Day 28 – To Boldly Go

Describe a moment when you made a big, bold move. In any area of life: Career, Love, etc. A few years ago, well now, several years ago I was in a rotten position. I’d been left alone with a child to raise, recently lost my job, and found myself without a place to live. It was a rough time to be sure. I was riding a long streak of low spirits and lower hope. I had spent a good year applying for jobs and while I had interviews, I was always left the bridesmaid hoping to catch the bouquet when the final decisions came down. It was frustrating.

I’d come from doing trade show graphics work and in relocating to a new county to stay with family, found all of those prospects nearly dried up. I applied everywhere I could. I tried for assistant positions, clerical positions, anything I could find. I had a son to raise after all. I interviewed at a few sign shops and decided to go for broke and try random things that always interested me. I had two interviews in the same week which I sort of phoned in by that point and gave up the results to fate. I ended up with two job offers on the same day. There was a world of difference between the two careers. I had a decision to make.

The first position was with a graphics supply company. I was familiar with the products and the place was nice and small. I would work with two other women taking orders and talking about graphics products. It was something I could do and the pay, though half of what I was used to making in my graphics shop, was enough to get things started on the right track. On the other hand, I had a random interview with a mortuary, which I had no previous experience with, but which I’d been drawn to for ages. I managed somehow to get that job at the same pay rate as the other. There were no clear incentives either way.

I don’t know what got into me. My sensible self told me to go with graphics. It was safe. I had experience. I could parlay that into maybe a similar position to my old job which was way more creative. There was something eating at me though. If I never went with my other interest, I would never know what it was like or of I could do it. I read somewhere that when faced with two possibilities, you should always take the bolder path.

So I did.

The next day after I’d turned down the job at the graphics company, the president of the company called me to ask me personally to reconsider. I remember telling him that I felt the need to go down a new road. I’ll never forget his stunned silence when he asked me what type of work I chose to do. Since then, everyone else has told me how perfect I am for the work I do, which I’m both flattered by and a bit taken aback by. I just know it would have eaten at me, taking the safe road.

I should really take my advice now since it feels like another one of those crossroads moments. Hopefully I’ll have a clear sign and something I love to move on to. In the meantime I’m quite fine being the quiet mortuary girl with the calming voice. If people only knew!

Day 12 – Victory!

I wanted to say that my proudest accomplishment was my son, but I can’t really take credit for that, at least not all the way. I steer a little here and there but he’s his own driver. It’s also a cop out answer.

An accomplishment should be something that you plan and work toward and complete from beginning to end without quitting. That’s what makes my answer hard. I’m not really great at celebrating victories or taking note of small steps, which really is a lousy habit. I tend to notice the things I didn’t do. I never learned to swim. I can’t ride a bike (no, really), I never got that degree out of indecision…

An accomplishment is something that should have you falling asleep in your corn flakes, buying extra concealer for the dark circles, and drowning in coffee. Thinking back, I do this every year in a contest called NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month, It’s really more of a challenge than a contest because you don’t really win anything other than a little winners badge and the satisfaction of knowing you’ve written 50,000 words. I’ve finished every year for the past few. I have a bunch of almost-books in the wings just sitting there waiting to become something. 

One of them, however, I actually went back to, revised, revised again, and revised again until I had a 300 page piece of…work. I stayed up day and night for weeks. I drank tons of coffee. My eyes went blurry. I did laps. I procrastinated. I tore out hair, I yelled out loud and sat alone at my desk in the middle of a world of my own making. It was mostly a filthy world because I was too tired and engrossed to do much cleaning, or actually anything else, but hey, I was dedicated. I wrote when I hated writing. I had fantastic moments of sudden inspiration. I came up with things that were amazing that I can’t believe I wrote and then I came up with things that were horrid that I can’t believe I wrote. The experience was both wonderful and so much more difficult than I can ever describe.

The book is still nowhere near perfect. It’s still not agent ready let alone sitting on a book store shelf, but I did see the story to the end. I fleshed it out and I intend to keep working on it until it is something that people will read. Now those people may be the population of my office and my family home, but hey, it’s people!

The point really is that I finally did have that experience of seeing something through. I know now that I can do it. The next time it will be a little easier and hopefully a lot better. I hope to have book signings and maybe a graphic novel (and maybe people arguing on a forum about what some nit picky thing in one of my chapters really was supposed to mean) one day. Why not dream big? There’s nothing to lose by dreaming. Anything can happen. Make it big and then a little bigger! I just want fan boys! Not too much to ask…