16 Signs It’s Time To Leave A Place You Once Loved | Thought Catalog

16 Signs It’s Time To Leave A Place You Once Loved | Thought Catalog


This is coming up more and more every day. I was just having this conversation (for the umpteenth time) with my mother yesterday, a guy I recently met over the weekend and also with one of my girlfriends just last week. People, listen. You are not getting any younger or growing any less miserable sitting in your rut waiting for better. "Better" doesn't generally make house calls. YOU have to go to IT. Don't know where "better" is? Okay. Go FIND it. Maybe you don't know WHAT "better" is - that's okay too. You know why? Because you can CREATE it. "Better" can be whatever, wherever and most importantly WHENEVER you want it to be so why not be, have, get and do better NOW? What's gonna change in a year of sitting around waiting for some great thing to occur that didn't change in the last year of sitting around waiting for it? Well.... other than another year of your life going by that you'll never get back, not a damn thing. One thing I can guarantee is that you WILL look back one of these days and say to yourself, "Damn. I wasted so much time," and you'll wish you had done any one of a million things so much sooner.

I don't like to speak about my transition from there to here because I cant seem to do it without becoming super emotional but that's just how big an impact that move had on my life. Good, bad or indifferent I NEEDED to go. I couldn't breathe. And now, even in my moments of struggle and difficulty, no matter what other decisions of mine I may question, the one thing I never second-guess is that decision to move. That place was changing me into something I didn't recognize and again, more importantly, something I didn't like. I was starting to hate myself and all my shenanigans and the only thing I was sure about was that there were going to be more. A lot more. It takes me back to the conversation I had with my mother about why she attempted to uproot us to Florida at the worst possible time in my life for her to do it. She felt like she was losing herself and she didn't have the strength anymore to fight it. I was at that point. When you get there, what is there to question? You need change to SAVE YOUR LIFE. And if you have kids... WHAT? #comeonson

All that to say this: know when it's time. If you don't recognize when one chapter of your life has closed, your story can go unwritten for much longer than you can afford. When people say life is short, its just to motivate you to get up and do some shit (that you probably ought to do) sooner than your complacency would manage. Truth is life is LONG and you can spend those years moving closer to happy or you can be miserable for no damn reason. What do you choose?

Expired Chicken

This is why I love my kids LOL

So I take the chicken thighs out of the fridge, open them and start to rinse and clean them in the kitchen sink. I get to thinking, damn.... this chicken might be borderline bad. It doesn't smell super rank or anything but it feels a little slimier than Im used to. Might just be a fatty, slimy pack, I mean some are better than others. I double check the expiration date just for shits and giggles and yeah, its expired, but the chicken had been in the freezer up until about 4 or 5 days ago. It took at least 2 days to thaw out in the fridge so...... we should be..... good? Dammit, this is the last pack of chicken, we aint throwing this shit away! LOL I throw it in a bowl, season it within an inch of its life and throw it back in the fridge.

But then my conscience kicks in. What if its bad though? Yes, it is the last of the chicken, but is it worth the risk of getting sick? Maybe LOL. I go to Googling. "Best way to cook possibly expired chicken" LOL Yeah, I know, but WTF was I supposed to search? LOL Essentially the net left me with "cook the hell out of it and pray for the best" so I call a family meeting. It was sheer comedy explaining to the midgets that the chicken MIGHT not be so fresh and that I had a concern about cooking it. My daughter had a horrified expression on her face which I only wish I had taken a picture of but my son was like nigga, we aight, you better cook that chicken LOL So against my better judgment, I said fuck it. We aint got it like that to be throwing shit away. And its a FAMILY pack at that! LOL My daughter comes in the room about an hour later saying, "Mom.... I just want to let you know that that expired chicken you're cooking smells FANTASTIC!" LMAOOOO!

#raiseemright

#message

Lucky Me

I hate these periods when I feel like the Lord is telling me to wait to do something I so badly want to do, not just now, but RIGHT now. I want to leave this job so damn bad, I actually sit and day dream about different ways to quit LOL. But the interviews I've gone on haven't worked out - for lack of a fit on either my part or theirs - and I have to admit I've been fucken KILLING the game the last couple months at work. I've been slaying so much that the bitch we all hate pulled me to the side last Thursday and told me she appreciated me and I should leave a little early to start enjoying my long weekend. She aint have to tell me twice.

And I woke up at 4am today with Jay-Z on the brain HARD. I don't know what that means cause my 4am with Jesus usually doesn't come with a soundtrack but "Lucky Me" was playing over and over in my head. Those of you who are familiar with the song will recognize the hook: "You only know what you see. You don't understand what it takes to be me." Those of you who aren't should be in mid-google right about now, getting your life. Aside from it being [arguably] my favorite Jay-Z song ever, it resonates so much in my life right now, its almost not weird that it seeped into my Jesus time. In different ways, of course, but......... let's just say that a series of conversations I've had with people over the last couple of weeks made it very clear to me - people think shit is sweet. They have NO idea..... but you know what? They shouldn't. So Ima leave that right there.

Things are not 100% the way I want them to be but they are slowly but surely evolving into.... something. A lot of it I like. I don't really know what the finished product will look like but I definitely feel change afoot and I welcome it. Too soon to go into detail about most of it but...... I am finding that as long as I remain open, I can still be surprised.

I like surprises.

I Aint Nobody's Jesus

I aint nobody’s Jesus
But I’ve died a thousand and one deaths to let some other live
Thrown myself on my own sword to give
Some other an opportunity they never take
To grow… Learn… Love
The way God intended
Or at least the God in me, but I mean

I aint nobody’s Jesus
Still I never leave home without a pocket full of nails
Just in case there’s some sacrifice to be made along the way
On any given day, I tell you….
I am likely to propel myself clean off the top of mount anywhere
Just to spare some soul the devil’s already changed a 20 for

Like I’m somebody’s Jesus
But here I am, once again,
Taking a loss up on this cross… Well…. cross-ROADS anyway
Just so I can keep the fantasy and you’ll be able to say
That there is still some love in your life that you haven’t tainted
Still someplace where you’re appreciated……. For once, not hated
Understanding finds its way in the silence and suddenly I want that for you too

I aint your Jesus, but I’ll do it……… for you.

One thousand and TWO.

*Crickets*

Yeah so...... nothing went down today. Nobody said anything at all to me about the employment verification call last week. I wasn't sure if it was because our big boss is in town and the bitch we report to in the office knows the admin shouldn't have divulged that information or if it was just a really bad game of telephone and the information was grossly misrelayed as it traveled through the grapevine...... but nobody said anything. My immediate supervisor must have completely forgotten because she definitely would have asked me about it had she remembered. She's just nosy like that. I still have no idea who it was that called either. The company I am hoping for an offer from claims to not have made the call and the head hunter I had been working with said he only called the previous employers I provided as references and okayed him to call. Im not gonna put too much more energy into figuring it out. Im just gonna hope it continues to get swept under the rug. That being said, just because no one has mentioned it yet, doesn't mean they aren't going to. I am not quite ready to let my guard down.

One more thing I wanna get off my chest tonight - I absolutely cannot stand people who use other people's suffering as a platform for their own agendas. Sometimes you should just say "please offer them my condolences" and carry your ass on to bed. All this wanting this person or that person to call you at work tomorrow with info on the wake when you hardly knew the person who passed is doing too much. Okay, you wanna pay your respects and show your support for the ONE FRIGGIN PERSON in the family you did have a little bit of rapport with..... take your ass by the house with a card or something. You don't need to be showing up at the wake just to be damn seen and its always the people that's super needy in that regard (just NEED to be seen doing some shit) that violate the most. MOST of this family don't even fuck with you. Like literally DO NOT FUCK WITH YOU. On top of that, they are mourning the loss of one of the most beloved members of an entire family of beloved members and you think somebody gonna make it their business to call YOU bout some services that I promise you they wont even understand why you're trying to go to? WTF is wrong with you? 1-800-Flowers and sit your ass down somewhere.....

UGH!

The Bullshit

So Im off today.

Somewhere around lunchtime I get a text from a teammate of mine giving me the heads up that a company I interviewed with called for an employment verification and our admin told the bitch we report to about it. The bitch we report to then told my manager who in turn asked my teammate if she was aware I was looking AND whether she herself was looking. "I would expect her to pull you to the side on Monday" was what I got.

This is the stupid part - a couple days ago a call came to MY desk regarding employment verification for someone. I didn't think much of it because this wasn't the first time a front desk call found its way to my desk for some odd reason. One of my other coworkers had recently put in her notice so I assumed the verification was for her or some other employee I wasn't aware was leaving. I mean it couldn't possibly be for me, right? I hadn't been given an offer so there was no reason anyone would be calling on my behalf. Ohhhhh but they were.

On the advice of my HR homie, I emailed the recruiter I have been working through for the opportunity at this particular company I have been waiting for a decision from. She had no idea what was going on, stating that any call for employment verification should have come from her [third party recruiting] company not the hiring company itself.

Ok then we both getting fucked over.

So now I gotta go in on Monday (Im off today) and deal with the barrage of questions behind this total mishandling of process. Not only do I have to deal with this bs but I have to do it during a week when my the big bosses are gonna be in town. The good news is that Im killing it at work so any potential decision for them to want to let me go wont be easily come to, but if you know anything about my company, you know they don't do the shit you expect or that makes sense. I could be walking into ANYTHING. I just wanna go on record as saying that I am not about to be that chick....... UNLESS they get on the bullshit LOL. Im telling you now, let em try it. Im turning up!