Breaking points - when and where?

I passed the three month mark last week, and with it another observation and performance review. It was good. Great, even. The head teacher said she was amazed at my improvement. Definitely a nice surprise!

Well, maybe surprise isn't exactly the right word. I did feel I was getting better at my job anyway, although her enthusiasm was definitely unexpected from where I sit. The thing is, I came here fresh from two years and change in a situation where progress and effort just weren't rewarded, or usually even acknowledged. How I survived as long as I did there is really something of a mystery to me. Bottom line, the idea that if you work hard on the job and learn from your mistakes you will be rewarded for it is something I no longer take for granted. I'm not sure that I ever did, really, but I definitely don't do it now. The fact that such a no-brainer came as such a surprise to me is a rather sad commentary on how an awful lot of people (previously including myself) are treated at work these days. But I guess this is proof that, ultimately, you don't have to take what I put up with for a while there.

I keep thinking of a conversation I had with a friend not long before I left DC, who had been through his own share of recent ups and downs on the job. He noted that he always did pretty well in jobs he only took to pay the rent until the Next Big Break came along, then added "It's only the jobs on my actual career track that became disasters." I recall thinking the same was basically true of me, and since I came to Taiwan mostly for the adventure and to do something fun for a year until I can go back to school, my success here would appear to bear out that trend.

So, when does one's breaking point come when it's time to take a chance like this? If I had to choose a single moment, it probably all goes back to hearing this song on the radio late last fall, when I was exactly where she describes herself in the first line. As I pondered the lyrics while waiting for the light to turn green, I thought, why not stop thinking about big changes and start making them? Barely three months later, I was on a plane to Taipei. There were lots of conversations with friends along the way and a fair amount of searching for other options in case I found something I might like better than teaching. But it all started at that one moment when I remembered that if I was that unhappy where I was, there was no real reason to stay there.

So, when have you hit a breaking point in life? What brought it on and what did you do in response? (And by the way, if anyone else is crazy enough to take a big leap like I did based on such a seemingly minor occurrence, let me encourage you to do it! I haven't regretted it yet.)