
I was fortunate enough to be asked to stay at the office beyond our one year there. When my friends left, my job continued, & I carried on without much of the support system that had propped me up throughout year one. Convinced I could never find friendships to match the ones I'd just made, I was shocked to form ones just as strong with a new batch of coworkers - friends I now feel just as close to & love just as much, in different but equally meaningful ways. Together, these groups of coworkers-cum-friends comprise the smartest, most hard-working, most driven people I've ever met. They inspire me & challenge me & believe in me & all kinds of other good things.

It's so easy to say "___ changed my life," & it's not such a powerful statement, when you think about it. Lots of things are life-changing. The simple truth is that life changes - every day, all the damn time, sometimes good & sometimes not, for better & for worse & for different. We get older, we move on, we learn new things, we meet new people. But this job changed my life in a million ways, almost entirely for the better, & though this is certainly not the route I planned on taking through life, I'm infinitely grateful to have stumbled upon it.
You know where this is going, right? Most of you have probably already heard the announcement by now: I have a new job! On May 28, I'll officially call it quits at my current office, & on June 1, I'll begin a position at a nearby communications firm. I'm wildly excited about this new job, even if I haven't necessarily processed that excitement yet as I try to manage the shock of leaving the office I've called both work & home for the past three years. But I'm absolutely looking forward to this next step in my life, to the challenges & opportunities that come with trying something scary & new.

So this is action. This is me moving forward. This is what comes next, & I'm sure as hell scared, but not so scared that I can't do it.
This is the start of something new. I believe in what I want. And so it's time.