You’d think that I would have blogged sooner with all the free time I have these days. I have plenty to talk about, after all, and I haven’t worked in ten days. In reality, I’ve been slowly piecing together my thoughts on a major life transition, and I wanted to start talking about it all today.
As most of you likely know from my other social channels, I was informed on Monday, May 20th, that my position at the corporate headquarters of Best Buy was to be eliminated four days later and I would be released with severance. I started with the company in July of 2004, so I had nine years under my belt and wasn’t entirely prepared, but the company is in a rebuilding phase, so I wasn’t entirely caught off guard either. As a matter of fact, I had joked with some long-time peers in the previous weeks about what I’d do with a severance and a newfound freedom.
On Friday, May 24th, I worked my last day and said my goodbyes before enjoying the “three day weekend” leading into Memorial Day. It didn’t really become apparent to me that life was rapidly changing until the following Tuesday when everyone went back to their weekday lives and I was in my office working on my résumé, and I decided that I really needed to take a breather to see what it was that would drive me toward my next passion. For the past week, I’ve been clearing my mind, working on the garden, staining the deck… but mostly clearing my mind and preparing for the journey ahead. Clearing a mind as jumbled as mine can be time-consuming.
What I realized is that I really wasn’t passionate about retail anymore, and I had known about this lack of passion for some time deep down, but I didn’t allow myself to entertain the thought of taking a big risk because I quite enjoyed the stability of a biweekly paycheck. I realized that I’ve talked for years about “what’s next” but I’ve never tested the waters. I ended up feeling very fortunate to be thrown in head-first, because even if I have to go hungry at some point, I’m determined to discover a new passion and to prevent my career from going stagnant again. It’s invigorating.
We’ll get back to that. I also wanted to mention that, in my first week off, I finished planting the garden, stained the deck, fixed both gates and a couple of broken fence posts in the backyard, replaced the lock on the shed, and wrapped up some other maintenance that had fallen behind. Homeownership could easily be a full time job if money were no object, but it feels good to at least make some progress on a very old and very long list. I do believe that I’ll be detailing some more completed projects in a future post.
So what of my future, then? Clearly, it’s still up in the air, and it’ll be discussed further in Part Two later this week, but there are two components. On the one hand, I am seeking a traditional job and have a great opportunity with a major (and ethical) financial organization in their IT department, culminating in a phone interview on Thursday afternoon and a likely in-person follow-up next week. At the same time, I’m also digging deeper into some self-employment ideas that I’ve tossed around in the past. With any luck, I’ll be able to figure out a balance so I can take some risks without worrying my girlfriend too much, as she’s not all about that side of things.
In the meantime, I’m about six weeks from my first 5K, and I’ve switched up my diet to help aid in the progress of getting in shape. The garden is showing signs of life in pretty much every row. I’m back on the blog, of course… and hoping to get in touch with a guy who wanted me to do some writing for the newspaper of which he is the managing editor. All in all, I’m still trying to figure out how to get the most out of my newfound freedom, but I’m off to a good start.
In the next installment, I’ll take a little more time to elaborate about the future. In the meantime, I have to go figure out exactly what that means.