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| Past Photo: Somewhere in Wyoming after 3 hours of driving dirt roads seeing wild horses but no other people in sight. |
In another state, another woman was a VP in a Bank. She was
important. She poured herself into her
job. She traveled. She created a life of friends, family and a collection of
beautiful things placed in an awesome multi-level condo. She dated, came close
but never married. The huge national bank was restructuring. She was offered a
package and took it. She fell in love with orphanage work in Africa, but
volunteering is expensive. She teamed up with a friend and started a business
that has little to do with banking except for making the money to put it there.
She is hoping this is her next chapter.
In yet another state, another woman poured herself into her
business. She built a life out of nothing except a college education. She had
friends and family and pets and sports. She dated, came close but never married. The
economy changed and her business was heading on a terrible projection. She
needed to sell her business. She trusted a corporate partner but it left her
empty promises. She closed her business, traveled and is looking for the next chapter in life.
All three women had met 30 years earlier and worked on
publishing a college yearbook: a massive one year project at the university
level. One was the editor, one the assistant
editor and one a reporter. They would go
their separate ways but somehow they would go on to share a lot of similarities
between them.
Reinventing yourself and changing careers has become more prevalent
in an economy that has changed a lot of lives across the globe in the past five
years. On my time crewing on sailboats
three years ago, I was in the tiny
island of Ithaca, Greece and a woman worried about the jewelry shop she owned with
her husband. If business continued to be this bad what would they do? They were
preparing “plan B.”
On the even smaller island of Trizonia, Greece a German
electrical engineer had made his peace with his important position in the corporate
world, bought a sail boat, sailed the world and had found his stopping place on
this tiny island. Content with his small business of fixing boats that stopped
in port with broken mechanical problems.
Spain, Morocco, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Dominican Republic,
Panama even the Galapagos Islands I met people looking at, in the middle of, or
having already changed the direction their life had been heading.
I am not the only one looking at the next chapter.
I am however, the only one with the experiences that I
personally have had. This experience defines me as a separate and different
individual. And so it is true for the other women in this story and many, many
others that I have visited in the 9000 miles and counting that I have driven so
far.
Changes have included; an out-of-state move to go into
organic gardening, learning an entirely new
craft, going to nursing school at 52 years old, starting a cross-generational
family business, waiting two years for
an easy retirement and then looking at what’s next, keeping a job but
throwing passion into side work. The list continues. Many want to make a
change and are willing to take a pay cut in order to have more job satisfaction.
I visited woman number one and two on this trip, and yes the
third is me. Until I sat down with each of them I had no idea how closely aligned
our lives had been. We are each very different but have so much in common.
At one woman’s home, a gorgeous English style home in an
upscale neighborhood, we sat talking about the past, present and the possible future
directions and options we both had. I had forgotten how hysterically dry her
humor was. I wondered why I had lost touch for the past 25 years. She turned to
me and said, “Do you remember what the theme of the Yearbook we published was?”
“No,” I answered.
“ ‘Redefining’,” she said with a laugh.
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