Welcome to unemployment.

Yesterday—Wednesday, April 23, 2014, was my last day working at the law firm where I had been a Firm Assistant for three-and-a-half years. This is where I started, as a courier, in 2010, before I graduated from the College of Charleston.

The decision to quit was not an easy one to make—but one that had to happen sooner, rather than later, for my own sanity, happiness and sense of self-worth. I just wasn’t getting what I needed out of my job—in a professional/career and personal sense.

I never intended to stay as long as I did, but the relationships and joy I gathered from the people there—kept me there. I was always hoping and wishing something better would come along. If I waited long enough. I waited and waited and felt like I was in the same situation and mindset day after day, month after month, even year after year—and nothing had progressed. My feelings of being stifled were still lingering.

Then I, slowly, came to the realization that nothing was going to change unless I changed something—my perspective, my job or my living situation. The answers to what I wanted in life were not going to be handed to me on a silver platter—I have to go out and search for them.

I have to mess up, I have to stumble, I have to fall, I have to sweat, shed tears and work my heart out for this change—and what I want can be mine.

I would have given the advice to “take the plunge and follow your dreams—do what makes you happy,” to anyone, so why wasn’t I taking the same genuine advice myself?

I’m calling and yearning for the earth to cradle me—I have finally jumped and I don’t know where I’ll land. I am free-falling and riding the waves of my emotions. I am calling for the universe to brace me from my fear of the unknown.

I’m just shy of six years as a Charlestonian. I have gotten to know this city forward and backward; eaten at nearly every restaurant and have really branched out in all realms, in order to enjoy every experience Charleston has to offer. I love this city—it’s history, it’s beauty, it’s weather, it’s familiar faces—it’s willingness to do big city things and it’s courage to put itself on the map.

Charleston is growing and changing faster than we can have a Jimmy John’s sub delivered to us on the peninsula.

It’s a special, special place—and I am so thankful for everything that it has shared with me and given to me. I’m sure I’ll have many days down the road when I’ll wonder why I ever left a place that, seemingly, has it all. But, I’ll have to remind myself that I left because there is so much more out there for me to experience.

There is a whole nation and world of beauty—and I won’t know it if I don’t go.

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Apprentice Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock/ Editor: Travis May

Photo: Wikimedia, Wikimedia