Three months ago today I walked away from a job I’d held for twenty years. I knew it was coming but nothing really prepares you for the moment when you hand over your keys and drive away.

I’ve been thinking about identity a lot in the last three months. What nobody tells you about losing a job you loved is how much of yourself goes with it. Not just the work, the identity. The morning routine. The sense of being needed. I spent the first few weeks genuinely wondering who I was without a title attached to my name and the work. I wrote in my journal: “I feel purposeless without a job, undefined.” I meant it. I had one particularly bad day in early February where I just gave in to all of it — the anger, the sadness, the feeling of worthlessness. I walked around the house all day being miserable on purpose. It sounds counterintuitive but it worked. I woke up the next morning in the best mood I’d had in years.

What I’ve learned in the last three months is that the identity I lost wasn’t really mine. It was given to me, shaped by an institution, tied to an organization, a budget, and an org chart I didn’t choose. After the shock of the change started to wear off I began building a new identity for myself. The one I’m building now is chosen. Every piece of it.

I’ve been working to launch a consulting business: building the website, creating branding, getting organized. I launched Two Bit Consulting a couple of weeks ago, and this morning I received the Articles of Organization from the state of Missouri. It just became real in a new way. My client list is growing quickly. I’ve been writing more, building things, exploring technology in ways I haven’t had time or energy for in years. I called a former colleague this week and told them that life on the other side is pretty dang nice. I meant that too.

I’m not going to pretend the last three months have been easy. Some days were genuinely hard. But I can say without hesitation that I’m happier, less stressed, and more myself than I’ve been in a very long time.
The explorer, the builder, the connector - it turns out they were still here the whole time. They just needed a little room and energy.