Walking Away

Walking away from a career of 20 years or more. Leaving something you know so well for the unknown is a great big step for anyone.  Ok there has been  of course many things to bring you to this point. But the biggest one is that you have lost your passion for what you love to do.  Or maybe it is you never found what it is you really loved to do.

Over the  past year or so the eye for detail and commitment to my job that I had loved for over twenty years was diminishing.  With the  challenges becoming more and more difficult to deal with. I was feeling so alone and that know one could understand what I was going through.  Too scared to discuss my feelings with any work colleagues for fear of them losing confidence in me or me being able to do my job.  I had created quite a standing in my field over many years with an impeccable reputation.  I started to feel because of my lack of caring or placing my work as number, which it had been ever since I can remember that this hard work or building such a name for myself was falling apart.  With many challenges over recent months I am  surprised if I was perfectly honest with myself that it had not come crashing down sooner.
The universe sent me a life line to exit the crumbling Colosseum of my career without too much of my pride damaged in the process and most of all without a huge financial blow, actually it was a windfall. After many weeks of finalising the ending of two decades of my life, it was only then I started to feel the enormity of what I had done. I put a wrecking ball straight through that stone bridge.  I felt very alone and really didn't know which way to turn, but all this was on the inside.  The outside was a totally different  picture with enthusiasm for the coming months with no direction and no income and with loads of options headed my way.  This is the pretend me that everyone I knew except for husband and kids has seen for years and now that I want to become a new person i feel that I need to end all relationships that were built during that time in my life.  Of course there were many of those relationships I would be happy never to think of again.
 After a couple of weeks the emails and phone calls from my previous life were starting to be less frequent but initially the disbelief was quite overwhelming, how could I walk away from such a seemingly successful, rewarding and lucrative career.