When 19 cents held more value than my salary

The reward I got for quitting my nearly $80,000 salary job is summed up to nineteen cents—and I love it. Now, this doesn’t include everything that happened in between quitting my job and earning these nineteen cents. In fact, there’s a nasty journey of healing, unlearning, breathing, traveling, euphoria, frustration and countless tears in between.

I have always carried a poetic heart, well at least since I can remember. I’ve loved love and hated hate. But genuinly enjoyed every feeling in between. I’ve romanticized the sky, the sun, the stars and the moon. Concluding with that every lover was a dream. Even the nightmares were an extraordinary ride for me to experience. Because they were mine and I felt everything so deeply.

In middle school I started writing poems. I enjoyed that more than anything else I got into in my free time. In my freshman year of high school, I took an art class. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t really feel it was my passion’s creative calling. Sophomore year, I took a creative writing class because I had heard nothing but great things about the teacher. I had always enjoyed writing poems, why not give this a shot? I thought.

In that class there were two defined moments that changed my view of self, regarding my creative parts. One was when we wrote a poem, which we later had to meet with the art class and have an art student create a piece of artwork to bring our words to life. I thought this was such a unique and fun thing for my teacher to do, to bring two creative classes together. To bring students together, to share their creativity and work together to create something new, that otherwise may not have. At first I was a little embarrased beacause I thought no one would read that poem. It was a little dark and so different from "the norm". However, I found an art student who loved it, and created a piece of art that matched it. I felt a deep connection with someone I had never met, and truthfully, never spoke to again.

The other was a memoir. Which I found fascinating that up until that point, just about every adult in my life had continued to treat me as a kid. “What could you know about life?” “What life have you lived?” “You’re too young to have been through shit” The list goes on and on. Mrs. Benning, however, asked us to write a story of our lives. Understanding, acknowledging and encouraging each of us to write about the “shit” we haven’t been through or the things we “don’t know about”. It was refreshing, liberating.

I wrote a piece that I was scared to share. I was surprised how naturally the words would flow from my finger tips on to the keyboard. Surprised at how easily the story just wrote itself. Through her encouragement and support, I had the bravery to submit it. Her feedback was… human, to say the least. I think all the friends I had in that class and I were both surprised, but not shocked, at how beautiful of an assignemnt that was. It’s like I could see everyone’s shoulders lighten up as we each received our papers back. How magical this woman was to make us all feel this way. It made me proud of everyone in the room. I don’t think I ever felt that way about any other class, any other time.

Unfortunately, I took the momentum she had given me and decided to use that piece for a midterm for my IB English class the next semester. Well, you may have guessed it, it turns out not everyone is as receptive to your story as Mrs. Benning made us feel. So from that day on, I kept my words short, and hidden in my poetry.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world—my world, and everyone’s in it as a result. My change, however, came about a year and a half later than most. When the pandemic first started, I had just been hired at a small family company for vacation rentals. But first, a little back story. I was exhausted from working in an industry that I thought would bring me more. The hospitality industry is supposed to be an industry of humans. Humans that get paid to be human and take care of humans. With that expectation, I knew that the guests we’d take care of would be their human selves. More often than not, this included their insecurities, dissatisfactions, unrealistic expectations and loud demands. What I didn't expect was the toxicity from the teams I was working with.

It was so easy for my co-workers to dehumanize and desensitize themselves to other people’s vacations. To other people's time, and other people's money. Working in the hotels here in San Diego just grew disappointing and unfulfilling. I decided to take a break and reconsider where my skills were going. Were they growing? After I quit a hotel supervising job, I was teaching jumprope lessons to keep busy. My teaching, leadership and patience skills were growing. I enjoyed being around the kids so much I decided not to give up on a job that was interactive with guests or other humans. My friend suggested craigslist—I know!

As I scrolled through the jobs part of craigslist, I found a management job for a small vacation rental company. I thought, maybe a smaller company would be a better fit. Well, a week into my “training” I was called into HR’s office. We only had one HR representative, our HR manager. She told me they were “letting everybody go” and were asking if a few people would like to stay. She said I’d be stripped of my title and my salary until further notice. I had just gotten hired and had not even begun any proper training, what do I have to lose? I thought and agreed to stay.

The next year and a half resulted in a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears. Literally. I was a part of the “keeping things afloat” and the "re-build". There were so many shady and wrongful things the company was doing that I felt a duty to clean up. This was a God given opportunity to build things back, but better. I had no manager to lean on or even really ask for guidance from. But through my grit and “optimism” I was able to lean on the operations manager to rebuild both of our departments differently. I climbed up that ladder quite quickly and soon began reporting to the CEO directly. Not long after that I had accrued a new department. I was always working.

From a personal life’s perspective… I don’t even know. I never gave myself the time to realize what was going on in the world, outside of my office’s four walls. I lost friends, family and loved ones. To either COVID or just life. I tried not to get politically involved in anything. I moved in with my vain and narcissitic boyfriend, broke up with the boyfriend, moved into my sister’s, moved out of my sister’s and into a one bedroom apartment that was twice my rent. I was so unhappy.

I remember I had actually quit my job when my boyfriend and I had broken up in March. But I ended up having a meeting with my boss and HR that somehow convinced me to stay. I was promised, again, a promotion and a raise that never came— though I didn’t know it at the time. I guess I was just happy to still have something after all I was letting go of.

In July the company announced their sale to a bigger company. I tried to give it a chance but the merging was a mess. Everyone was confident in my ability to carry my teams through to success. But I was tired. I was exhausted. I was annoyed. I was burnt out. I remember an associate walking into my office saying, “you’ve handled worse, you can get through this.” and I just responded with, “I’m just tired of the shit show. I want a real challenge.” The look on her face made me realize I didn’t just think those words, I said them. She started cracking up and saying how much she loved me.

Less than a week later I was gone. I remember the day before it happened. I was looking out my office window. For what felt like a lifetime. Must’ve been a solid hour. I loved the team that I had hired, trained… created. I love the influence that I had in this company and my co-workers. I loved witnessing myself grow out of my own shell. But there was a heaviness in me sitting in that chair. My office with my name, just simply, didn't feel like mine anymore.

The day I quit had many tears. More than I anticipated, more than I had wanted. I knew that my departure upset some of the other managers, but the responsibility— it just wasn’t mine to carry anymore. My team organized an outing to Dave and Busters and we had a blast. It made me so fulfilled to see how much they got along and showed their respect for one another. Through some of the most--if not the most-- difficult year for some of these people and I, we stood here cheering and laughing in our togetherness. Accomplished.

I took a week and a half to go to Germany, after that. A country I said I’d go back to “one day”, but never gave myself the time or importance to follow through on it. I walked, and walked, and walked. One day, my friend and I walked 26 miles! A whole marathon. Another thing I’d always wanted to do (run not walk) but never gave the time or importance to follow through on it. In heels and nothing but streets and museums.

Now, had I known what’d follow would be the challenge I so easily demanded that day in my office, I probably would’ve thought about quitting differently. But you don’t know what you don’t know. So a million applications later, a hundred hours on a couch, several interviews and 3 and a half months later, I finally found a job. It wasn't the change that I had wanted or the type of job I'd been applying to, but I needed to start making money.

The reasons why it took me so long, well they’re simple. I didn’t want the same toxicity in a culture that I've experienced, to have poor management or low morale and values. Additionally. I wanted a new industry that could develop me in the ways hotel and property management wasn't. I ended up walking out of three interviews, purposefully bombing a few others for the sake of not appearing rude to walk out. But I know they knew I simply wasn’t interested or would not take the job. I saw that the questions they were asking were not really relevant. It was frustrating to see that I had the experience in an industry but they couldn't understand how they were transferrable to their industry.

I remember walking in to an inverview that was for a job similar to what I left. I was so sad to see that one of my previous employees, who left the job for hating the job, ended up in a very similar job. And the most depressed person in our group did too. I did not want to work with them again. It felt like they were able to give up and just start in a new building. I couldn't let that be my fate. Not in a role that I was applying for but "I may or may not have have six months from now", according to the interviewer because if they needed me to manage another department they'd just switch me to that department. In retrospect I can see how sabotaging that Intwrview was on some level knowing that what I didn't want lead me closer to what I wanted. Looking back now I can laugh at that interview.

My faith in humanity and industry was shooketh. So, I did what I had always wanted to, but never did before–I started to write. So far, in those three months and a half, I wrote the completion of a novel, 4 children's books and the majority of two other novels. I began to look into publishing, but I realized I knew even less about that. I could not start the job I had been offered because there were “issues” with my background check. Needless to say, my previous company lied and screwed me over once again. Changing my title and I guess other facts my new manager didn’t get into details with me about.

Nothing like a little anger to push you off the edge. So while I waited for the background check (which took a month!) to finalize, I decided to start publishing. I didn’t want to give away everything I had spent months (well really, years) creating. So I found Vocal and began to take on prompted challenges. I never thought my stories would get a single view. Except maybe my sister, if I chose to share them with her. Yesterday, I logged on to my account and saw a 32. My words are being read.

The reason why these nineteen cents mean so much to me, is because the fear that I’ve had to change my career without direction has been invalidated by the fact that I now do have a direction. I can see the flowers blooming and I'm longing for their smell. Through every story, and every publication, I’m creating my footprint on the writing path. One that, like Germany and a marathon, I had always wanted to achieve but never gave the time or importance to follow through on it. But, dear reader, your views let me know that you are out there. You are listening, you are reading what I am creating in this electronic notebook. Thank you. Thank you for your support, for your time and for your curiosity to want to know what I have to say.