Extreme Courage / Abject Terror

Throughout my adult life, beginning with my first divorce, friends and colleagues have commented on how courageous I was. I have routinely disputed these statements. I never felt courageous. I think I felt it was a survival instinct. The harder action in the marriage, I thought at the time, would have been to stay in the marriage and make it work. But it takes two to make a marriage work, and maybe—in the long run—that would have been impossible.

Looking back at my work history, the best jobs usually come to me serendipitously. No courage involved; just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I got my first IBM job as a secretary with a temp agency. IBM liked me, hired me, and then recognized my abilities and promoted me into a programming career path. My first contract position with CTG came because an IBM manager wanted me to come write marketing materials for him and he got me the only way he could. The most amazing serendipity occurred on the day of John's death: I received a phone call completely out of the blue from a man I had taken a Lotus Notes class from two years before. I had never applied for a job with this company, had never spoken with this man after the class. He called to ask if I'd come work for them. That's astonishing to me!

Sometimes my leaving a current position to go to something that looked a little more promising took an enormous leap of faith. Sometimes it was just following my gut. Today I took an action that was a combination of leaping and following my gut: I quit my job to become a freelance something-or-other—writer, editor, web editor, executive assistant, …. I have only one contract lined up: performing all those tasks for my son. I think I performed a courageous act.

When I handed in my resignation this morning, I was immediately washed with a feeling of relief. As the day wears on, I'm swimming in terror.

The rightness of what I've done is pooling around at the base of my gut. I know that my leap of faith will pay off. I've been dreaming of it long enough that I know it's right. But right now I feel like my head is about to explode from the fear.

What's the worst that could happen? I guess it's that I would declare bankruptcy. But I know within myself I couldn't do that. Twenty years ago, when I got custody of my son, I worked a full-time and two part-time jobs while in law school to provide for us and to pay his boarding school tuition. It was the right thing to do. Tired? Damned right. I was tired constantly, but I knew I was doing the right thing. And it paid off—I credit much of who he is today to the education he received at Interlochen Arts Academy. If I need to do that again—to work multiple jobs—to pay my bills, at age almost-60, can I keep up that pace? I don't know. What I do know is that I instinctively, religiously, try to do the right thing.

So here we go. The known is behind me, or will be in two weeks. That includes a grueling commute that costs me a minimum of two hours a day and thousands of dollars a year, and a workday spent in a job where I don't feel appreciated or respected. The unknown is ahead, but aspects of this unknown can be seen. What I can see is that I'll be working for a bright and mature young man who knows the quality of my work and respects me. I will commute from my bedroom to my home office. I'll have blessed time to walk around the block or spend a normal-commute-time hour in my sewing room. And I'll make a difference to my employer.

I can't even imagine the fear and panic that must have swirled around my son when he took his leap of faith almost two years ago to become an entrepreneur. He was a father with a wife who was just beginning her own entrepreneurship and two young children. All I am is a grandmother with a lot of bills.

Good God—if he can do it (and become so successful), surely I can follow in his footsteps.

Here's hoping.