A few years ago the company I worked for was acquired by another, much larger, company. While I was able to remain employed through the acquisition I had to take a different role. And I told myself at the time how lucky I was to be able to keep my salary, work remotely, not go through a job search, it just didn’t feel good. I loved my job. Like, not just “yeah, my job is pretty good” love, but “Sunday nights don’t bother me because I get to go to work Monday morning!” love. It’s rare, I know, because that was the first time I’d ever loved a job that much.

What made my job so great wasn’t just one thing. It wasn’t just the work I was doing, or the travel to fun places, or the people who worked for me, or the person I worked for, or even my friends across the hall. It was ALL of those things, combined. A perfect storm of elements that, when combined, created a perfect little haven that I was thrilled to live in. And almost every single one of those things is changing, and that’s scary.

I was scared, but committed to giving it a go. Doubt lingered through the transition process like a grease stain on a favorite sweatshirt. What if I won’t like the work I’m doing, the person I work for, the people who work for me; maybe the travel will be less manageable and my friends won’t be across the hall anymore. Or maybe none of those things will happen. I didn’t know what the future held and that is a real challenge for someone who likes to be in control. So I did give it a shot. Two years in fact. And it sucked. It sucked soooo bad. I didn’t have any real connections with my new team save for one person. The work was horribly tedious, boring, and I did it in a silo with very little interaction with the rest of my team.

So after giving it longer than I really should have, I finally decided to quit. Just quit. I’d been lucky enough to have a severance package offered that would expire two years after the acquisition so I triggered it and gave my notice. I planned to take several months off, see what I wanted for my next move, and for the first time in a long time I was content. Still scared – I’d not been out of work since I gave birth to my youngest and we moved states! But I knew leaving was the right decision.

Then, a funny thing happened. I got a job offer from another company – to do what I had been doing before the acquisition; still work remotely (I literally started in the middle of the pandemic) and build my own team. But I was going to take off several months! But I was considering changing careers! But it was an incredible opportunity and could I really pass it up? Well I did NOT pass it up and have been at this company for almost three years now. While maybe nothing will ever match the job I lost, this is pretty darned close. I love my team, I love my leader, I love the culture and the work is fun. I still get to travel to some fun places, and even manage to take my husband from time to time.

I often think about how scared I was, and about how all of the things I was scared of actually came true. But I survived. And if I’m being honest, learned quite a bit about my own resiliency – I’m kind of bad-ass. In another silver lining, this was also an opportunity to teach my children that we don’t always get what we want and life isn’t always fair, but how we react, adapt, and learn is what defines us. They’re both old enough now to judge me on my behavior; I sure hope I got an “A”.