I didn’t really think about it until we got back home from a short holiday earlier this month. I know, October sounds like an odd time of the year for a holiday, but it was the earliest we could fit one in this year. But that wasn’t what I was talking about at the beginning of this sentence. The holiday was the first real break my wife, Brenda, and I were able to take since we completed our midlife career changes.
Sure, we took our first-ever holiday in the time we’ve known each other in August 2016 but the circumstances were very different. We had just closed our business after 12.5 years and the holiday we took then was to de-stress. Then when we returned we ended up with over two weeks of cleaning and moving to do in order to vacate our downtown office space. That was a bit more stressful than we expected. So, in the meantime Brenda shifted her side hustle of JamBusters! into a full-time vending business and I did the same with my freelance writing home-based business. We have since been able to turn them into successful and profitable sources of income for the both of us. The stress is gone along with all the worries related to “What are we going to do now?” Our midlife career change is complete. In fact, we did such a good job with the transition (my opinion) that our scheduling was so full we couldn’t get away again this past August. Then we realized that some extra vending dates in September pretty much eliminated that month. I ended up with a two week window from one of my commitments in early October and that was all we needed in order to shut things down and run away for a few days. For our first real holiday without a lot of unanswered questions and worries hovering around, it was a good break. We ventured back into The Kootenays of British Columbia. That was where we went in August 2016 - south and east. The trip we took two weeks ago was a loop that took us into the Kootenay Rockies and down through the Upper Arrow Lake region over to Kootenay Lake. One of the reasons why October was appealing to us was that it would be cooler for travelling and that we stood a good chance at seeing fall colours in the region. We were right on both counts and actually found it far too cold in one part of the region as we actually encountered snow. However, the pace was slow and we spent a lot of time just wandering with no specific timetable or daily destination. It was a nice break and as I said in the beginning, it never really occurred to me until after we got home what this holiday meant in our career timeline. We are right back to the pace we had before we went away and it feels as if we lost little or no ground as a result. I was concerned that business would be slow to resume, but I was wrong. As for our midlife career changes, we are embracing them and turning them into positives. You can learn more about our midlife career changes with the eBook, “Surviving Midlife Career Changes,” that I wrote and published on the subject.
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AuthorMy name is George Elliott. I have been in the Media Industry since 1978. I spent 23 years in Broadcasting and worked in a total of six different radio stations located in southern British Columbia Canada during my career. In 2000 I switched gears and moved into the Print Media Industry at a small town, local weekly newspaper. In 2004 I bought the paper and operated it with my wife, Brenda until July 2016 when we closed it. I launched a freelance web content and article writing business from my home in January 2014. Archives
April 2021
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