Writer’s Block from August 20, 2010:

What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done? Would you do it again?

On April 26, 2006, I told my supervisor that he needed to start looking for my replacement. I wasn’t giving formal notice at that point, but I had made the decision: for my own sanity I was moving away from Raleigh. By “away,” I meant far enough that I wouldn’t be able to commute in.

I didn’t have another job waiting for me. In fact, at that point I didn’t even know where I was going to end up. That following weekend, I picked three places: Charlotte, Atlanta and Washington (in that order). I also picked the date of the move: the weekend of the Independence Day holiday.

At that point, I kicked the job searching into high gear, but by mid-May I still hadn’t found anything. I went so far as to ask a friend of mine how much rent she would charge if I moved into her basement for a little while. I had enough saved up, and knew I could land a minimum-wage type job quickly enough, to manage that for four or five months.

I was lucky. I landed a job in Atlanta just in time, with a company that was willing to wait for me. I turned in my formal notice the Friday before Memorial Day. But I was still pretty scared because I was actually taking a very slight decrease to move to a place with a higher cost of living.

Six months later I bitterly regretted it when I lost that job. But I’m a fighter and I had twin motivations: a lease and an unwillingness to move back. I’d also already paid for a mini-vacation that weekend so I went ahead and took that to settle my mental state…and then I came back and started calling temporary agencies.

One of them placed me about a week later, and that placement turned into the job I have now.

I don’t know if I’d do something like that again, but I do know that I’ll be gone from Atlanta by June 2016, and probably back to Raleigh. (If I have my way it will be earlier.) The issues that drove me away don’t exist anymore, and I’m homesick.

That being said, it was still the right decision and I don’t regret it anymore.