I'd planned on leaving my full-time job sometime in the early part of 2021, after Emily (my wife) had been at her new job long enough to confirm she liked it. We didn't know how long that would take, but conveniently assumed it would be sometime after her health benefits kicked in. With insurance coverage, I could remove one of the larger obstacles from my list of cons and take another step towards going full-time freelance.
That plan changed halfway through my second work meeting of the new year.
After a perfect holiday break — zero meetings, zero emails, zero clients and absolutely zero fire drills for nearly two weeks — I was dreading going back to work. I couldn't sleep the night before my first day back. That Monday morning, I paced around the house like a nervous animal who just found out it was going to the vet.
The first meeting was simple enough: regular stand-up stuff, with "how was your break?" and recalibrating for business that we'd all kinda forgotten about during our hiatus. I was put on a new project and within a couple hours I knew the time had come.
I'm still waiting for a supercut of all the pitch meetings in Mad Men. Peggy is my hero.
I'm still waiting for a supercut of all the pitch meetings in Mad Men. Peggy is my hero.
The best way I can describe it is kinda like that last meeting in Mad Men when Don Draper just walks out. Everyone's working from home so there's no way I could've looked that cool, but it felt just like a series finale.
About halfway through my second meeting, where I was being tasked with deck-building — compiling presentation slides from old documents into a new template — for a quick-turn assignment. After ten or fifteen minutes of expose (I genuinely can't remember) everything kinda went fuzzy. It was like I was just hearing white noise. Words didn't make sense to me. There was this ringing sound and time kinda stopped. I remember thinking something ridiculous like am I having a stroke but more accurately wondering if I was about to have (another) anxiety attack.
Before the meeting was over, with the blessing of my wife, I shot off a note to someone in HR. Shortly after my third and fourth meetings of the day I'd let everyone of significance know that I'd be leaving the company in two weeks.
I grabbed a sandwich and walked out of my virtual office. I was finally on my way.