You would have thought someone was asking me to cut the grass with scissors the way I groaned inwardly during so many Zoom meetings over the past four years. I used to think I would never have a boss again. Never say my job was “marketing.” Just to utter that word —marketing— sends a shiver down my spine. I tell my friends they are lucky if they don’t have to report on KPIs—luckier if they don’t know what KPIs are. But covid made the job offer feel like a life raft. And it was.

My own work required intimacy, and intimacy was no longer permitted in 2020. So I did what I’ve done a dozen times. I leaned hard into my masculine energy and spent my days building someone else’s business, starting with the website design and moving onto Google ad campaigns and sales templates and Tag Manager to set up conversion tracking, all the while limiting the use of smiley faces in my emails. Of course the new job wasn’t all bad. There were moments of real inspiration and satisfying teamwork. Two years passed, and then three, and we were out of the woods with covid but now I was accustomed to the stability this job afforded me—buying organic groceries, taking little trips, and splurging on $15 cocktails when I went out with my friends.

I could never stay optimistic for longer than a couple weeks. The truth would come knocking from my insides. This doesn’t make me feel alive. I have to leave this job before my soul grows so weary and numb that I don’t know what does make me feel alive anymore. I could settle for a steady paycheck with the hope of one day buying a house with the money I made by denying my desire to write poems. Lord knows I’ve tried over and over to choose the rational path and found it irrational at the deepest level. So, for the second time in my life, I resigned from my marketing job. The first time was to save myself from overwhelming boredom. This time it’s because I have a vision.