The step has been taken. The decision has been made. The notice has been given. So how do I feel about that? I feel like I have lived in two rooms of a house.
One was where I lived my free time. It was familiar and safe. Somewhere my children could visit. A place that was a sanctuary, but one that I would walk through the back door of to go out and spend time with family and friends. I did this journey on weekends and holidays and programmed myself to see the world through eyes associated with a 'down-time' perspective when I would leave it.
The other room was work. It was a potentially very big room, with lots of interesting things to investigate, and the opportunity to make a difference to the outside world on a big scale. Outside the walls of this room were customers, clients, stakeholders and people that would have benefited from allowing the people in the room find a way to make the tools and knowledge inside the room sing. There were numerous windows on the walls of this room - I know, I can remember looking out of them in the past and seeing the impact of what we made inside the room on the outside world. But something happened to the windows. Vision of the outside world became blurred. Maybe we just forgot to clean the windows, but the reality is, we really did forget to check who was outside and how we could help them. Instead, all the tools and knowledge inside the room got put into departments and cubicles. They were given structures to follow. They were told to not let other departments see their work. To protect their own progress. To be suspicious of the other departments. So I found myself in a small section of the room, with none of the interesting bits, and no ability to work out how to leverage the skills and knowledge of my team, which was way more useful than just to our department. In fact, it was most useful to those in the outside world and as a conduit between other departments and those outside - but we couldn't see outside. And guess what, the world began to change.
So, whilst reflecting on my little department, and my own values, I decided to expand my knowledge in another way. I began to see that there were actually some really interesting things outside those dirty windows. But it is big and scary out there!
Then, one day, I found that there were External-Influencers who had ventured into that other world who would encourage me to explore it. I was building my 'boldness' already, because of my daughters. Even so, this was not enough - I couldn't see a door out of the room accept back to my other room.
Integrity is an amazing thing. People can pick at your integrity, but at some point you will have to say enough is enough otherwise you will crumble. I decided I needed to find another room when it became clear that people were picking at my integrity. I have not slammed the door to the old room, but I have let them know it is no longer a place for me.
And now I am taking a whole different look at the world when I walk out of my sanctuary. I can see there is more to the world, and opportunities abound. I know there will be work involved. Thomas Edison said, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like hard work." I am keeping this in mind.
I will take some time, then I will begin to build a new room - one that hopefully I can be happy in. One that will definitely have lots of windows, and a big, two-way door, that people can both come in by and go out of, and that I can leave through at times. Because whilst we (or me) will do work in that room, the results have to be for stakeholders on the other side of those walls. See you in the outside world.
