”  I had no idea what it meant, but it brought me some peace.

While some among me were thankful for a job, others for a paycheck or both, I was relieved that at this point lunch was only 3.5 hours away. What is wrong with me? You need this job I convinced myself. See, I was a victim of two of the most gruesome man-made disasters to hit planet Earth: divorce and the recession.

The difference between me and Miss I Can’t Kiss Enough Butt that resided in the cubicle one over from me was that I was possessed by an insatiable beast. And no matter how broke or let’s say financially challenged I was, the beast inside me hated my job. This beast had resided within the deepest parts of my conscience since before I knew what my conscience was. Today the beast’s appetite was strong. It was repelled by the thundering ticking clock on the wall behind me that was the moderator of my meager fifteen dollars an hour. It was annoyed by the harmonized hacking of fingers pounding against keyboards. It was angry that I had brought it to this place again on a beautiful Tuesday morning. And it was hungry. Hungry for freedom.

Unlike Regan in Blatty’s The Exorcist, there was not enough scripture or holy water in the world that could draw the beast from my soul. My beast was actually not a beast at all; it was what Business Week’s Marshall Goldsmith calls the entrepreneurial spirit.

What was my choice to make a change? I quit my job four days before Christmas. While I will admit that I was partly inspired by my ProAstro horoscope that phropesized that , “If a total lunar eclipse in your career sector just 4 days before Christmas shook things up, then the aftershocks are still likely to be reverberating as you move into the New Year.” In truth, the relentless hunger of the beast could not be sustained by the sumptuous bits of freedom I offered it every day after 5p.m. or the 48 hour freedom feast we so suitably deem the weekend any longer.

 Don’t get it confused; I had moments when I felt that I must have been clinically insane. These moments were most often followed by panic attacks that felt as if my heart had stopped. But now, four months and ten days later I am much happier. And truth be told, I make just a little bit more money than when I was punching the Man’s good ole’ clock; I work just as hard, if not harder. The difference is I decided that I didn’t have to compromise my life or my happiness, for the sake of having a job. I made myself a job; I made a choice, to make a change.