You Can Take This Job and Shove It

After three years and untold amounts of frustration and aggravation, I quit my crappy serving job on Monday.

I won't go into details, but let me just say that they found my line and ran screaming past it. So I quit. And the clouds parted and choirs of angels sang. Hallelujah!

Since the time I took that job, which was only supposed to be a stop gap between full-time salaried jobs, life kept getting in the way of leaving. First it was J Girl's arrival, then it was J Boy's diagnosis, and finally James' new job at the beginning of the year. More than anything, I used the fact that J Boy has autism as an excuse to put up with the wildly inconvenient schedule, the abuse from customers, aggravation from management and a laundry list of complaints from James to NOT move on. I was comfortably inconvenienced by this job and timid about finding something that would be leagues more beneficial to my family. Not only that, but I wasted time off my life using autism as a justification to not reaching my personal goal of becoming a freelance writer or working in media.

Does anyone else have this tendency? In my head, it's easier to put up and shut up, deal with the status quo because you know what to expect, rather than cut the cord and possibly have a shot at happiness or fullfilment.

If I hadn't had a fit and fallen through it on Monday, Heaven knows how long I would have stayed to avoid any real action to improve myself or my life, and there really wouldn't have been any excuse for it. In fact, if I can get this writing thing off the ground, it will improve everyone's life immensely because I'll likely be making more money, have more flexibility and not be at the mercy of people's burning desire for crisp bacon NOW. Children could get sick and go to the doctor's office without disrupting the entire restaurant staff; we could make weekend plans again; I won't have to take entire days off for an hour-long appointment. In short, the stress in our house will decrease. Writing is one of the only things I know I do well --- it's been a long time since I've done it and I'm nervous, but I'm a hell of a lot better at it than serving.

Have any of you ditched dreams, however modest, for the safety misery offers? Despite good sense telling you to do otherwise? Please tell.