Today was my last Friday in Corporate America. It was busy, and it was good because I spent so much of it working with my team. They are what I’m going to miss the most, of course.
The past two weeks have been interesting in so many ways, but perhaps the most interesting is the large number of people who have stopped me and told me how much they admire my choice. “It’s rare to find someone who will follow a dream like that,” one of them said. “I’m proud of you,” said another. Some of them seem wistful, others just excited. “I’ve never known anyone who left to become a writer,” said one of my HR cohorts (a person who has helped a lot of folks leave over her career).
I’ve had people stop me and tell me that they are writing, or they want to write, or they wish they were a writer.
It’s an interesting collection of people and comments, interesting because at the same time they are clearly so sensitive to my new gig, and clearly excited for me, they don’t see that I’m having the opposite thing going on inside me. I leave different sessions thinking “Wow. I’ll never do
I’m not changing my mind of course. It’s not that moving. If I ever doubt that this is the right choice for me, all I have to do is think about how I’m feeling each morning as I leave a manuscript unfinished that I would dearly love to keep working on.
It’s nice to see this dichotomy playing out these days. It’s nice to see so clearly that the grass is green everywhere you look.