my rather choppy early employment career

This morning I was on a call with a friend and she was telling me that she had resigned, and I said, "Good!"

Resignation to the fact that something is not for you is not the easiest thing in the world, because it requires courage to cut your loses so to speak. Often though it's a necessary step that you need to take at some point in your work 'career' and more pronouncedly at equally important junctions in your life, the only real difference is that you don't do it via a silly formal letter stating your intentions of moving on.

I resigned from my first job, in big-bad-NGO, after three days of work, for a long time it rated as one of my most embarrassing feats of which there thankfully are few, but now on reflection it was quite a brave and noble thing to do. The NGO facilitated, mentored and instigated action but never ever followed through, that was for the community to do and since the real work was building low income "starter" houses it quickly became apparent to me that very little building would take place and a lot of politicking would instead be its substitute. Perhaps this is the first phase of development but I was young and I needed to be on site doing work, so I resigned, I realised that it was not for me and in that sort of space somebody committed to facilitation needed to take my place.

Then a couple of years later in my rather choppy early employment career, I resigned for the second time and this was such a relief, a huge weight was lifted, the circumstances had become "strained" and I felt increasingly like I wasting my time. Eventually it got to a breaking point and I wrote that letter, which I am sure you can now Google, if you are looking for a template.

There are just times when you need to acknowledge what you already suspect and courageously follow through, it's not easy because circumstance often dictates priorities to the contrary but the future at these trying moments is more often than not a very comforting companion, that same future that generally causes you anxiety because it is unknown, is now your sense of hope and purpose, as you move on to bigger and better things.