A former boss who became a dear friend – my Uncle Jack – wrote me a note once and addressed it to his “favorite restless soul” and I instantly fell in deep romantic love with the description.

I come by it honestly, through a repressed sense of adventure.  

Both my parents had passed by the time I was 23 – loss like that reaches well beyond the absence of parents.  At that age and in that situation, you become keenly aware of risk and safety, of making ends meet b/c there’s no one to call if you can’t make rent or the electric bill.   

So I worked, and I worked, and I worked.  

I stayed later, came in earlier, read business and technology-related books in my free time, experimented, built things and worked.  Existing fear was compound by not having a college degree, of being a woman in technology.  I worked, and worked. 

Forever dancing with my fearlessness and imposter syndrome, I was curious and I learned and I gave and I worked. I was grateful for what I was given and never asked for more.  

The pattern held for the better part of 30 years, when I’d found myself mentoring younger women in tech –  telling them to advocate for themselves, that they are worthy, that they are clever and kind and have so much to give…and I started to feel like a world-class hypocrite.

At the same time, my sense of adventure and appetite for new experiences got more oxygen.  I was building communities and experiences and it felt good. But it wasn’t balanced.   

So earlier this year when I was watching the organization I’d been with 18 years go through it’s latest rounds of growing pains, I broke through the fear.  I sent an email to HR and organized a phone call.  I volunteered to be severed.

Here we are in December and I’m a few weeks into my 3 month separation period before severance begins, and I’m taking a trip I’ve been itching to take for years.  I have the time, the resources, the net.

It’ll be part reclaiming lost time, part sight-seeing, part healing my spiritual self with a good dose of catching up on books I meant to read and books I meant to hear, and just being.