I worked as a front desk receptionist, and I had recently discovered Walden Farms no calorie pancake syrup, and cookie dough Quest Bars, which altered my life forever.
Doesn't sound that exciting. Because, it wasn't.
But then came 2014. And I'm realizing now just how much things have really changed for me.
I'm sitting here typing this at 3:59 on a Tuesday, after a killer leg workout with a good friend. I have a crazy, insane, perhaps slightly possessed 7 month old puppy at my feet. She's chomping away at a pig ear, and five seconds later she moves to a rubber bone, and five seconds after that shes running 4094 laps around the coffee table like Satan himself is chasing her.
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| Meet Bailey, just one big change in 2014! |
I have Photoshop and Illustrator open on my computer, and both contain art files that people are actually paying me to create. I have spreadsheets open with profit and loss and expense statements. (And I did math to get them.) I have a dinner date with one of my oldest friends later. And yeah, I'm wearing sweatpants.
Unbelievably to myself, I'm not dead! I'm not broke! I'll max out my IRA this year, and I can still afford peanut butter!
Looking back, I guess this was one of the most "successful" years of my life. This was the year I started making my dream life a reality. But it's been the hardest year too.
I've said I QUIT to a job with nothing at all lined up. I've met more strangers than I can even count. I've gone to networking meetings, and stood up in front of crowds to pitch my services, and try to explain my passion for design in 30 words or less.
I've walked into more businesses, wearing really uncomfortable pants and blouses and heels to talk to people who've never met me before and sell them on my offerings. I got a lot of freaking no's. And blank stares. And nice brush offs.
And I got some yesses.
I made an idiot out of myself on more than one occasion. I didn't always have the right thing to say, or the right props to pull out to impress them.
I've sat there in tears because no one was emailing me back, no one was ordering anything. I've sat there in tears because everyone was ordering everything all at once.
It's been hard.... yet not hard enough. Next year I want this to be bigger, better, faster, stronger. Every single day, I go to sleep feeling like I haven't done anywhere NEAR enough. And I think it's going to be that way for the rest of my life. I think that little nagging voice is what keeps me going where others would stop.
I think you can find that voice too.
We don't need a new year to start a new way of living, but its a convenient marker in time. Too many of us simply go through the motions, check off the neat little boxes. College, job, meet perfect person, house, dog, kids, retirement, die. How many people stop to think if it's what they REALLY want? What if you want to move to Bangladesh with your pet hedgehog, stay single and live in a tent? Why not? This life is YOURS. If half that list is already checked, and you don't want to check off any more neat little boxes, rip the thing up and burn it. It's not too late. Put the house up for sale. Start a business training donkeys from your tent on the beach in Hawaii. So what if everyone says you're crazy.
Be crazy. Save money. Do the research. Do so much research. Then do what it takes.
Stop checking off the boxes and start making 2015 the year YOU go for what you really want. I want even more. More experiences, more meetings, more cool projects, more chances to inspire you, more trips, more huge freaking mistakes and eff-ups that show me what I need to improve upon. Bring it.
Rip up that list. You can't take it with you when you go. You can't take anything. Not the money in the bank, not the house, not the car. Leave behind some cool stories for the people who knew you to tell.
Leave knowing you used up all your spins around the sun to the fullest. It's like a game show. You only get so many turns before you go bankrupt and the game's over.
Start now.
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