“Quitting your job was probably the best thing you could have done for your body.”

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Today I saw my R.M.T. for the first time in a few months.  He commented a couple of times at how easily parts of my body were releasing which is normally pretty rock hard, tight and takes a while to release.  As he said and I wholeheartedly agree,

Quitting your job was probably the best thing you could have done for your body.

I was in a car accident on Good Friday the 13th back in 2001 and have had a lot of back, neck and shoulder problems ever since.  My body has been an absolute wreck for over a decade now (coincidentally, about as long as my career).  Yesterday my chiropractor commented on how easy I was to adjust.

My first foray into holistic medicine was a Reiki session I had within the year after my car accident.  A very longtime friend of the family is a Reiki Master who I have gone to visit a few times in my life when my soul has needed it the most.  On a few occasions, she has read my cards and has accompanied my sister and I to have our tea leaves read.  It was she who first told me to see a chiropractor about the “stinging bee” in my right hip – something other gifted individuals have also picked up on, including the tea leaf reader.  At the time I wondered how on Earth someone who was a Reiki Master (or tea leaf reader) would know better then my own doctor (who told me no when I asked) about my need for a chiropractor care.  Unfortunately, it was about four years before I finally took that advice and started seeing a chiropractor with my partner when we were trying to conceive our son.

I started my career as a web geek back in April of 2000 after having gone to college for just over four years.  For several years, I questioned whether or not I liked what I did and felt I must have because I would go home after work and continue working on my own projects at home.  Surely I enjoyed it if I put in upwards of another 6 hours of work when I got home, right?  It took me several more years to realize it was the environment I was not happy with as well as the platform I was working on.

Environment has meant two things for me in the struggles I have had through most of my tech career.  I have almost exclusively worked in medium to large sized corporations in an IT department and those departments have always been Microsoft Windows based environments (at home, I work in a Linux-based environment).  The other detrimental variable has been management.  Throughout my tech career, I had one great manager, one good manager, one good manager who eventually turned into one of the four abusive bullying managers, and a handful of others as part of a revolving door of usually good managers who end up leaving due to the poor corporate culture of the company (there’s that environment thing again).

I have done many great things during my almost twelve year tenure.  I have pleased many a clients and received TONS of positive feedback from them (but of course, have also received some not so rave reviews, I am far from perfect and some people are impossible to please and almost always, the negative feedback came from said abusive management).  I ran into a few co-workers while I was on LTD who were practically begging me to come back to work sooner then later so they would no longer have to deal with the person now doing part of my job (who just so happened to be my boss).

In my post on When one door closes another one opens, I went into the details about my returning to my employer post LTD or not.  I kept coming back to the same place of feeling that by going back to my job, I would be taking a step backwards rather then forwards in my life.  On September 25th, I read my horoscopes (I am on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer) at one of my favourite coffee shops:

The photo was taken on my cell phone and I read it several times before I finally told them I would not be returning to work:

Whatever risks you take you will succeed brilliantly.  What would you do if you knew you could not fail?  Do it now!

Once I had finally decided for sure I would not go back, I gave myself two weeks to ensure I was sure before officially telling them.  During that two weeks, the anxiety issues I was having about being downtown during banking hours, completely disappeared.  There was even a morning at a coffee shop that the bosses boss came over and sat down for a five minute shoot the shit – my heart rate barely raised in my interaction with him.  Heart palpitations has been one of the major anxiety symptoms I had for several months (along with an eye that started twitching last November and finally stopped in April which unfortunately started again with the RTW planning but has since left again).

In When one door closes another one opens, I mentioned a few doors at the time that were opening and since then, a few more opened.  One of my biggest fears about leaving my job was around finances and mostly, having money during surgery recovery.  I had prepared myself for walking away with nothing financially including being able to collect EI and had been stocking up on food in the prior few months.

Then the universe started providing even more of what I needed.

Even though I would not be doing the RTW, the insurance company paid out the rest of my claim to when I would have been back to work full-time based on the RTW schedule created by my psychologist.  I had also prepared myself for the worst by walking away with nothing from my employer (2010 bonus, accrued 2011 vacation, etc.).

Instead, I thankfully walked away with what may be enough money to stretch through chest surgery recovery (provided of course there are no further surgery delays).  Just in case, I put enough money into an RRSP for the anticipated two month recovery.  This has given me the ability to take the rest of the year off to focus on getting even healthier and losing the 30lbs Dr. Bowman requested.

Never in my wildest dreams did I figure all these doors would have opened up from me quitting my job.  I was preparing for the absolute worst and extremely happy with the outcome unfolding before my eyes!  More time to get healthier, lose weight and gain more experience and training in my new career!

During my time off since last December, I have been researching and reading a lot about holistic/energy/eastern medicine.  Since the Summer, I have taken the first two levels of the Touch for Health series as well as the Louise Hay, You Can Heal Your Life workshop.  I can definitely see my new career path unfolding before my eyes.

Since quitting my job, my body continues to relax and ease and my mood has totally changed.  Since a few weeks ago, when I turn around to look at my son in the back seat of the car, my chest cracks and is finally opening up.  When I mentioned this to my R.M.T. today, he commented, eyes bulging a bit, how he could see the different in my shoulders.

I attribute the changes in my body to two things – energy medicine and having quit my job.  I went for my first keneisdiology appointment two weeks ago and of course, during my Touch for Health courses, I got a lot of balancing done while we practiced on each other.  Part of that was dealing with some ESR (Emotional Stress Release) regarding the reasons I was on LTD.

As I learn more about my body from a holistic perspective, I understand why it hurts where it hurts and why it is mostly down one side of the body.  When reading about the energy meridians within the body and their associated metaphors, I begin to appreciate more the “what” that has caused those aches and pains.  It is surreal to have had so many “ah ha!” moments in my classes or while reading the many books I have accumulated this past calendar year.

I am so happy to have taken this leap of faith.  I may slip and slide here and there, but, I know and feel that the best thing I have ever done for my body, mind and soul, was quit my job.

I will continue my career as a web geek but I will never again have a job as a web geek.

Is there a dentist in the house?

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So the stress was partially shrugged off on Friday when I didn’t get my October disability payment into my account figuring alright, I will just get paid on Tuesday after the long weekend.  No big deal.  It is now Wednesday the 12th, still no payment, and I am starting to freak out (okay, the freaking out actually started yesterday).  More so because I have my Touch for Health Level Two course this weekend which I am waiting to get paid so I can take the course.  Thankfully my partner gets paid on Friday and should be able to lend me the money should I not get paid by then.

Why the dentist?  Over the years, I have had several dreams about my teeth falling out and me scrambling to get to see my dentist.  Literally me spitting out mouthfuls of pieces of broken teeth.  I asked a friend of mine about the dreams and what they meant and she told me I didn’t want to know without ever explaining to me what it was about.  Looking back, I really wish she had.  I did some Google’ing one day to find out it was a warning sign about finances.

Last week, I had a dream that I had one broken tooth worth of pieces and a filling I spat out.  Thankfully, not mouthfuls of broken teeth and me scrambling to find the dentist – but one tooth nonetheless.  And now, my disability payment is late….

When one door closes another one opens…

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Obviously been a while since I last posted and it goes without saying a new post is long overdue.

It has taken me over a year longer then I would have hoped to get myself to the place of motivation, mental focus and out of the funk I had been in for years.  But, at least I am finally feeling like I have shown up to the starting line for moving forward in my life.

In the past two weeks, it seems as though a lot of things in my life are falling into place with the catalyst being me mentally getting to a place of moving on from working in the corporate world without entirely giving up my career as a technodorkmegageek.

At the end of last year, I went onto disability from work due to depression and anxiety that was associated with my workplace.  My doctor wanted to just drug me and send me back to work but that wasn’t a good enough solution for me.  I felt very back and forth about wanting to go back to work.  The pay and benefits package were okay, pension, security and a guaranteed yearly bonus dependent on how the company did for the year.  I had taken this job in the first place for the security it offered while I rode out the last of my transition mainly so I didn’t have to worry financially post-op.

From the day my doctor wrote me off work, I have said I would not go back (although deep down, I knew I was telling myself this to alleviate stress figuring some day, I would have to), my partner was also saying I was not going back there.  My case manager for my disability claim and my psychologist had somewhat talked me into going back there several times with an exit strategy.  It didn’t seem to matter how much or clear I was about the fact and why I did not want to return to my place of work, it was always about the “return to work” that I kept telling them would not happen.

It has only been in the past two weeks that I finally got over the last hangup about not going back.  Since then, a few door started opening for me.  In mid-August, I took the Touch for Health Level One course locally.  This modality of holistic healing is something I was somewhat skeptical of and within the first hour of taking the course, I knew it was something I wanted to do.  There are four levels of TFH and they felt the Level Two would be offered sometime in October or November.  As we got to the end of September and I was doing my budgeting, I had begun to think of emailing them to find out if they knew when they might run the course and then received an email from my instructor saying she would love to have me in the course and was just emailing to make sure I knew the course was running in mid-October.

After having made the decision about not going back to work, I wanted to see my psychologist one last time and ask if I was making a sane decision and if she felt there was any mental health problems I was suffering from that might impact my decision making.  She said no.  I was to have phoned my case manager either that afternoon or late the next afternoon to let her know my decision.  At 4:43pm, I was looking at the stove trying to remember if she was done work at 4:30 or 5pm and realizing it didn’t matter, that I could just leave a message if she didn’t answer and talk with her in the morning.

As I had this thought, the phone started ringing and I figured it was her phoning.  Much to my surprise, it was Dr. Bowman’s office calling to setup my chest surgery consult for the end of October.  All I kept thinking after I hung up the phone, was about the timing of this call.

Was it a sign?  Was it confirmation of what I was doing?  Was this another test?  Is this going to change my going back to work and toughing it out until I recovered from surgery?

My partner and I talked that night and decided that in the grander scheme of things, it really didn’t change some of the bigger issues I have with going back to work.  The next morning I phoned and told them I wouldn’t be back.

Another potential opportunity that has come up is doing some contract web work.  I haven’t quite figured out what I am going to do financially between now and the end of recovery from surgery.  By not going back to work I may have forfeited a fair sized bonus from work as well as my vacation pay for the year.  I have to sit down in the next couple of weeks to figure things out after I have a chance to sit down and figure out if I do have any monies coming from my soon to be former employer.

Ultimately, in electing not to go back to work, my decision was made on the fact that I felt that by going back, I would be going backwards and not forward with my life.  I will get more into what I have been up to in the past year but just mention in this post that I felt it was the right time for a career change or at least, in starting to pursue new areas of interest in holistic/energy/complimentary medicine.