Leaving Your Job and Why It's Exactly Like Schizophrenia

Guest blogger Caitlin McCabe is a Madison, Wisconsin-based social media enthusiast and consultant. A graduate of the University of Iowa she is putting her hard earned journalism degree to work in writing a blog, Smile Like You Mean It, covering design, fashion and social media.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I left my job this week, the details of which don't really matter. Things ended well with everyone, security wasn't called, and we promised to stay in touch.

It was anti-climatic actually.

I thought that doing something as big as changing jobs would be a bigger deal somehow, like part of my identity would be missing. Like I'd wake up and be either freaked out, enormously exited, endless possibilities, or..... something. I blame social media for the ease of transition. For example, 20 years ago when you changed jobs or careers, you had to turn in your Rolodex and generally stopped connecting with a lot of the people you knew. When my Grandfather was laid off a few years ago, it was almost like they had cut off a limb. His only access to the company news, the employees, etc. was by being at the building. With social media, my LinkedIn is still there, my Facebook friends still update me on their every move, and my blog is exactly the same as it was last week. I realized that however superficial my identity is on the Internet, it's permanently attached to me. That we aren't as defined by our place of employment as we think we are.

Granted, the crazy had to set in since I am melodramatic and cannot let an event like this pass without some kind of existential drama. Turns out that drama is schizophrenia. Example: during the course of 1 conversation with New Jersey, I had definitively decided to: start my own company, work for someone else, work on my blog more, open a clothing store, open an art gallery, design a new software, or some combo of all of those. He agreed with all of those ideas because he's really supportive and probably a tiny bit frightened of multiple personality me.

I just can't help thinking that since I'm 28 now, the next thing I do is going to have to be good. Because I always thought that having career schizophrenia was ok if you were in your twenties but not in your thirties and since I'm getting pretty close, I shouldn't still be deciding what I want to be when I grow up right?

So I laid out all of these ideas (there are 6) and tried to find a common thread (there wasn't). I tried to "gut instinct" them and see which one really stood out (nope). How could there be a universe in which there are so many different versions of me and how did I not realize this until very recently?

I think that the older you get, the more these decisions we make (career or otherwise) determine how our life is going to go. These decisions start to stick longer and have a lasting impact on our lives. Also, and this is the hard part, choosing one thing means you are probably not going to ever do some of the others. Maybe I don't even really want a clothing store but the idea that I could have one always pops up at times like these and that's a very tough thing to come to grips with. Anyone else have to give up a version of themselves (pipe dream?) lately?