Dear day job:

I want you to know that I couldn't have made it through this winter without you. I am so grateful.

I couldn't have navigated these strange places and maintained my independence without our relationship. You paid my rent and bought my food and covered the tab for pottery classes and garage sale bookcases and hundreds, maybe thousands of Bahkti chais. You gave me structure and sanity on the tail end of months of strange and scary unemployment, shaped my life back into days and nights that I could recognize, and that is something I needed more deeply than I can express.

You taught me how to do grown-up things, like transfer phone calls and write proposals and talk to people in suits. You were my first desk job, the first place where making money was the  most important thing, the only thing. Because of you, I have a Microsoft Outlook email account and a phone voice. I say things like "functionality" and "I'll follow up with you" and other things that kind of make me gag when I think about them later.

You also taught me something I hadn't quite learned yet, the value of waiting in a place that doesn't feel right and trusting that I'll come to a place that does. You taught me something more about showing up, day after day, not knowing the purpose but not checking out. You taught me to attend to life anyway.

I appreciate all this, and that's why I wanted to tell you first that I'm leaving you. In just a few days I'm going to go talk to my boss and give him my notice, in my strange and painfully I've-never-quit-a-job awkward way.

I hope you understand that this does not diminish my gratefulness. I am so acutely aware that you provided me with the things I couldn't live without, at a time when I needed it the most.

But I'm leaving because you also taught me something else: exactly what I don't want to spend the hours and days and months of my life doing. You taught me how sad and uninteresting a life spent chasing money would be. You showed me how empty an organization is when the only thing tying an employee to her desk is the promise of a paycheck. I guess I knew that anyway, in a theoretical kind of sense, but I think this practical experience was one of the biggest reasons why my path wound through this place. I can almost feel God's breath in my ear, saying, Are you paying attention? Whatever you create, you cannot do it this way. You will make hell.

You taught me that none of us can become just a saleswoman and still live. You taught me that there are so many people out there who, for whatever reason, have suspended or killed their creativity, their spirit, their intuition for what is good and what is not, and that theirs is a path to avoid at all costs.

I wanted to let you know that I learned this, I will always remember it, and I will do whatever it takes to never become the person I saw sometimes in the bathroom mirror. I'll live for weeks on rice and canned peaches, I won't believe people when they tell me this is the way the world works, I'll keep trying to do life in the way that's hard and good and God-led, even if I'm poor forever and my kids have to substitute folk school for college and share a teal 1995 Pontiac Grand Am. There are worse things.

I'll keep trying to connect with people who are good and present and full of life, and I'll keep exploring and growing and drawing closer to my purpose for being here. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate what I learned with you, and I won't forget. And that's why I won't be back.

Sincerely,

Kate