Yesterday, just before 4 pm, I walked out the door of a job that had been suffocating me for months, and took what felt like my first real, deep breath, in a very long time.
It’s hard, feeling trapped in a position that sucks so much time, life and happiness out of you. There was a lot of weight lifted off me when I put my notice in two weeks ago, but the feeling of calmness I felt waking up this morning was incredible. I didn’t have an overwhelming sensation of dread, no panicked, anxious inhale, when rolling over to check my phone, because I no longer have my work email app on my home screen.
It’s funny, how one simple act like uninstalling an application can bring such a sense of relief; because even though it’s just an app, and it’ll only be gone for 12 days (when I start the next chapter of my career) it held so much weight on my heart. Because even though it was “just an app”, it symbolized a heck of a lot of unhappiness.
For the next 12 days, I’m so excited to live a life away from my email inbox. I can read. I can write. I can poorly crochet. I can sleep in, or wake up early; I can do yoga in the middle of the day, or take an afternoon nap; I can play Animal Crossing for an entire morning, or clean out my closet, or throw Taylor Swift on my stereo and have a dance party. I can spend my evenings fully focused on dinner conversations with my husband, and phone calls with my friends and family, without feeling like I should be checking my phone for an email or assignment, without needing to vent about work.
For the first time in I don’t even know how long, my time is my own. I’m on no one’s schedule but my own. I have full control of how my days go. We don’t get that, very often–and it truly is a blessing. I feel like finally, finally, I have time to catch my breath.
