Almost ready to leave my job

If you read my last post, you heard some of the reasons that I felt I should leave my old agency job. Really, it became inevitable: I had faced my situation, and realized there was only one conclusion. I couldn’t stay at a place where I felt so undervalued. I of course considered sitting down with Johnson and threatening to quit if things didn’t change, but I realized that what needed to change was…everything. I wanted to work on different clients, I didn’t want to sit 4 feet away from someone else and not be able to take work-related calls at my desk, I wanted a title, and most of all, I didn’t want him to be my boss. There simply wasn’t a way to make this all happen while still working there.

So instead, I started considering other possibilities. I called my biggest and favorite freelance client, who was very encouraging. He said he wanted to give me more work over the next year, at a faster pace; so for him, working with a fulltime contractor would be ideal. He did a quick estimation that the work he sent over would total around $15,000 over the course of the year. This isn’t a whole salary, but it is a good start. So I told myself I would jump in the deep end to do freelance full time. I didn’t realize that this would keep me awake at night feeling sickly nervous, curled up with fear of the future. I realized the leaving thing might be too extreme, and when I said “I’ll get a part-time job and do freelance for the other part,” it felt much better.

So I began applying for jobs. I applied for fulltime jobs as well as part time, just in case something seemed interesting, but the one interview I went to, we both knew the job wasn’t for me. It would be web design fulltime, and I would be the only designer at their workplace, which was in a building behind their house. Ehh, no thanks. It turned out they didn’t want to hire me either because I wasn’t very experienced in web programming. So that was fine. The next place I interviewed at was in Boulder for a company that promoted the riding of bikes. It was only $18/hr, but was part time, so I was pretty hopeful. Unfortunately, I think they saw through my white lie that I’m totally in love with biking (really my only eligibility was that I have a bike, but I live outside town so I don’t get to ride it for practical purposes very much). So they turned me down too.

But things at work continued to spiral downward. After my Christmastime revelation that my work situation was all wrong, I started noticing the wrongness more and more. Some coworkers would get their hands slapped for really little things, and others would be given top-notch projects when they were total slackers. One of my coworkers (whom I absolutely love), was requested to join another design team. I was so happy for her, but had to fight my own feelings of jealousy that she got to move onto new things, while I had gotten so good at my job that the powers that be couldn’t imagine putting me on anything new. The only way to keep my spirits up was to think “I’ll be out of here soon!”

In the meantime, I got to work creating an LLC. I wanted something that my husband (a hardware and software tester, who worked on contract) and I could both be under. I asked my friends on facebook for help choosing a name, and out of that got the word “Media.” It seemed to cover the fact that the only real thing our jobs had in common, was that we both work on computers. I wanted to call it “Insight Media” —as in, we provide brains, not just computer skills. But that name is taken in Colorado. So Ben suggested “Incite Media,” as in, “we will incite your customers to riot out of love for your product.” And the name stuck.

By February, I had an LLC, health insurance (that is actually less monthly cost than my agency plan – weird), and a wish. But I didn’t have the safety net of another job. In the end, I would decide not to worry about it. My number 1 priority was to be happy again. What I didn’t expect was what would happen right before I quit…