Moving On (It's My Time)

There comes a point in every path where the decision must be made to keep going, or to stop and accept you have reached the end of the road. My three months in quarantine taught me a lot of things, but my biggest takeaway was that my peace and my time are valuable. 

I have always been the kind of person to put the needs of others first. For far too long I have allowed relationships I’m unhappy in, clients I don’t see eye to eye with, and jobs that I have merely outgrown dictate my time and my life for the sake of keeping whoever or whatever is on the other end happy. All things in life have an expiration date and as hard as it may be, it might be time to accept that it’s time to move on. 

You might be thinking “but I love him/her/it” or “things will change” but sometimes that isn’t good enough. How long do we keep making excuses for something that is inevitable? 

A few years ago, I had a job I thought I loved. I quickly realized I was overworked and severely underpaid. But I stayed. Why? I stayed because I didn’t want to let people down. I had built a community within this job and I was scared of what a future without it would look like. I didn’t want to let my friends I had made in the workplace down. I didn’t want to let the clients down that I had grown to love. But the biggest reason that I didn’t want to face at the time, was that I was scared. Fear is what was holding me back from letting go of something that was not only no longer serving me, but was also blocking my potential for what the future actually had in store for me.

In my lifetime I’ve dealt with quite a few heartbreaks, but every single time, I have kept the person around. I put myself second. Even though they had broken my heart, some even absolutely destroyed me, I still stuck around. Do you know how difficult it is to stay friends with the person who broke your heart? How terrible it feels when you are sad and angry yet feel bad at the thought of potentially abandoning them? It’s not fun and it sits with you every single day (even once the feelings die out). I would have probably saved myself a lot of tears and a lot of sanity had I just let him go. 

In everything I do now I try to ask myself “is this worth it”? Whether it’s a person, a job, or anything in between - if it serves me no purpose, I try to move on. Don't get me wrong it's not like I can just shut my emotions towards a person or a client or a job off - but I try to distance myself from it to HELP cut those emotions off until I believe I can let it/them go. I had three months to myself to in a way audit my life. I’ve realized where and with who I am draining my energy, and where I could offer a little more. These decisions are hard and emotional, but they're ones that need to be made. Remember, growth doesn’t come from comfort zones and effort should never feel forced. At the end of the day, we have no one but ourselves so that is who needs to come first.

Xoxo,

Shab