The plan that morning was simple. Go in, send the resignation email, be done.
I got to the office, opened my inbox, and there it was before I could send anything: a meeting invite the head of the team had called, my manager copied in, subject line reading “Performance.” I replied and asked if we could do it later, because there was genuinely no need. I was resigning that same day. They just didn’t know it yet.
They kept the meeting on. So we got on the call. My manager opened with a few words, and then the head of the team took over and really got going, picking apart work I knew for a fact was good. While he was going in on me, I was smiling. Didn’t even realize I was doing it until he stopped and asked what I was smiling about. I didn’t tell him. In my head, I’m thinking you have no idea what’s coming.
Because weeks before any of this, someone had reached out about an opportunity. A job I wasn’t looking for made me an offer I couldn’t say no to. I hadn’t gone chasing it. I’d known for a while this job had run its course. You can feel that before you can prove it, but I hadn’t sent out a single application. Wasn’t updating anything, wasn’t putting out feelers. The opportunity just found me while I was sitting there quietly done, with no plan for the door. It landed in the exact window I needed it, right as I hit the point of “I can’t do this anymore.” Not a month earlier, when I might’ve talked myself out of it. Not a month late, when I’d have been worn all the way down. Right when I was ready to walk and finally had somewhere to walk to.
I’ve done the math on that more than once, because it’s not how things usually go for me. Most of my life, I’ve had to fight for the thing. Force it. Grind it into existence and drag it across the line myself. This was one of the few times I didn’t push at all, and it showed up cleaner than anything I’d ever forced.
That’s the part that stuck. Not the job. The timing. The quiet proof that some things arrive exactly when they’re supposed to, whether or not you were the one arranging it. The problem wasn’t me either. In the two years after I left, five more people came and went through that same seat. I’ve become more of a let-go-and-let-God person than I used to be, and mornings like that one are why.
Here’s the lesson: you can’t always force the clock. Some of what you’re waiting on isn’t late, it’s loading. It’s lining up in a window you can’t see yet, waiting for you to be ready to receive it instead of just chasing it. The waiting feels like nothing’s happening. Usually it’s the opposite. So if the thing hasn’t come, it doesn’t mean you missed it, and it doesn’t mean it’s not coming. When it lands, you’ll understand why it couldn’t have been a day sooner. Not early, not late. Right on time.
See you next Sunday.
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