Freedom

Yesterday morning, in a blind fit of frustrated spontaneity, I invited my boss out for lunch and announced that I wanted to resign. My heart felt like it was about to jump out of my throat, but as soon as it was said, I knew it was the right thing to do.

He was really great about, not at all launching into the shocked and angry tirade that I was expecting, so it was actually quite relaxing and I felt at ease to tell him everything that was on my mind. In retrospect, this might not have been such a great idea.

He went through the lunch asking me to reconsider my position, demonstrating why he thought I was great and had so much potential etc, and I got back to the office thinking, 'he's right, I can do this, and I am so amazing that if I can't do it, well nobody can.'

In other words I got trapped into staying.

As soon as I sat down to work again I felt conned, as if resigning were just one more thing to add to the list of things I wasn't allowed to do at work. But I just had to look up at his puppy eyes across from me to think that maybe I was wrong.

Of course it was then impossible for me to sleep last night, and this morning I formally handed in my resignation, sending him a letter saying that in effect I was firing myself so that he didn't have to, and that really I was doing him a favour. No one wants an unhappy member on their team.

This did NOT go down well. He told me that he was very disappointed, that I had let him down, and that because it was so unfair of me to leave so soon, I would have to work out one month's notice instead of the one week in my probation period. I accepted with my tail between my legs.

The silence in the office was already quite hard to live with, but now the silence is so much heavier, full of accusatory looks and tense sighs. If you think about it, resigning is SO much harder than breaking up with a boyfriend. At least in the latter case you get to leave straight away and feel bad alone, but when you resign, you have to hang around feeling guilty and being punished every day for a month. And you have to keep doing a job that you actually don't want to do. And I still want to do the best job I can. I'm not just going to give up being me because I am leaving. I'll take breaking up over quitting my job any day.

But it's done, at least. And I'm glad that I didn't regret it the second I had sent the letter. My reaction is telling me that this is what I needed to do, and that we will all be much happier when it is over. And they will find the perfect candidate and everyone will live happily ever after.

So I guess life lesson number one from the Hong Kong experience so far - when someone offers you the job you really want and have been chasing for months but every instinct still tells you to say no, don't accept! Sometimes your body can say more than your heart in those situations. I wanted to throw up when he offered me the job, and I thought it was from excitement, but now I think it might have been from fear and forewarning...

Well, next stage (trying to be the freelance writer I always wanted to be!) coming soon hopefully, as soon as I have worked through my month's notice. And then I'll just be complaining about not finding any good writing jobs. They don't call me moany for nothing!