2 Resignation Letters Worth Your Time of Studying If You're Moving On From A Full Time Job

 I copy-pasted these 2 letters from Brain Pickings, which prompted me again to post a new blog here after many days of being absent. I am grateful for the inspiration. The letters hit me deep personally mainly because I'm a writer myself, and am working to ensure that I get paid for what I really like doing. Of course, I'm not saying that you run away from your current responsibilities (especially if you have a child or someone who depends on you to live). 

What I am saying is that I've realized a long time ago after so many years of denial mainly because I had a very good paying job and an imaginary status that gives me a ranking far higher than most in the social spectrum. The most valuable lesson connected to this, to-date: that I can't possibly help others well unless I get to help myself well first. There goes the conundrum of finding, recognizing my purpose in life. 

Oh, well, I've come into terms with that, gratefully. And, hence, I'm building and growing my franchise business with Market America, with its ongoing commission plan that gives assurance to my mind as long as I do the requisite hard work in taking action on what are ready and provided by the franchise system, and invest the necessary time from my already very loaded schedule as a writer and online storefront entrepreneur. I could only shake my head as I see my new found friends and acquaintances in the same business and they have their full time jobs (plus growing families for some of them). And they have their challenges in building the business. But, of course, growing and making very good money from any business takes time, efforts, persistence, discipline (among other secrets only known to those who actually build their own businesses).

Facing some challenges in moving on from being a full time employee? Read and study the letters somewhere here. One is actually not a resignation letter. It's more of a letter of gratitude to someone who has influenced the letter writer to finally take action in resigning from doing a full time job. I'm familiar with the tone and the feeling. I resigned from well-paying job that comes with it a pleasing social status over 8 years ago (as of this writing). I've never been as grateful for having done so. So much blessings have come forth in return----I see now that I have to create so much more space for something more grander to pour forth and come in into my life.
Dear Barton:
You have a man in your employ that I have thought for a long time should be fired. I refer to Sherwood Anderson. He is a fellow of a good deal of ability, but for a long time I have been convinced that his heart is not in his work.
There is no question but that this man Anderson has in some ways been an ornament to our organization. His hair, for one thing, being long and messy gives an artistic carelessness to his personal appearance that somewhat impresses such men as Frank Lloyd Wright and Mr. Curtiniez of Kalamazoo when they come into the office.
But Anderson is not really productive. As I have said his heart is not in his work. I think he should be fired and if you will not do the job I should like permission to fire him myself. I therefore suggest that Anderson be asked to sever his connections with the company on [the first of next week]. He is a nice fellow. We will let him down easy but let’s can him.
Respectfully submitted,
Sherwood Anderson


August 12, 1986
Hello John:
Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s overtime and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place.
You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?”
They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.
Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:
“I put in 35 years…”
“It ain’t right…”
“I don’t know what to do…”
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?
I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.
I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!”
One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
yr boy,
Hank

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