A decision was made after months of procrastination, battling fears, searching for answers, praying for signs and seeking advise. A month had passed and it is still sinking in. The question that keeps playing on my mind “Am I really ready for this?”

The fear is real. Getting out of the comfort zone of bringing back the same amount of money each month vs fluctuations of income. The fear of not getting enough work, the fear of starting from scratch, the fear of being lost, the fear of the constant need to seek validation, the fear of being overwhelmed, the fear of overcoming all fears (overthinking really does not help) and the list continues.

It was not an easy decision to be a full time freelance after 15 years of being a cubicle rat. The thought  has been playing on my mind for more than a year and I was waiting for the right time. When I was at my deepest end  I started asking “when is the right time?”, “do i want to continue to be stuck and simply leave everything to fate?”. There were multiple rounds of self-reflections aided by conversations with family and friends. A split second decision was made when enough was enough and at that moment I realised that there is no such thing as the right time.

Many say that a job is just a job. You do based on what you get paid for.  There are times that due to changes in the company, responsibilities are added. Due to these changes you start to see a lot more wrong than right. Due to changes, your values and principles are no longer aligned with the company. When that happens, do you stay on and simply take it all in despite being jaded, brown out/burnt out because you are already in your comfort zone?  Wouldn’t it be like a daily robotic routine – wake up, go to work, slog at work, go home. Where is the satisfaction? I admit, different people have different satisfaction levels, different people have different motivation level and different people stay as long as they could for different reasons.

I realised that I had lost my motivation for more than a year and no longer feel a sense of achievement. I was just going through the motion. Being a team player, I man-up, putting in more than 100% and simply just taking it all in even though most times felt that I was taken for granted by being a team player. Speaking up (part of company culture) feels like falling onto deaf ears. Many times I was told that I take my responsibilities too seriously and that I have too high expectations of myself. It is difficult not to when I am dealing with someone else’s life and safety. I take my responsibilities seriously because my credibility is at stake and I am one who do not regard a job as just a job. It is an implied trust. I hate it when I dropped the ball and felt inefficient. It saddens me when told that I’m physically there but not mentally. Don’t get me wrong, I am one who prefers to have open and straight conversations/feedback. But it does not work when frequently it is only one way traffic.  It came to a point where I am tired of trying and simply give up. I had alot more questions than answers. Instead of asking and listening, it became asking and finding fault.  Cliche but true that at the end of the day no one is indispensable to a company.

Through out the years of working full time I had picked up various skills (both technical & soft skills) and past employers had given me abundance of opportunities and regional exposure. For that I am truly grateful. These actually complement the experience that I gained with my freelance work and vice versa. The various roles from my freelance work opened up a totally different world and experience that I could not gain while sitting in the office. I had been asked many times why I do it. I simply answered “why not?” Knowledge is to be shared and learning is at its best when it is shared.

And so, here I am writing this still thinking if I am really ready for this (more like – what did I get myself into). I guess I will never be ready but at least I am brave enough to take the very first step towards an adventure to add on to my book of journeys.

“When you get out of your comfort zone, life begins…” – Unknown