only you make your dreams come true

I haven't been posting as much to this blog, but that ain't because I haven't been writing.  Or thinking.  Or plotting.  

Just this past weekend, par exemple, I wrote and sent a piece to our local rag, for their Tuesday "How It Is" column, in which I had something published earlier this year.  It's just a local paper, but there's something pleasing about telling stories in that forum.

And last Friday I spent three hours and four pages working out how to arrive at what I could reasonably say, to my current colleagues, about why I'm resigning that position and moving on.  Four pages of diatribe, to arrive at a list of 6 bulleted items.  

But mostly I've been catching up on sleep, since Friday, and thinking.  And, to be honest, feeling pretty pleased with myself. 

On my long list of goals for 2010, #1 in the Business category is "Gracefully leave [current job]."  I've been super-serious about these goals all year, made a copy and pasted them into the back of my new Moleskin when I ran out of pages in the old one, and refer to them periodically.  It seems like I refer to my two-page list most on those rare occasions when Joe and I go out to dinner together, we've placed our order and are waiting for food to arrive, and are sitting in that quiet pause reviewing progress, making plans, sketching (literally) ideas.

It's taken me most of this year to get clear about what I want and need, to move beyond the clear sense of what I don't want.  Which is so much easier to describe.  Getting to a definition of the positive, on its own, not just in contrast to what's negative, has been months in the making.

And now I'm here.

Pretty happy, as I said, with myself, with sticking to my intention to leave a place where I've been unhappy and frustrated for about three years, for these reasons (and yes, these are my positive bullets):

I’m leaving in favor of a job:
- in the city I live in, in an organization that directly serves my community and the environment with a mission I can get behind and which has nothing to do with cancer, which I’m sick of
- in a location I can ride my bike to, so I’ll be out of my car and have 1 ½ to 2 hours more of my life back a day, plus more time outside and physically active
-  at an organization that has managed to grow even during an economic contraction through strategic moves and investments
- at an organization that is non-profit but operated like a business, with two bottom lines
- with a defined scope allowing me to do work I love (numbers) in a position that is a respected and integral part of a fully-functioning successful management team
- that will support my desire to simplify my life a great deal and enforce a discipline of simplicity through a reduced salary

Probably the best thing about setting an intention, sticking to it, and getting there, is this profound sense that only I can make my dreams come true.  Only you can do the same for you.  This is so great -- this feeling of being in the driver's seat, of being in charge of destiny, of calling the shots in my own life.  When it's a big change, like this one, it just feels so good to accomplish a deeply-considered goal written down in January of the year.

So as of December 31, 2010, I will walk away from the work I've been doing for 10 years and be in a "smaller" position, one with a narrower scope.  Such a tremendous relief. And such a sense of accomplishment. 

And just in time for me to start dreaming 2011.  New list here I come.  Yay!!