New Chapters can be terrifying, but the terrifying ones are sometimes why we keep reading

10:00 PM, June 5th, Sunday night.
Right now my story has me sitting in a quite room in front of my computer. Piano music is playing softly in the background and the dishwasher and old laptop are humming along. As the sun began to set only moments ago the sky turned ferociously dark and raindrops are now tapping on the tin siding. My loved ones are sleeping, aside from the two furry children who are slowly pacing around at my feet. The smell of ginger and coffee cake is wafting through the house as an early morning treat is baking in the oven. I could hardly be more at peace. Apart from actually being asleep this is rest, this is the rest I was seeking out this month and yet my mind... I am at peace but a terrifying anticipation is swirling right at the edge of all the calm.

I just keep thinking, "twelve and a half years." For twelve and a half years I've put on a black polo and khaki pants five days a week. For twelve and a half years I've worked such a strange job, driving from store to store filling out reports, resetting sections, installing graphics and application books and pretty much anything else that might be found in a supermarket, signs, stickers, fixtures, the list is virtually never ending. For twelve and a half years I've been a wanderer of sorts, never having a concrete schedule, never really seeing my boss (or any fellow co-workers for that matter), never having guaranteed work and often times having much too much work. The people I saw each and every day weren't ever really co-workers even though I've made many friends throughout the eleven stores I called mine. For twelve and a half years I haven't worked a weekend or a holiday. For approximately 20,000 hours of my life I've been on the clock working for the same employer and for eleven of those twelve and a half years I was pretty happy with my job.

For most of those twelve and a half years I worked for a very small company that like most every small company these days was bought out by a very large company. Just recently we've "officially" been absorbed. Just recently my job has become unbearable. But, for a little over a year things have been getting worse, and worse, and worse. Tomorrow is the day that I let my company know that enough is enough. I can't do it anymore. I can't work at a place where I feel very little respect, where my voice is not heard or at least never listened to, where almost every answer I get for almost every question I ask is a total non-answer. I can't work at a place where communication, organization, and direction are going downhill at an ever increasing pace.  I've been scared to leave. I've been scared to change paths, to jump ship, to do something else. I was just holding on hoping that a better day would come. I can't hold on any longer. Enough is enough but there's a twelve year backstory and that makes me a little heart sick, a little nauseous, and a little terrified.

Tomorrow is the end of twelve and a half years. But I think this is the end of the terrifying chapter. I think new, exciting, and just a little bit different are the theme of the chapter to come. I did mention that big changes were happening this month, right?
(My husband isn't the only one starting a new job this month)