Letting go has nothing to do with “quitting.” Ask yourself,
“Am I sticking it out or am I staying stuck?” You know yourself best. ~~ Alex Elle
This is a quote a colleague of mine posted on Facebook
recently, and it really stuck on me (no pun intended). I truly thought I would work in some capacity
as a medical transcriptionist until I decided to retire, whether it be actual
transcribing or instructing. The one big advantage to the MT profession is that
you can work at it as long as you desire to do so. I had a dear friend who
transcribed into her 80s—that is how much she loved it. I loved it too, but I was
finding myself getting a little burned out from it. I had been in the industry for 37 years.
That’s a long time for one type of job, especially when you consider many
people have more than one career throughout their lifetime.
I feel like I fit into both scenarios with regard to letting
go of my MT career. Even though I genuinely loved being an MT instructor, I was
sticking it out, because I was often thinking about when I could retire. At the same time, I did feel stuck because it
never occurred to me that there was anything else I could do besides medical
transcription. I have written a lot of
articles and a newsletter over the years, but those were all related to my job.
I even wrote a textbook, but that was also about MT. Even though I did not finish and publish the
MT textbook until after I lost my teaching job, it was still something I had
worked on off and on over the years. I
had never written even a short story, much less a full novel. I did have an inkling I was a good writer
because I knew the articles I wrote were good based on the feedback I received,
and I also had a handful of times throughout my career where I had to write
difficult letters. They were business related, but they were still difficult
situations where I had to communicate well in dealing with delicate
circumstances.
While I did not choose to step away from my MT career,
somewhere there was a voice telling me I needed to give this writing thing a
try. Literally a few short weeks before
I was told my job was being eliminated, I had spoken with my brother and sister
about writing this story about our mom. I wanted to make sure they were okay
with it before I proceeded. Now had I
not lost my job, A Life Unplanned would probably still be in the draft
stages. Who knows when I would have gotten it done. So I was lucky in a way
because I was pushed into this new career, although I did work at trying to
find a new job while I was writing.
