Winds of Change

For the past ten years I have worked at the same office, talked to the same people everyday, sat at the same desk five days a week, eight hours a day. I worked in the same industry for twenty years, the brokerage business. While the industry is constantly changing and evolving and there were new things to learn, to an extent on a daily basis it was like being in the movie “Ground Hog Day”. Sometimes in the mornings before work, I would sit in my car in the parking, enjoying those last few moments of solitude and I would watch as slowly more cars pulled into their same parking places. Even though we didn’t have assigned parking it was like being in a Baptist Church where you and your family sat in “your” pew every Sunday, and you always knew when a family was visiting the Church for the first time because they were sitting in the “wrong” pew!! But I digress, so back to the parking lot; I sat and watched the same cars pull in, the same people get out and walk the same path into the building every single day!!!! It always struck me as a little robotic but over the past few years it has become almost as if I were watching drones make the journey mindlessly, and unemotionally every day. If one were to observe the parking lot at five o’clock in the afternoon, one would see those same drones make the journey back to their vehicles and home to their families, still mindless, unemotional and now tired having given the best of their energy and time to someone else. For many years I was a single mom and so very thankful to have a job that paid decent, had good insurance and allowed me a few weeks of vacation-it felt “safe”. But as I grew older that was no longer enough. I felt cheated, my children were growing up too quickly and I missed so much of their lives by always being at work. I felt my time was more valuable than what I was being paid. Over time I began to hear that voice speaking louder and more often that their must be more to life than THIS. There WAS more to life but in order for me to find that I would have to make a change. And as much as I would like to think that I embrace change a little more than the next person, I will honestly say that it was very difficult for me to step out of my comfort zone and initiate the changes that I knew had to take place in order for my situation to change

Now, I am listening to the voices, initiating change and making a turn down a new path. I am leaving the job I have spent the last decade of my life at and I am going into business for myself. I have discovered that change is frightening, invigorating, energizing, and it makes me refocus on the big picture instead of the day to day drone-ness!!! Nothing ever stays the same, whether it’s by our choice or someone else’s. But change doesn’t always have to bad, change just has to be different. If we don’t have different we will never make mistakes, we will never grow, or learn or become the person we were meant to be. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not advocating that everyone go to work tomorrow and quit their jobs but what I would challenge you to do is to take a chance, do something you have always wanted to do, take one step closer to your dream.