Marva's blog: Only the Brave (or Stupid!)

Three months ago, I decided to take the semi-calculated risk of leaving my current employer, without having a job-offer in place for another position. 

For a single parent, with ever-increasing outgoings, no secondary income and a wafer-thin financial buffer, many of those around me thought I had simply and finally taken leave of my senses and waited with baited breath for the inevitable catastrophic fall-out that would obviously accompany such a whimsical action.

My employer is a fantastic company to work for, and has listed in a recent LinkedIn survey as one of the Top 25 in-demand places to work.  It’s such a good place to work that many people arrive as graduates and leave many, many decades later. I felt that 8 years on from my own sojourn (I was supposed to be contracting for two months initially), I was in danger of sleepwalking in great comfort, through the rest of my career.

Through the conspiring in quick succession of several incidents, an alignment of the stars, and an overwhelming gut-feeling, I handed in my notice with no fixed point on my horizon, and felt something like a great weight lift from me.

To my mind, there is a danger, a quenching of the essence of a person, when they stand still, going through the motions, paralysed by comfort, paralysed by the fear of change and of the unknown, whilst ever so desperately desiring it. 

I didn’t want to be that colleague, you know, the one who moans about being unfulfilled, nit-picking their way through every day, just there to earn a pound whilst dragging the morale of everyone else down with them because they have been unable to locate their own happiness and path within themselves. 

We each have the ability and power within ourselves to change the outcome of our lives - I mean, what happens if we just jump?    

So, the countdown has begun and I am working out my last days at my current employer.  Did the risk pay-off?  Or did the parachute fail to deploy cataclysmically?...

Find out on the next episode of “Only the Brave…”

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