So anyways, yesterday I walked away from my day job.

It wasn’t as dramatic an exit as that sounds, it was, instead, quite lovely and something I’d made a decision on and been working towards for a couple of months. I know I’ll miss my colleagues and the daily interactions – even though as I work remotely those interactions have been mostly over Teams calls. I also know I’ve left no business unfinished, and have no regrets. I have a theory that people remember you more for how you leave than what you’ve done and I’ve left in the way I wanted to leave. I may have severed my relationship with the company and my job, but I hope the same can’t be said for the relationship with my co-workers. It’s been a de-coupling rather than a break-up.

After seven years it was, however, time.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will immediately click into seven years. After all, we all know about the seven-year itch, don’t we? Us astrologers, however, know that seven years is a quarter Saturn cycle and is similar in meaning to the first quarter in a moon cycle.

At this, the opening quarter, we’ve reached a cross-roads of sorts. We know enough to know whether we want to stay on the path and we know enough to know whether some adjustment – is required or whether it’s time to walk away. It’s a tad like when you begin reading a book and you get a quarter of the way in and decide either:

• This isn’t for me – and place it in the DNF (did not finish) category
• Not quite sure whether this is for me so I’ll keep going a bit longer and we’ll check it out at the halfway point or
• I’m in this for the long-haul, I want to see how it ends

We do it with relationships and we do it with jobs. And it’s actually pertinent at this full moon in Aries.

Where Libra is about relating and connecting, Aries is very much about will and the self – and therein lies the inherent challenge in any relationship (and not just the romantic ones): how to balance being together without abandoning one’s self.

While my work relationship wasn’t broken as such, that’s what this decision came down to. I enjoyed working with my colleagues, but I no longer enjoyed my job and at the ripe age of fifty-six and staring at my own second Saturn return, that’s not a compromise I want to make anymore. If a good relationship is somehow about all parties bending and stretching and tweaking and adjusting in order to ensure that each person has the opportunity to live their best life, that was no longer working for me. I reached that crossroads and decided it was time to walk away before I became resentful and bitter and twisted and all those other things that life is way too short for.

I’m not sure what’s next and with Neptune playing dreamily with my Pisces Moon that’s okay – even if Mercury in Virgo is asking detailed questions about what’s next and how I’m going to make a living and pay the bills.

I know I’ll have to work harder than ever to make a living and put myself out there and do all the things I’ve been scared to do to promote my work, and that’s okay, I’m not afraid of hard work and it will do me good to push my boundaries. Besides, this isn’t about being less busy, it’s about putting my energy into busyness I care about. And while I know I’ll have anxious moments (especially around money) for now, at least, I’m prepared to do it in order to ensure I don’t lose the “me-ness” of “me” in what I do and who I do it with.

What it does mean is that you’ll probably see me lurking around here a tad more, and it also means I’ll be rewriting some of my blog posts and compiling them into a series of “What I know about…” mini books. They’ll be on Amazon and they’ll be affordable.

More on that as things become clearer for me.

For now, though, I’ve handed back my laptop and access pass and as I write this I’m at Sydney airport getting ready to fly home – and am ready to begin a new working relationship with myself. As they say, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. The trick is recognising that – and there’s no better time than at a full moon to see things more clearly.

Aries Full Moon 6 Aries, 29 September, 2023, 7.59 pm (AEST)