Somehow, about Lunch Tables: Farewell from Karis

I'm bad at making decisions. Bad at changing my life, doing things that will be hard for me (even if they're good for someone else), putting the wheels in motion to alter my reality.

Sometimes though, you know in your gut it's the right choice. And as hard as it is, you have to just dive in, no matter how breath-stealingly cold the water is, and hope you're able to swim rather than sinking.

Yes, friends, this probably terrible metaphor means one thing: I've made the decision to leave the Operation Awesome team.

I applied to be an OA blogger last February because my friend, Jaime Olin (remember her? She's awesome!) was on the team and has posted there was a vacancy. At the time I was unemployed, depressed, bored, anxious for more writing projects to help me fill the void in my life.

And I was excited to be a part of something, to not be alone anymore on this writing journey. I think that's the thing about being a writer, even a blogger, that can be hardest, if you're just starting out or unsure how to navigate all the churning waters of Twitter, Instagram, BookTube...it's the eternal question of where do I belong? who will I sit with at lunch?

Operation Awesome was my lunch table for a little over a year. I wasn't always the best lunch-table-person: I got distracted by a new job, and then I got depressed (really, really depressed), but I tried. And I found that my lunch table partners are good partners. They were always there to support me, to tell me it was okay if I fell off the grid for a bit; that it's okay to be depressed; that it's okay to not be perfect.

These are the truths I tell others; sometimes it's nice to hear them myself.

Oh man, as far as blog posts go, this one has been all over the place!

I guess what I want to really say is this: sometimes we do things not forever, but for a period. We join a group blog and we hope it'll last forever but circumstances change and it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the team, so it's in everyone's best interests to leave. And decision-making might be so hard for me, but in the end it was realizing I was letting the team down that pushed me to say, "okay, it's time to go."

And the other is: put yourself out there. If you feel scared or alone or lost in the big wide world of writing, find a team. It helps.

Love y'all, can't wait to see where things go with the rest of the OA crew!