Have you ever experienced that feeling of rightness?  The absolute certainty of knowing you are on the correct path?  In the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, the gunslinger Roland and his companions often speak about being on the path of the beam.  In that world it's something they can actually see reflected in the movement of the clouds and the way the grass lays in their path; nevertheless I think it's an apt analogy.  More than ever before in my life I feel attuned to minute signs; tiny details that confirm and illuminate the road I'm traveling.  I suppose this is a product of my quest to be present, to really get to know myself.  Certainly I have been working to remove those things that are detrimental to my mental/physical/emotional health, and to give myself those things that feed my imagination/drive/sense of purpose.

I recently quit my job of five years.  As far as restaurant jobs go it was a good gig.  The shifts were rarely more than five or six hours and the money was good.  I had coworkers who had been there for twelve, fifteen, even twenty years in some cases.  And I see why.  Under the right circumstances it can provide a very comfortable living.  I wasn't happy though.  It used to be that I felt really secure and competent and grateful to be there, but that hasn't been the case in a while.  And that attitude was noticed.  I was faced with a glass ceiling, and I didn't feel like my voice would be heard.  So I didn't say anything.  So now I had these awful feelings festering inside me, and it was noticed.  Who wants someone working for them like that?  No one.

It's really difficult to try to tell this part of the story in a concise way, and also without offending people I care about.  I want to talk about how frustrating my work situation was.  How I felt completely unappreciated, so I stopped doing my best.  Not consciously, but nevertheless I got reprimanded.  It was a big eye-opener.  Because I'm a really smart, capable person.  And there's no reason why I shouldn't excel at whatever I set my mind to.  And at the same time, I realized that I'm not going to let some asshole hold me hostage.  I don't owe them anything.  I gave them four Christmases.  I gave them every Friday and Saturday night for five years.  And I deserve to have my good work acknowledged.

It was psychically draining.  It was leeching all the joy and creativity out of me.  At this time in my life when I am harboring a new and delicate thing (myself, as an artist) I need to protect myself.  The world is changing faster than I can possibly process.  MY world is changing, I mean.  Turning thirty was standing out as a giant billboard in my head.  It felt imperative that my thirtieth birthday not coincide with the start of my sixth year at a snobby corporate restaurant.

So I quit.  I'm not proud of the manner of my quitting.  I know that the prudent thing to do would have been to give two weeks notice and leave on good terms with a reference.  But something came up-something big.  And then this voice in my gut spoke up clearly and said, "What are you waiting for?  There's no other time than now.  You'll never have this decision to make over, on the cusp of your thirtieth birthday.  Stop putting life off and instead live it now.  Thus it was that on the day I had intended to give my two weeks notice I instead told them I wasn't coming in that night, and that I wasn't coming back.

It was terrifying.  And exhilarating.  I truly cannot go back.  And I have no regrets.  I experienced this sense of certainty as though I were driving down the road, with the highway unfolding steadily before me.  To either side the landscape is barren, marked only by outcroppings of boulders and sagebrush and dull, dusty desert.  But the sky where I'm heading is so so clear.  Clearer than I can ever remember.  I drive down that highway watching tiny mirages resolve themselves from shimmering water into asphalt in front of me, and I'm driving straight towards a mountain.  Towards my destiny.  Climbing in elevation and the air gets crisp and cold and before I know it I'm standing at the edge of a vast canyon that seems to continue for ever.  And something inside me just lets go.