I've left my job, and the future seems bright

Yes, it's official. As of 2:30pm AEST, I walked out of the door for the last time of the company where I have worked for the last 9¹/₂ years. It felt almost surreal as I started to drive away that I have spent nearly 25% of my life as an employee with the same company.  In some ways, it's been a scary thing leaving a place so familiar and where I have invested so much of myself in terms of my work. In other ways, I feel elated, excited, and like the future couldn't be brighter.  All of this, and I don't even have another job to go to.

Now, you might think to yourself that I'd be crazy to leave without having something else lined up, and truth be told, there is a very small doubting part of myself that might just agree with you. The thing is, that I have been putting off my resignation for a number of years, and in some ways I've been procrastinating over this for far too long. And let's face it, after going through a messy divorce, dealing with the subsequent near financial ruin, managing stressful situations at work, supporting two teenage boys through a difficult period in our lives, falling in love again and dealing with a long distance relationship, getting married again, and all of the other really stressful goings on in my life, you'd think I'd have finally chosen to simply settle back and take it easy for a while... Nope!! Instead, I terminate my employment, risk having only a couple of months of pay to fall back on, and while looking for my next job, I've decided to try and kick start a new and independent software project to keep me busy, and hopefully through which to turn up business opportunity or two in order to keep the lights on a little longer.

I should be shaking with fear. I imagine that I should be turning into a chain-smoking caffeine-addicted psychopathic alcoholic right about now, yet the thing is that I feel nothing but excitement at the prospect of moving forward and into a new chapter in my life.  I have found that after 9+ years working in the same place, and going through the same routines day after day, that I had fallen into a kind of a rut that I had found was a little too familiar, and a little harder to get out of. As I settled more firmly into this former life, I found my creativity starting to disappear, and my thoughts becoming more locked into the things that I had become most comfortable and familiar with. The crazy thing about handing in my resignation at the beginning of April was that every day since, I have felt like a weight has been slowly lifting off my shoulders, that I am seeing things more clearly, and that my creativity has started to flourish once more. So much so, that I find myself getting new ideas for solutions to problems, business ideas, and software project idea so often that it is becoming hard to keep track of it all. There are just so many things that I would like to do now, and it's impossible to know where to start, or what to do next. So many projects that I am looking forward to working on, and I feel so motivated and alive.

I am however only one man with limited financial resources available, so I have devised a project to keep me busy for a couple of months while I figure out my next move, and which I've found is an idea at once so simple and so profound that it has me champing at the bit as I wait for funding to become available, and for the project planning to take shape.

The project itself is being crowd funded via Pozible.com, and I am really hoping that a large community of enthusiasts will appear soon to help me realize a long held dream of mine, which is to found a company where I can work for myself on the sorts of projects that result in benefits for everybody.  I don't have the company as yet, I don't have the name or the logo.  All I have is a project idea to develop a product, and a slogan which sums up what I feel represents the sort of company that I would love to build, and to work for. The slogan is:

Finding innovative solutions to every day problems

It's a pretty bold statement to make, and a very high expectation to live up to. I really believe my new project idea has the potential to represent the slogan's ideal in a very real and profound way, which is why I have been feeling so excited about my prospects over the coming months.  The project has been tentatively called "BrowseMapper", partly because I have no idea what to actually name it, and partly because I wanted the product name to be chosen by the community of contributors that I'm hopeful will somehow magically appear over the next month to help me make the project a reality. It's an idea I've had for quite a while now, and I realized that not only was it time for me to risk telling others about my idea, but that the timing was right and that I needed a big shakeup in my life if I was ever going to find an opportunity to take a couple of risks and have a go at doing something really fun, motivating and... well... awesome!

While it felt really good to part ways with my employer on the one hand, it was tinged with sadness on the other.  There are a couple of people who I feel close to and who I have a great deal of respect for who I will miss dearly, and I also felt it was important to acknowledge the people who I have worked with for so many years. I didn't truly want to burn any bridges, and I felt compelled to write a nice letter to say goodbye to everyone in a way that is always so difficult to do as you are shaking hands on your way out the door.  I thought it might be nice to share that letter with you now:

Hey everyone,

Thanks for joining me at lunch today.  It’s been a long and interesting journey working here. I’ve seen a company start from literally nothing, to becoming a successful small business, and eventually a part of a large global company. I’ve had the pleasure of working with many wonderful people over the years here, and can take with me a lot of memories and lessons which I am sure will help me to achieve many more successes in the future. It’s rare that you can leave a company feeling happy that you have achieved most of the things that you set out to do, and for me that comes with the acknowledgement that all of my achievements and memories will carry with them a part of each and every person who I have had the pleasure of working with.

For those who have wondered, in many ways it is long past time that I left to pursue other opportunities.  I’ve sat back for at least the last 3 years, putting off my decision to leave as I kept feeling I had left something unfinished.  The reality is that it is difficult to leave a place where you have invested so much of yourself.  The time is right for me now, and over the last 2 months since I handed in my notice, I have been getting more and more excited about the opportunities that await me in the future.  I will be looking for employment in other areas of technology, while at the same time I have been secretly preparing to start a project of my own that I believe will allow me to form a company in the next year or so. I received notice today that I will receive some of the funding that I have been seeking, and I will be crowd-sourcing the rest using pozible.com within the next week or two. This is something very exciting for me, so while I still feel a little sadness at leaving, I feel very excited about the next coming months.

For those who have worked closely with me over the years, thank you for your support and your input, and for reminding me from time to time that I need to remember to view things through the eyes of others.  Even when our opinions have differed, I have respected those differences and I have been able to learn from them. For those of you who I have not worked closely with, I have felt friendship and respect, and it has always been a pleasure for me to chat with you and to see how your contributions to the company have helped to shape it, and the people within it.  I’ve always believed that it is the people in the company that make a company great, and I feel that you have all played your part in enriching my life to a certain degree, and I hope that you have felt the same from me also.

I wish you all the very best, not just as a company, but as individuals in your own lives. I look forward to meeting up with you in the future as our time and lives allow.

Kind regards,

Sean.

Yeah, I feel kind of proud about my letters these day, but more so about this one because it allowed me to say goodbye properly to the people I would miss on my way out, and to acknowledge those people I feel are quite special to me.

The future is both scary and exhilarating, difficult to predict and yet bright. I'm really looking forward to the opportunities that await me, and hopefully I'll find myself inspired to write and blog more, and make a contribution to the world through the work I see in my mind.  One of the nice things about having worked with a company in the hearing industry, is that I have written software for products that is already out in the world helping thousands of people every day, and that the impact of the things I have achieve over the last years will continue to be felt for many years to come, both in the company that I leave, and in the wider world. It's a legacy that I can feel very proud of, and yet I feel humbled by, and it is something that I hope to be able to continue to achive on my own over the coming months.