Change

shallow focus photo of change

It’s the beginning of a new year, which always seems to be people’s favorite time to start some new habits or make other (big or little) changes in their lives.

We’re installing a new Presidential administration later this month (despite what the incumbent and his cult would have us believe).

Gyms (if allowed to be open by local regulations) are most likely packed for the next few weeks.

The Covid-19 vaccines are being deployed across the US and around the world, albeit not as fast as we all had hoped.

Travel and tourism, considered dead for the past 10 months, are beginning to pick back up, hopefully staving off further job cuts in the airline and hospitality industries.

Around here, I’ve been contemplating a few changes myself. In the financial independence blogosphere, the growth of the CoastFI and SlowFI cohorts have shown us that it’s possible to build a life you love while on the path to full financial independence. And in that vein, I signed up for a course on becoming a Virtual Assistant (<– affiliate link) to monetize some of the things I already do, or build a small side-business that I might grow into something more robust if/when I pull the plug on my full-time employment.

I’ve already had a couple offers from seriously BIG NAME bloggers in the space, but I am having a terrible time establishing a brand new identity as a newbie VA versus a statewide expert in my career field. In my day job, I have presented at state and national conferences, and I’m the Chair of my statewide professional organization, but now I’m this a completely novice VA, especially when it comes to setting my prices. I may not be new at sharing content, moderating Facebook groups, running the behind-the-scenes of a webinar, scheduling tweets, or many other tasks that Virtual Assistant performs, but I’m brand spanking new at putting a price on my time and efforts.

I sat down last month to do some goal-setting for 2021, and I came up with 15 measurable goals in 7 different categories including learning, business, friends/family, travel, health and financial goals for the year. Some of those were small enough that I got the boost of being able to check them off quickly. But some of them will take consistent effort all year, and I’ll only be able to look back in December to see if I’ve done what I wanted to do.

Towards these goals, I’ve already upped my water consumption, I plan to keep my alcohol consumption at 0 for the year, and I’ve walked more than I did in 2020. I bought the Pro version of Duolingo for my language learning goals, bought a Brita pitcher to help me drink more water and use fewer bottles of water, and submitted my time off to attend CampFI this upcoming weekend.

But this is where I feel like a failure. All of those are just nibbling at the edges of the big changes I want and need to make in my life.

I listen to the podcasts and have read the books on goal setting and habit formation. The biggest change I want to make is a one-fell-swoop type of change, not a habit I need to develop or a goal I can break up into little chunks.

How do you get comfortable making 1 big change that will affect EVERYTHING in your daily life, your financial future, and the way you operate in the world?

What about changing your earning AND living arrangements at the same time?

And not just dropping a job and leaving a house you’ve had for almost 15 years, but what about leaving the area entirely, as many of my friends have told me I need to do if I’m ever going to find a partner in life?

These are ginormous changes that would impact the rest of my life, my finances, my relationships, and everything in between. And I stand here on the verge of my 40s (less than 2 years away), feeling like it’s now or never.

I can’t decide what to do in this situation. Do I stay where everything is comfortable, even though clearly it is not? Do I forge a new path in life, even if it means giving up a whole identity I’ve built for myself over a career in public service? Or do I just hit the pause button and take a sabbatical or gap year to try to figure it out?

4 Thoughts to “Change

  1. Nice job with the small changes – water consumption is especially hard for some reason! Big change is hard too. When we moved from NJ to CA I was able to keep my job in NY remotely for a year – would that be an option for you to dip a toe in?

    1. I don’t think so. I work in local government, and it has been hard enough just to set up working from home in an adjacent county – multiple times I’ve had to come into the office the second half of a day because of some asinine “emergency.” But this is a big part of why I’m interested in Virtual Assistant work, so I can do it from anywhere I have my laptop and an internet connection.

  2. I am the wrong person to address this question as I’m all for backups of my backups, but with your jobby expertise, would you be able to easily find a job in that field again? Or would the “worst case scenario” be out of work indefinitely? I have ZERO DOUBT you would be able to find a whole bunch of work VAing. I mean, seriously. NO DOUBT AT ALL. But maybe you need to get some real offers in hands for you to feel that confident. Also, no one cares about the same kind of things for a VA position. You’re Josh-freakin’-overmyer. You’re online presence is a resume for VAing. My rambly comment is all just me saying: Go get that thing you want, but do what you need to do feeling comfortable doing so. Hugs.

    1. It’s hard to say. The main problem being that most communities, even in flood-prone Florida, do not hire someone specifically to handle all of the flood-related activities It’ll be tacked onto other duties of a Building Official, Emergency Manager or a Planner. I can only count a handful, and they’re mostly at the largest cities and counties in the state.
      I think I just need to get on board with the idea that it’s ok to not be a floodplain manager anymore. That I can still provide value and provide for myself doing other things. OR another option I’ve thought about in the past, even just a little bit, is to become a FEMA disaster reservist. It would be part-time, on-call type of work. It would involve travel, albeit usually when you’d rather not visit a place (post-disaster). But that could be an option in the future, too.

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