Okay, so, it’s no secret: I HATE MY JOB. I hate it up one side and down the other. I can’t even remember when I stopped liking it and started hating it. Was it one year ago? Two? More? And yet, I’ve been fighting with myself about it despite wanting to quit. I guess the big problem is that I don’t wanna let a certain love of my life down. I feel like if I quit or even just cut back on hours before having a new job perfectly lined up to pay all the bills he’d be disappointed or worse. Don’t get me wrong, I know money is “important.” But with my current crappy job we are JUST paying the bills. No savings. No buffer. No spending money, even. And the problem is, with this job sucking away all my time (and me working way too hard for almost nothing) it leaves no time to look for a new job, start a business, or develop my passions. All I do is work and eat and sleep, work and eat and sleep. No balance. No hope. No future. And I know most people think that should be okay and be enough. I mean, I should feel lucky and privileged just to have a job at all in this economy, right? Because it seems like the general consensus is that money is more important than everything, even saving yourself from sinking into depression because you’ve ended up living a completely unfulfilling life.

Well, I guess money isn’t my only reason for sticking around at this crummy job. I really do like the people I work with, although most of them are gone already or headed out the door, at least. That shouldn’t really be a reason though. I shouldn’t stay in a job I hate for other people. But any way I turn, there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this situation. No matter where I look it’s the same: I need money. I guess there may be one way to ease my troubles. If I telecommute to the office there would be fewer wasted hours in my day. More time for the things that really matter. And the more I make those things matter, the possibly less I will have to work that hellish job. My only problem is that I tried that once before and the stress and deadlines of the job had me working in my PJs all day, unable to even take the time to walk my dog when she sat crying by the door with a full bladder. I guess it was the pressure not to disappoint or perhaps my inability to say “NO, THIS IS TOO MUCH WORK.” Or, you know, just to have the self-worth to put myself first over any crummy job making demands on my time. I was always super-distracted too because EVERYTHING in my life is way more important (in my eyes) than this horrible job, so it always felt like such a waste of time, working, when I could have been doing more important things, money notwithstanding.

But I can’t keep hemming and hawing forever. I need to pull the trigger, make a choice, set a direction and follow it. I need to stop feeling bad or thinking “what if” or hoping that a change will find me all on it’s own. Yes, money is important, but is it important at the expense of my future? I always thought that everything would be so much easier once I finished university, but it just seems to have gotten that much more complicated. Building a career is a lifetime commitment and there are no mid-semester breaks. There is no half-assing it if you want to be successful. You have to believe it and just do it. Don’t let money make you scared or you will spend your entire life living in fear (like I have.) I can’t do that anymore. I can’t be okay with that being my life. I can’t spend all my time worrying about what other people will think.

The Year of Freedom is almost over, gone before it every really began. By this time next year I’ll be 30 and I’ll be married. So maybe it’s time to stop dreaming of who I’ll be when I grow up and start living my life being that person. I read a blog post the other day from a very talented artist. Her words were simple: Fake it till you make it. Pretend that you’re already the person that you want to be and one day you’ll wake up and you won’t be pretending anymore. That’s just who you’ll be.

I didn’t really sleep that well last night. I woke up around 3 AM and never really got back to sleep. Just too much on my mind, I guess. But it was good in a way, I had time to think. And so I’ve decided that though I may have been up for hours already by that point, when dawn finally broke this morning I stopped being Sarah: wussy-faced whiner and chronic daydreamer. Instead, I became Sarah: professional organizer and interior decorator. If 2009 was the Year of Freedom, 2010 will be the Year of Change. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. I know I will be.