Occasionally I come to gush on SR about how much this place has helped me, and I'm posting to gush again.
I just accepted a new job in a "new" field. It's not actually a new field to me at all, but it's something I used to do as a hobby and was VERY successful in, but never saw as a paying field within my reach. But a couple of months ago, I calmly decided I was sick of my current job and the way it was going, started strategizing about how to get a new job, and everything clicked into place. I casually reached out to my network, someone recommended me for a new opening, I put together a MASSIVE two hour presentation, went to the interviews (two of them) and knocked it out of the park, and they put together a hiring package for me that is at the salary cap for new-hires in the position.
I walked out of there knowing that I had interviewed very well, and if the other candidates got it, it was because they really deserved it, because I had done so well. I was 100% myself, it was a breezy and professional process for me, speaks to my talents, and will fit into my lifestyle in ways my prior job never could.
I never, ever would have been able to handle this process with a level head prior to the self-work I did on SR and in counseling. The counseling gave me a good framework to work with, but it has been my time on SR, reflecting and sharing with everyone here, and practicing acceptance of myself, my environment, and of others, that really matured me and got my head screwed on straight in my general life.
In many ways, as sad as my time with my XAH was, I would be a very different, and probably less-fulfilled, person today had I not gone through all this, and not had all of you to walk through it with me.
