Career Confession

Failure's hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.

 -- Po Bronson

Here's a confession: I've been locked into the wrong careers for much of my life. OK, almost all of my life. I've basically had the same job since I was 6 years old and have had such trouble leaving it ever since. No, it wasn't a sweat shop, but an equally chaining confine called an office. It started because my dad didn't know what to do with me during his visitation days after my parents' divorce. He worked in real estate and Saturdays were a popular day in the market. What do you do with a precocious young girl? You stick her to work, he figured, and it began with answering phones and greeting people at the door from my desk and whatever work he and his colleagues didn't want to do and could easily train me for.

Decades later, I'm still working at a desk. While no longer that front line of reception, but I'm still basically doing work for other people. Pay is decent, colleagues are fantastic, benefits phenomenal and some of the access and privileges have been jaw-dropping. And the stickler of the global good mission, whenever I do get reminded of it somehow, endears me to the work as a greater whole.

The job, however, has always felt like a bad outfit, one that didn't flatter my interests nor my assets. I've tried for years to find ways to make this job, and similar ones I've had previously, really work for me, and I've had a fair share of glorious periods of time. Hence, why it's been so hard to leave. But I must.

I finally submitted my resignation yesterday. I'm leaving one of the most powerful charitable organizations in the world. I'm not doing this because it's a terrible situation (let me be clear, it's not), I'm doing this because its time I step into my own power and do the work I'm really meant to do. I've empowered so many people to live their authentic lives over the years with the work I just did on the side, that it's time I empower myself.