The Gap Between Wanting to Leave and Actually Leaving
Why I started writing this newsletter
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re not happy in your job. Maybe you’ve known it for a while. Maybe you’ve imagined giving notice a hundred times. And every time you get close, the familiar fears—paying your bills, ending up in a worse job, not being able to handle something new—come rushing in and stop you in your tracks.
I get it. I’ve been there.
I stayed in a job I hated for years because of doubts that kept me trapped and miserable. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to make enough money if I left. I was afraid that whatever came next would be worse. And deep down, I was afraid I wasn’t capable of handling any other job.
I spent countless hours going over pros and cons lists, trying to decide if I should—or even could—leave. I Googled other job listings. I asked ChatGPT if I should quit a job I hated. One day, I was dead set on quitting, the next day I was going to save for one more year. Some days I was saving for three more years. I was basically driving myself crazy, going back and forth, while knowing deep down that I needed to leave.
But every decision was ultimately made by that four-letter F-word: FEAR.
Until it wasn’t.
In a full-on twist of irony, the job I was too afraid to leave ended up leaving me. The company was restructuring to cut costs and moving my team overseas. I was told my job was no longer necessary and given a month’s notice. And just like that, the job that I desperately wanted to leave—yet had been clinging to for security—was gone.
I was so relieved that I actually thanked my former boss when he gave me the news. The decision that I’d found impossible to make had been made for me.
In the end, my fears hadn’t protected me. They had just kept me stuck.
I wrote my first book, You Don’t Have to Stay: Leave the Job That Drains You for a Career That Lights You Up, because I wanted to help others who were exactly where I had been. Other people who were miserable in their jobs but didn’t think there was another way.
But after that book, I knew I had more to say, more to give. My first book didn’t tell the rest of the story. The story of how I was able to start from scratch and build a new writing career, despite the crippling fears that held me back. And those fears were real and strong—strong enough that I sought out every self-help book and podcast I could find to move past them.
So I started this newsletter, You Don’t Have to Stay, to go deeper into the strategies I actually used to prepare for leaving—the actions I took in the six months before my layoff that allowed me to step into writing full-time instead of scrambling for another job.
The book You Don’t Have to Stay gives you permission to want more. It validates that your unhappiness is real, that you deserve to be happy, and that wanting to leave isn’t ungrateful or weak. It tells you that you aren’t alone—and that the life you’re imagining isn’t out of reach.
But permission to leave isn’t the same as actually leaving. You can know with every part of you that you need to go and still find yourself stuck in the same job a year later, waiting for the right moment that never seems to come.
This newsletter fills that gap. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be breaking down the fears that keep people stuck—financial fear, fear of the unknown, and self-doubt—and why they feel so real. Then I’ll share the exact strategies I used to move past them: how I calculated what I actually needed, built my buffer while still employed, and prepared my exit so that when the layoff came, I was ready.
Next week, I’m starting with the foundation: the three fears that keep you stuck and how to tell when fear is protecting you vs. when it’s trapping you.
If you’d like learn more about the book You Don’t Have to Stay, click here.