The Leap
“One often meets her destiny on the road she took to avoid it.” – Jean De La Fontaine
I feel like in order for y’all to understand how I ended up here I must first take you back. Let me paint you a picture. This is going to be a long one so bear with me.
If you’d asked me five years ago if I saw myself as an entrepreneur, my answer would’ve been a firm NO. I’m naturally risk averse and at the time (2016) I was content with my 9-to-5 and collecting my bi-weekly check. I was working in corporate Supply Chain (think spreadsheets, analytics, data, etc.) and I’d been with that company for about 2 years and starting to feel that “itch”. You know the one; your job is starting to feel mundane or the company/role isn’t offering enough in the way of advancement of responsibility OR pay. Basically, I knew it was time to start looking for something new. Later that year I landed what I THOUGHT was my dream job; significant bump in pay, a role that was more challenging, a company that appeared to prioritize wellness with a beautiful campus, and room to grow. Soon after transitioning into this role I noticed some red flags, not enough to immediately jump ship, but some cause for concern.
Whenever I set my mind to something; I jump in feet first and give 100% (fast track to burn-out anyone?) Anyway, that’s exactly what I did in this new job; I immersed myself in the role, and quickly established myself as a leader on what was a relatively young team. My primary role (without being overly specific) was to “support” sourcing teams with the negotiation and execution of group purchasing contracts.
Remember those red flags?
So about a year in these red flags were full on sirens warning me that a crash was imminent. My mistake was that I set some dangerous precedents early in the spirit of being a “team player”. The work culture at the company for salaried employees was that you did whatever it took to execute the contracts by their deadlines. The problem? The workload distribution across my team was nowhere close to even; on a team of 16 about 50% of the workload was assigned to TWO people!
Guess who was one of the unlucky two? You guessed it, me, and that meant that my personal workload was often very high, requiring 60+ hour work weeks on a regular basis. Work life balance was non-existent, and I was heading for burnout FAST.
By now, the strain of maintaining this work schedule, coupled with the stress of a workplace rife with daily micro-aggressions (that’s an entirely different blog post, maybe) was beginning to take a toll on me both mentally and physically. I was constantly sick, depressed, and anxious; I’ve always struggled with insomnia, but sleep was impossible because of the constant worry of looming deadlines and never-ending to-do lists. This job paid very well so I didn’t want to just leave without first attempting to see if I could improve the working conditions. Another 6 months passed with several conversations with my superiors about improving my work life balance and reducing my workload so that I could take better care of myself: NO IMPROVEMENT. I reached a breaking point around January 2018 and I realized that the only way things would change was if I did it myself. It was at this point that I began to plan my exit.
Remember where I said I was risk averse?
Right so my first thought was not to walk away entirely but rather to change roles/teams, preferably internally since I was already familiar with the various aspects of the business model and a transition would be easy. After being passed on a couple of internal placements it became clear that moving internally wasn’t likely. I began to realize that I might have to do something a bit more drastic. I started to question whether this corporate environment was one that I wanted to remain in. After some soul searching, I decided that even if I found a “new” job at a different company that I might still find myself in the same position in another 2 years.
Once I made that decision I was like “Now what?”
At that time, I’d had a full-time job consistently for the last 7 almost 8 years and the thought of walking away from a stable income was TERRIFYING but I knew it needed to be done. The only thing I knew for certain was that whatever I decided to do needed to feed my spirit and not just be a means of income. I kept circling back to a passion that I’d previously discarded in the pursuit of “more sensible’ goals, design. I’ve always had a love of beautiful things; people, clothing, places but wasn’t brave enough to make it a career, until now.
I quit my job and enrolled in an associate’s program to learn and perfect the more technical aspects of interior design. Of course, because life can never just mind her business; *sigh* in the second year of my program the world screeches to halt in a global pandemic throwing a lot of my post grad plans in flux. Companies are more conservative in hiring, so the available jobs are not as plentiful.
Once again, I found myself asking “Now what?”.
After looking into market trends, I noticed that even though the design firms are hiring less; home renovations and remodels are steadily trending up and due to the very same pandemic/quarantines, a virtual or electronic interior design model is favorable. I decided to launch my business that offers complete E-Design, Space Planning and 3D Rendering packages in Q4 2020.
So, now you’re all caught up on how I decided to take a huge leap of faith from “stable” misery to the unknown but at least I have my sanity. Whew! I know that was a long one; my other posts going forward won’t be this long, but I needed to get that out.
Have any of you found yourself in similar work situations or environments where you were forced to make some difficult choices? What did you end up doing? Comment below.
