I've handed in my notice

The decision to leave didn't arrive in a single moment. It built over about eighteen months, fed by a confluence of things. 

Losing both my parents in recent years — I'm an only child — had a way of making me look at how I was spending my time rather differently. Grief tends to strip away the noise and make you ask questions you'd been avoiding. Not dramatic questions. Just honest ones. What am I actually waiting for? If not now, when? 

At the same time, things were changing at work in ways that made staying feel less and less like a positive choice. A return-to-office push that conflicted with years of established hybrid working. The departure of my boss and a close colleague who'd joined at the same time I had. The gradual sense that the thing I was holding onto wasn't really the same thing I'd joined. 

And underneath all of that — five years of working away from home one or two nights a week, a pattern that was quietly taking more from my relationship and my wellbeing than I'd fully acknowledged. 

So I did the research. Eighteen months of it. I checked the pension numbers, ran the scenarios, read everything I could find, used every planning tool available. And I came to the conclusion that leaving was the right call — financially, practically, and in terms of what I actually wanted the next chapter of my life to look like. 

Then I handed in my notice. And the fear didn't go away. But that's another post.