Shooting for the moon…

{image credit to Making Things Happen}

I am making a big career move. Today is my last day at my day job, a job that has been a great learning opportunity. Like anything, the people I met and spent hours with for the past eight months made everything wonderful. It’s pretty unbelievable to me how quickly strong friendships are formed. For this, I am grateful.

I will give you all of the details about the work I’ll be doing soon, but for now, I’m thrilled to say that I am chasing my dreams beginning at 8 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, June 28. I may not make it big. I may even fail miserably. But I will pursue my passions. I will make things happen every day. And there are a lot of things to make happen.

I have never shared my journey here with all of you, but I plan to. There will still be posts about pretty parties, DIY home improvement projects and mama and baby topics, but I’m also going to start sharing my story, as wild as it may sometimes be. Starting now. Here goes…

{photo credit — hubby and his iPhone}

I attended the Making Things Happen workshop in Watercolor, Florida when I was just about six months pregnant in December of 2010. I told almost no one about this other than my husband, a few very trusted friends and colleagues. I accomplished very little after the workshop and didn’t really know where I was headed. I’m not even 100% sure why I decided to go. I had no real plans and no specific idea of what I wanted to do. But, I did go and it changed me when I least expected it to.

At that time, I still had strong aspirations of being a successful corporate PR pro, but somehow thought I could also chase my writing, event planning and photography dreams at the same time. Before my baby, maybe. With my baby, no way. My family comes before all else, so something had to give. I just didn’t know it yet.

Back to the day in December in Florida… To be completely honest, that day wasn’t as life changing for me as it was for others. I wasn’t ready for change at that time. I didn’t even know it until recently though. And while that day itself didn’t bring me the clarity I thought I needed and was there for, it did open me up to big changes a year and a half later. When it was time to make these life changes a few weeks ago, I drew energy, excitement and strength from the friendships I made at the workshop  and from the inspirational posts on the Making Things Happen blog.

I kicked fear aside using the tools I took away from that day and the support of some amazing friends. I now have a community of cheerleaders, dreamers and doers surrounding me throughout the country and a few right here in Minneapolis. Like her. Her. Her and her. This decision and the plans surrounding my new career are not the things I expected or even realized I loved back in December of 2010. But, life happens and things happen for a reason. For me, things happened a bit later.

Some positive life changes for my mom in May meant that I had to look into part-time daycare for Bodhi. I quickly realized how incredibly expensive it is, something many of you know all too well. Besides the cost, I also couldn’t imagine putting Bodhi in daycare even though I knew then and know now that he would be fine and that daycare has so many benefits.

While I worked to find a loving option for care for Bodhi, career opportunities started showing up in unexpected places. At first, I brushed them aside, but over the course of a few weeks, there were too many to overlook. The universe or God or whoever and whatever you believe in, was telling me it was time to make some changes. It became increasingly clear that I had a HUGE, BEAUTIFUL opportunity in front of me, to not only pursue my passions, but also to spend two extra days each week with my sweet, smart and amazing baby toddler boy.

This is something that is truly priceless and this time with my son means that failure is not an option. A simple day of giggles and cuddles and playtime and strawberries on our front porch makes me successful. Yes, I’m going to measure my success in baby laughter. So, off I go…