A weekend van trip to Tucson felt long overdue. After six years of living in Phoenix, I had somehow never made my way to our southern neighbor.
We booked a parking space near historic downtown for the weekend, planning our visit around the Tucson Folk Festival. It was an ideal setup—everything within walking distance: good coffee, great food, a handful of shops, and the steady soundtrack of live music drifting through the streets.
I recently quit my job to listen to my inner muse—and it has me thinking about quitting in a whole new way.
When I look back (and I have, many times), I see a pattern: I’ve always been a quitter. Jobs, relationships, basketball in the eighth grade… my life has been a series of walking away from things that no longer felt right or didn’t turn out the way I expected.
For most of my life, I’ve told myself this was a flaw. I’ve even blamed my parents for “letting me quit.” I used to joke that I could have been in the WNBA if they had just made me stick with it.
But now I’m starting to question that narrative.
Last week was my first week of freedom from a job that drained me, and the excitement was undeniable.
The thing is, I quit without a real plan for what’s next.
I have been practicing meditation, cultivated a morning routine that I love, and dreamt of the day I would be free from the job that was torture on my nervous system. Now that day has come, and the list of “want to do’s” is immeasurable.
There wasn’t one dramatic moment. No big breaking point. No clear plan waiting on the other side. Just a quiet, steady knowing that had been getting harder to ignore. Something wasn’t right.
Almost a year ago, I started practicing meditation. Sitting quietly with myself was hard at first. The discomfort. The racing thoughts. The constant am I doing this right? But gradually, it shifted. It became more peaceful. More intuitive. Even… enjoyable. And somewhere in that practice, I got better at listening. What I heard was loud and clear: Something has to change.