Hi Scott,
I am so sorry for the delay in my response back, I hadn’t even seen your note until last night. So this (what you wrote) is now a little time ago, and I am assuming that you ended up making some kind of final (for now) decision, as it sounds like there were all sorts of deadlines…
I do not think you are going crazy at all, with all the back and forth, I think (and this is probably advice for myself too as much as for you) that the indecision is like a virus that gets into your system, because your immunity gets depressed, and then it keeps on replicating, just like a bug does. So just like getting over a flu, you have to build up your inner strength. There will always be challenges and struggles no matter what choice anyone makes. Making a choice almost never means that now it will all magically get easy. I suppose it is actually a blessing to have some options, as some people in the world never even have any. But I also know very well the paralyzing effect. Just like I need to know, you do too; you are not alone. It’s scary when any move seems to take you further away from what you think you want. The truth is though that if your immune system is boosted up, in this case meaning; your sense of yourself and your ability to trust yourself, then you can conquer anything. You can make a decision and make it work for you, no matter which path you choose. Did you end up 100% leaving the current place? And if so; have you found some peace with it?
I love the Beatles song lyric “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you are meant to be”. I keep saying it to myself over and over. I have made the decision that I will stay in my job with the nasty little vindictive pay cut for the summer, and then probably come the Autumn, leave. Try to save up some money, in the meantime. Try to stop wishing they would just fire me, as that is surely the easy way out, but one that would only be bad for me later down the road, trying to get another job. I am telling myself that if my inner strength is hearty, then any move I make will be the right one. And that maintaining my inner strength for the next few months, working at a place where I don’t feel at all valued now, is going to challenge that, but I absolutely must find the way for it not to.
So many simply quotes occur to me, such as “Happiness (or contentment, rightness) is a choice” . As in you just make the choice. And face what you have to, but realize that no one can actually take away anything from you if you’ve made the decision to keep it. We humans do seem to need to change things up from time to time. We rarely want to go backwards, we want ,on a deep level to go forward, find the new. I wish it just all didn’t tap us out so badly; feeling scared of where this pull takes us. It helps me to keep on thinking the truth of all of this job stuff, like the truth about anything is really very simple.
That it is the little voices in our head that keep running interference, not letting us listen to the one deep voice of the simple truth or fact. This is what makes us feel we are losing our sanity from time to time. 🙂 Maybe that voice was speaking to you when you said after giving notice that you felt happy then?
I don’t know where you are, I am sure it is way far away geographically from where I am (you said “”rang the agency” among other things that make me think UK or Australia or a place like that) I am here on the east coast of the USA, (we we say “called the agency” 🙂 ) but it gives me strength to know you are out there somewhere and though far far away, we do understand the geography of this job indecision as though we are at the very same “desk”!
Wishing you the absolute best of luck. I plan to take a lot of deep breathes, every day, work on shutting up all those little nagging voices. Hope you can and will as well.
Cheers and Light, Donna