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On Wednesday I said I'd tell you the story I learned to tell in interviews. But that story starts later than the real one. Before any of that, something had to shift in my head first. Here's what that actually looked like.
The paper cuts, not the explosion
There was no single moment where I knew. No dramatic realization, no ultimatum, no one bad meeting that tipped it over.
It was smaller than that. I was still showing up to work every day. My body was there. My brain wasn't, not really. Somewhere in that stretch I was already halfway out the door and hadn't admitted it to myself yet.
The conversation that didn't give me permission
I had a manager at Crowd Content who was more of a mentor. I told him some version of what was going on, half expecting him to talk me out of it, or into it.
He didn't do either. He just said, "If you're not in it, you're not in it, and that's okay."
That's the part I want to sit on for a second. It wasn't permission. I didn't need permission, not really, I was an adult who could apply to a job whenever I wanted. What I needed was someone I trusted enough to reflect back what I already half knew, so I could finally hear myself say it instead of just carrying it around silently.
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The voice that wasn't even mine
Here's what was actually running underneath, on a loop. This company owes me everything, so what will they do without me. The whole thing falls apart if I leave.
More specifically than that, if I'm honest: worrying about dumping more work on one coworker I genuinely cared about. Whether a project I actually believed in would still land the same way without me pushing it. Whether the team would get trained on something only I knew how to run.
None of that was about the actual work anymore. It was an anxiety voice wearing a responsibility costume, and it's a very convincing costume.
The other voice, the one that was actually true
A different manager at Crowd, still one of my closest friends today, told me something when she first helped me get that job, long before any of this: "A business only ever cares about a business. It cares nothing at all for you. It's the people you work with that make the difference."
I didn't understand it yet when she said it. I understood it completely by the time I was ready to leave.
The company was never going to fall apart without me. Businesses move on, they hire, they retrain, they figure it out, they always do. The people, the actual relationships, those don't end when you leave a job. Mine didn't. That friend is still a dear friend. So is the manager who told me it was okay not to be in it anymore.
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What I'd ask you to sit with
If some version of that anxiety voice is running for you right now, try separating it from the actual relationships underneath it. Ask yourself honestly: is this fear about a person you care about, or about the company itself, the thing that has never once worried about you back the same way.
Those are two very different fears, and only one of them is actually about a business that will be fine either way.
Bottom Line
The company was never going to fall apart. It didn't. I did leave, and it's still standing, still fine, exactly like every version of me that was scared it wouldn't be. The people who mattered came with me anyway, in the ways that actually count.
Reply and tell me: whose voice is running the loop for you right now, and is it actually about them, or about the company?
P.S. If you're in that paper-cuts stretch right now and need someone to reflect it back the way my mentor did for me, that's exactly what these calls are for.