What it means to quit a job

I know a woman doing an artist residency in Iceland right now where the light shines all night and day. It agonizes her. I imagine that in a lot of peoples' minds, 24 hours of sunny brilliance is ideal, or something for which to strive. Not I. My incredible dad recently said something to the affect of "I love working through adversity. This is part of what it means to be deeply alive". Reflecting after my first week post-work, I couldn't agree more.

I'm not seeking the sort of utopia where I eat ice-cream* all day and float on a blow up raft in my aunt's pool.

Bumps in the road as if the road were not the bumps, too.

I'm much more interested in how to build from an energetic state. I recognize that in myself, I need that constant push and pull---I need some night and day, dark and light, to create. As an artist and a doer, this is to me inertia, perspective, context. I am not seeking silence; I am lovingly disrupting.

Leaving--by its nature--is a painful task. You're ripping something where's it's become embedded, then it floats out in space, awkwardly, looking around, until it perhaps finds another temporary home. Always temporary. Leaving, at the same time, can be a radical act of self-care. In my case, it is: creating space to reconnect with my professional sense of purpose and value, and, importantly, to redevelop a sense of how I want to move through my days. And how one moves through one's days is sacred. No autopilot. No rhythms other people chose for me.

*I am lactose intolerant. That would be cruel.