i quit my job and i have no clue what i'm going to do next but somehow, i've never felt more liberated.

by bethany callaway

hi, hello, welcome.

my name is bethany. i am a poet. a barista of twelve years. a chronic people-watcher. a lover of books, live music, candlelight, and the quiet intimacy of shared spaces. i am someone who has spent most of their adult life making coffee for other people while quietly building a life in the margins, in notebooks, on receipts, and in voice notes recorded while driving home.

and now, for the first time, i have stepped away from the counter.

i quit my job.

i don’t have a plan.

and somehow, i have never felt more liberated.

the week that i quit my job did not begin as the week i was going to quit my job.

if you asked me at the beginning of the week if i was going to quit, i would have laughed and said no, without hesitation. yet, here we are. the idea has always been obscure because it feels impossible to break a routine that has quietly become scaffolding. i loved my job, the people, the rhythm: milk steaming, the percussion of cups meeting saucers, the choreography of hands passing plates across the counter.

for three years i have been a part of chater’s, pretty close to the days they opened their own doors. when you stay somewhere for so long, you don’t just witness growth, you grow around it. the place becomes threaded into your life: inside jokes that make no sense outside those walls, the crack that runs across the floor, the way the sunlight hit the counter at 8.17am.

i also met my partner there, who works as a chef. our days are braided together in service. the staff are not just colleagues, but family. the chosen kind, built through burnt fingers, busy saturdays and the hours spent together long after everyone else has gone home.

so as you can imagine, leaving is not clean. it comes with grief. but here is a truth we don’t recognise enough: you can love a place deeply, and still know it is no longer where you’re meant to stay. the clothes don’t fit anymore. not because they’re bad clothes, they kept you warm for years, but because your body has changed.

to those of you who know me from across over the counter, don’t worry. i’m not disappearing. vino and verses will still be running. i will still be a regular. they’re not getting rid of me that easily! and after three years, it’s safe to say: i’m going out with a bang.

now for the harder truth: i am terrified.

not of the lack of routine, i know how to build new ones. not of leaving the people, they’ll remain. but i am afraid of the space that opens when you step away from what has defined you for so long. and now when someone asks 'what do you do? i am left holding an answer that is still forming.

maybe you know this feeling too?

standing on the edge of something familiar, knowing you can’t stay, even as every practical voice in your head lists reasons you should.

we are not taught how to leave well. we are not taught that grief can accompany good decisions. we are not taught that uncertainty can be a form of freedom.

but, i’m learning.

read the rest in substack.