Andria Cheng leaves WSJ/MarketWatch.com

Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch.com reporter Andria Cheng sent out the following announcement to her colleagues on Friday:

Who are we without our jobs?

“You take your work too seriously,” sometimes I’d hear friends say. “It’s just a job.”

But is it just a job? Call me idealistic. I have always felt a responsibility to make a meaningful contribution to the world. I want to channel the talents that I have been given into something that somehow maybe would resonate and touch a heart. I never knew, with my modest Taiwanese background where I once as a child would feel guilty to even splurge on the equivalent of a 30-cent pastry, I would end up where I am as a reporter in New York.

So I take it as a cue that the universe, with its mysterious design, has a plan for me. There’s a creative need to write, to tell the stories and to inspire and give back in the way I best know I can.

I still feel the strong mission as a journalist to enlighten, inform, educate or raise social consciousness on important issues. It saddened me when a veteran journalist friend recently told me he’s so done with the profession with its many travails and little rewards.

This job, I admit, is never just a job to me. It’s a big part of my life that I honor and take pride in.

So what does one do when life says it’s time to leave something that’s become a big part of your identity the past eight years? I have grown with it, learned from it, and matured as a reporter because of it.

I don’t have it all figured out yet. But as much as letting go is scary and leaves me sometimes sleepless and with a pit in the stomach, strangely, I also feel this big opening of the heart and connection with so many awesome people. Leaving doesn’t mean I’ve lost my identity. Quite the opposite, it’s a signal to reclaim and re-discover my many layers of identity.

And there’s this nervous excitement to not have a plan, to take a leap of faith to jump off that cliff, let the parachute of my life open, and see where it may land next. It’s time to be uncomfortable, and to trust.

I apologize to some of you whom I’d have liked to speak to personally before this, but in the many mixed emotions that come with a transition I felt it’s better to stay quiet and center.

I am so grateful for so many of you who have showed me what kindness is, who have believed in me and treated me with respect and appreciation, and who have given me so many opportunities and guidance all these years that led to many works that I can say I’m proud of.

For that, I leave you with this fresh piece that I hope will somehow touch a heart.

Thank you again for everything. Until we meet again.