via alphacoders.com

I’m leaving my job. That’s right folks; after over a year and a half of working full time in my kooky little call center, I am leaving to travel and follow my dreams of being paid to write.

It’s exciting, it’s terrifying and there is a very real chance I will end up extremely poor and never be able to move out of my parents flat. It’s even more of a daunting prospect because this is the only thing I have done since graduating. I literally left university on the last day of June two years ago and started working here on the first day of July. I didn’t take a break or a summer off, this is literally all I know of the adult world.

I always planned to leave; in fact I had no idea I would be here this long. The plan was to save enough money to go traveling before settling down into ‘adult’ life. Initially I naively thought that would take about six months. I kept postponing leaving partly because I didn’t have enough money to realistically do anything else, but also because despite my hatred of customer service I genuinely like the job.

I like my colleagues. I like my boss. I even like the fact that I know all the staff in the nearby shops and see the same people on my commute. I like the location and the view from my little office window. I like all the desk ornaments I have acquired over the years. I even like the routine. After years of believing I had a serious insomnia problem, working nights in the student bar at university probably didn’t help, I am now able to wake up before 8:00am every single day and manage to sleep at night like a regular human being. I’m probably the most productive I have ever been in my life because I have the least free time I have ever had in my life. Working here has become so comfortable and normal to me that now I’m actually leaving, even though I’ve planned it for so long, I’m starting to regret everything and sometimes catch myself seriously thinking about forgetting the whole plan to see world and have a career, and just stay here forever.

I can’t imagine doing anything else. Maybe I can’t do anything else. Isn’t it better to be secure than to try something new? To know exactly what you are going to be doing than wake up clueless every day? To be comfortable rather than challenged? Maybe never following your dreams is better, because then you can’t fail them. What if no one else ever wants to hire me? What if I am doomed to a life of dead end minimum wage jobs because I left the only place that offered more than that? What if I never earn enough to move out and I end up being forty and still living in the same bedroom I had when I was five?! Or what if I do get a new job and it’s horrible and I hate all my co-workers and kick myself forever at having left the one office in the world with (mostly) nice people?

But no. Realistically, this is just graduation goggles. This is the kind of thinking I always said I would avoid. I always swore that I would not start a job straight after university and never leave, that I wouldn’t turn into Chandler Bing or the many real life people who did just that. I always said I would travel before being tied down with responsibilities. I always wanted to have a varied, exciting and memorable life. And now in less than three weeks I am traveling across the world to spend six fabulous weeks in the distant lands of Australia and New Zealand (stay tuned for a lot of pictures), and then I’m going to actually see the European countries that are only about three hours away by plane and yet somehow I haven’t managed to visit. I might go to America. Hell, I might end up touring Asia for six months.  I’m going to do travel blogging at long last. I’m going to spend my Monday mornings on the beach.  It’s going to be good. There are other jobs and other opportunities, and life does go on. Change is scary, but you get used to it quicker than you’d think.

I am going to miss this office though. Sure, customer service sucks. When you work with people long enough you realize quickly how much they suck. Whether it’s the plain stupidity of some and the horrific rudeness of others, people who work in customer service are very under-appreciated. But despite that, this office has made my first years of ‘real’ adult life better than I  could have hoped. It’s taught me a lot about working and about life. I made some fabulous friends and met some quite special characters. I have a new found appreciation for the TV show ‘The Office’.  And even though at the time I always complained about it, when I look back I know I’ll smile at the memories.