John Scalzi is an Ohio-based writer that I’ve linked to before. He’s just posted a blog entry about how ten years ago yesterday he and his wife took a leap of faith on the home and life they wanted, in spite of the fact that he’d just been laid off as an AOL writer and was deeper into the blackest kind of life-questioning depression than he’d ever been. Following their refusal to have their situation dictated by circumstances outside their control, the couple saw their fortunes reversed.
Would have all this stuff happened if we decided to play it safe? Oh, probably, minus the house portion. But the point of it was how we reacted to it. When this good fortune came in, we didn’t feel like we had dodged a bullet and had gotten lucky. We felt that it justified our belief that we could make it work, and that our faith in ourselves was not misplaced. And, yes, that made a difference in how we viewed the world, going forward. It still makes a difference now.
And this is one of the reasons why I tell people that being laid off from AOL was one of the best things that ever happened to me — because as much as it knocked me for a loop, it made me ask myself who I wanted to be in control of my life — and it made me make a choice about how my life would be. It was the right crisis at the right time; it was something I think was necessary for me. In a very real way, it’s the moment I can point to and say “this is when I knew I was a grown up.” It’s maybe a silly way to put it, but it was important all the same. So: Thanks, AOL, for laying me off. I appreciate it. It’s done more for me than you know.
His story strikes a chord with me. I had a similar experience almost exactly a year ago today, when I turned my life upside-down, quit an unfulfilling job I didn’t want to do anymore, got certified to teach English as a second language, and figured I’d make enough cash substitute teaching to pay the rent until I could land a teaching job abroad. Spent a big chunk of my dwindling savings on a laptop to take with me, too. I held my breath and dove head-first and was a lot more scared than I probably let on, but that leap has proven to be one of the best things I ever did, and directly resulted in a job I love today, a dream relationship and a trip I’ll never forget. Never again will I go through the motions or allow my life to be shaped mostly by factors outside my control, and neither, it seems, will he.
Check out his story if you feel like you’re in a dead-end job/degree/relationship/life, and then go out and get a new one.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Rawda // Mar 11, 2008 at 10:51 am
I know exactly what that feels like… Except that when I changed my life, I felt that I shed 50 years off, and I’m enjoying life sooo much more now as a kid and a woman… (although I may be more of a sinner now according to your previous article with the 7 deadly sins.. lol)
Thanks for the interesting articles Mark.
2 F.T. // Mar 12, 2008 at 11:09 am
hey Mark,
That’s exactly what you told me last time. Man, I gotta do something crazy soon…What’s the book you told me about again?
F.
3 mark // Mar 12, 2008 at 1:55 pm
lol - if F.T. is who I think it is, the book is Conversations With God. I’m not sure whether the author, Neale Donald Walsch, is a nutjob or not, but if he is he’s an awfully wise one. And a happy one. And rich. That’s a kind of crazy I can live with.
4 B // Mar 12, 2008 at 5:12 pm
That’s the kind of crazy where it might actually be “everyone else”.
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