I've been bouncing around a lot lately and not really traveling psychically as I had thought I would when I first created this site. I have been doing a lot of inner traveling though and I thought I'd start sharing that journey along with my current situation.
My journey started in the late 90's when I worked at Sam's club. I had been in every department they had and even became a supervisor or "team leader" as they liked to call them then. I was working in the center section which had seasonal items and books. I think out of every place I worked there, that was my favorite area because I loved changing the section out with different seasonal merchandise and I love books and movies.
One day while putting out a new shipment of books, one in particular caught my eye. It was the book "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson. The book title was silly but the premise was interesting so I took it into the break room at lunch and read the whole book in 30 minutes.
Looking back it was the first book that taught me how to let go of something that no longer has any use to me. It also changed my life because it made me realize I was no longer happy with my job. I changed positions to the customer service counter shortly after but I still wasn't satisfied there either. I had been with the company 8 years and I had been through almost all the departments. I'd gone as high as I had wanted to go at that point in my life.
One night when I answered the phone, it turned out to be a previous manager who now worked at Staples. They asked how much I was making and if I'd ever thought of leaving. They offered me $2 more an hour to leave and come and work for them in Delaware. (I was currently living in NJ at the time.)
Looking back this was my first big move to something new and different. I traveled to work in a different state 5 days a week and made some really awesome new friends and had some pretty good adventures.
One of my friends there was working on getting his pilot's license and took my sister and I up for our first ever flight in a small plane (any plane actually). I had told my mom we were all going to Atlantic City for a little while. I just never told her how we were getting there LOL.
I drove my sister and I to the little airport in Delaware right over the Delaware Memorial Bridge and knees knocking we boarded the tiny little plane. It was just all so exciting! On one of our other flights we flew to Reading, PA because the airport there had great wings! The idea that if you wanted to go somewhere, anywhere you could just hop in a little plane and go just made my imagination race with wondrous ideas and places I could travel.
I fell in love with flying and small air crafts and getting a pilot's license is still on my bucket list of some day things to do just from that first flight.
We had a great time in Atlantic City and the scariest part of the whole night was the cab ride to the pier from the airport there. That cab driver drove so crazy and there were 5 of us in the back seat all squished on each other's laps. I think we screamed almost the whole 3 minute ride as we narrowly missed hitting a bus, a VW bug and a few people.
It's funny how something as insignificant as reading a really short book could set you on a new path and on to new adventures. Sometimes you don't realize how many adventures and how many risks you have been taking until you start looking back on all the things you've accomplished in your life.
I sometimes sit with anxiety and depression because I feel like I haven't done anything with my life. I'm glad I have been spending so much time trying to improve myself, because now I get to look back and see that I have done many things in my life. I have had many adventures, some small and some big. I have over come many things in my life.
I worked in a lot of supervisor positions and worked my way up to making $45,000 a year all with just a high school education and while being a single parent. I've spent a lot of time with the same companies and not been a job jumper. I learned a lot from every place I've worked and I've taken what I've learned with me to every new job I've gotten.
I've flown half way around the world to India and didn't have to pay for the trip. I've owned a house for 13 years and even though sometimes things were tight or got rough I still managed to keep a roof over our head and food on the table.
I think so far the best lesson I am learning is how to value myself though. How to do my own thing and be myself and not settle for being with people that do not value me the way I think they should. I am learning to not settle for less that what I deserve and that I am enough the way I am. It's been such a long and interesting journey and while I enjoyed it while it was there, I wish I'd taken the time to just be in the moments more while they were happening.
I have to forgive myself though, for I did the best I could with what I knew at the time and I wasn't in the place mentally then, that I am now.
I hope everyone finds their true selves eventually and find what makes them happy and how to live authentically. I hope everyone gets to go on such an amazing journey and figures out that all their dreams have already come true and there are so many more on the way.
What books have you read or are you reading that you have felt changed your life? How did your big journey's start?