Ok, it’s done. I am officially on the unemployment line. This is my third time, so it is familiar to me. So, how to start? What should I do? Who should I call? To be honest, I feel nothing. All the work I have done in the past 15 years is bad, and some of it is ineffective. Nothing comes to mind to start a business, and to make matters worse, I don’t want to do anything!
So, this time I closed my eyes and imagined what I really didn’t want to do and not “what I wanted to do... and “tried” to be focused on that. My brain loves to ask questions:
Do you want to work full-time again for a company that may frustrate my desire to grow? It happened in the last three jobs. (Could it be me the problem?)
Do you like to sell? No, I hate selling!
Do you want to change your career? Well, with over two master’s degrees, a public relations license, and more than 15 years of experience, it feels like I really threw everything into the trash. Don’t you think? Is not something that I hate.
However, after that haterful moment, I still have my dreams, and I can see them there. I just don’t know how to get there. It is funny and contradictory because part of my experience is helping businesses happen. but I think when it comes to my own brand, it is really complicated and exhaustive.
I visualize myself as a writer, as a creator, as a producer, as a make-it-happen person; this is something that I've been doing since I was 11 years old. In the end, I finished with the same question: What do I like? Well, without other reason answered: Freedom, sharing with people, and working hard as a team... Is communication definitely related?
During the first month, I watched all the Lifetime and Hallmark movies. I tried to unclutter the house, rewrite my resume for #11 times, paint and prepare my studio office, be a housewife, get some free-lance jobs, and focus on my synchronized swimming team—that's now my only income. Although, after some Christmas shopping, losing my phone, crashing my new car, food purchases, school compulsory kinds of stuff, buying medication because I got sick, a family loss, and the daily payments like gas, tolls, lunch, parking, etc., my piggy bank is cero!
I don’t know how many times I refocus myself to get something real, joyful, and fulfilling, and yes, that included helping young people. Sometimes I do more for others than for myself. My statement is that we can’t have different results doing the same. People don’t see they are stuck in a vicious circle that never ends. Thus, I like to make changes, take risks, and experiment with new things. A long quote said, If Mahoma doesn’t come to the mountain, then the mountain has to come to Mahoma." Most of these changes and risky jobs ending free and voluntary are consuming a lot of time.
After the second month, the never-ending Puerto Rican Christmas season ended. I woke up and started contacting friends, preparing proposals to exercise my creativity, and starting another new story. After reviewing all my writing stuff, something appeared. I calculated my 12-year blog, www.relacionistasdeportivos.com, about my thesis, some short stories, press releases, articles, and scripts. This should be the path to being a full-time writer at age 50.
Sometimes our economic and social contexts pressure you a lot to follow a comfortable life—home, food, utilities, clothes, and school payments—without doing extraordinary things. If you try to have a little more, you are deep-fried. This time, I am going to need a lot of patience, wisdom, and wit to make it happen.