"If you don't like your job, quit."

I am officially a free woman.

When I first came across the Holstee Manifesto, though its entirety proved very potently truthful, the line that struck me most in my current life was “If you don’t like your job, quit.” This simple statement was both oddly commanding, and extremely encouraging for me to continue forward in my journey for meaningful work.

For several years now, my mantra had been (sadly) closer to one of the following: "If you don't love what you do, you're screwed," or "Work doesn't matter: you do it, you get paid, you leave," or "Only lucky people really like their jobs."

I don't know the entire truth of it, but now, I know what it feels like to have hope. And quitting doesn't feel simple, I know. We all worry about money, about paying our bills or our rent, about being unemployed, about survival. If someone hates their job and you suggest walking away from it, they'll most likely scoff or brush your comment aside as childish or irresponsible. Who quits their job, people have said to me. In this economy, you take what you can get.

Maybe. And I don't want to seem ungrateful. Even though I wasn't happy working there, I am able to admit I was lucky, I made some wonderful friends, I had some irreplaceable experiences (and lessons therein), and I met the love of my life two winters ago, when he wandered in, adorably clad in red plaid, to buy a cup of coffee. Clearly, there are no accidents.

A chapter in my life that at one time felt eternal is now fully closed, is fully ended, is fully behind me. For all the time I spent wondering when I would ever make it to the end of that portion of the journey, I am now having a tough time remembering the specifics, most of it seeming like a breezy three-year blur disappearing behind me as I walked away for the very last time.

Even though, in my head, I heard the words from Aretha Franklin's "Think," (you know, the "FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM" part?), driving out of the parking lot after my last shift, (vandalized) apron and hat already in the dumpster (and all other work clothes and shoes soon to follow), the radio appropriately (and nearly eerily) serenaded me with Florence + The Machine's "Shake It Out." It's always darkest before the dawn, she says. Goddamn, don't I know it.

Though it seems to me that dawn is finally here.