The following blog details how I ended up reinventing and building myself from the ground up. I’m sharing only part of my story as it relates to my career path and a little bit about how my personal life got derailed and took my job with it. This blog is also about the realization that I could turn my love of travel into a work style that would allow me to enjoy life in a whole new way—one that I had never imagined before. Admittedly, life is so much more complicated than the following few paragraphs can relate, but I certainly hope you do at least. 😉
Who am I you may ask? Well, my name is Cheryl Redick and I enjoy making a difference by delivering solid results in all aspects of graphic design, marketing and office administration. The world of graphic design and marketing is always advancing and developing exciting new ways of communication. I enjoy applying my design/marketing communication skills to my knowledge of customer service, which also engages my skills in office administration.
https://pixabay.com/ 2018
After leaving my fiancé, our house, my garden and the design job I loved I found myself in, what can only be described as, no man’s land. My future was uncertain. I was doing temporary administrative jobs just to get by because the design job I had (when I was living with my fiancé) wasn’t giving me enough hours/money to make it on my own. Basically, I lost everything that I loved and brought me joy. The vision I had for my future and the security of my retirement was now uncertain and I had to start a new life, a new dream. What came next was planning the rest of my honeymoon. The trip gained more detail and as I made decisions, about the places I would go and the places I would stay, it started to seem like less of a honeymoon and more like my own personal adventure. Europe is where I went to think about my new life and what it might look like moving forward.
It was a sunny day in August when the plane I sat in carried me across ‘the pond’ and landed in Dublin, Ireland. While in Ireland I went to a World Heritage Site called the Brú Na Bóinne and communed with 5,000-year-old fairies. It was here when the rest of the tour group continued on around the corner and I stood there by myself that I felt the presence of the people that walked there a thousand years before me and I saw a glimmer of the magic from the fairy mounds—as the locals referred to them. I felt something bigger than myself and I knew I would be okay. I picked a sprig of clover, pressed it between two cards in my wallet and turned the corner to rejoin the group of fellow tourists.
Cheryl Redick 2017
My trip then took me to Germany and into the Swiss Alps of Switzerland, where I rode a type of zip-line called ‘The First Glider’ backwards up a mountain. I was terrified, screaming and swearing all the while feeling sorry for the people beside me listening to my cries. But, more importantly, as scared as I was I did it and on the way back down the mountain, hurtling at a record (80 km/hr) with the strong wind in my face, I laughed with joy. My trip ended in London, England where I was knocked back to reality because when I recalled the first time I’d been to London, England in my late 20’s and on my honeymoon with my now ex-husband—the parallels could not be ignored. The fact that I should have been there with my second husband on our honeymoon started to settle in, but instead (20 years later) I was alone, with no job or career to speak of, no money and no home with all my belongings packed away in a storage locker back in my hometown where my reality awaited me upon my return. Not exactly where/how my 28-year-old self, envisioned I’d be in life by middle age.
Cheryl Redick 2017
More than a year has passed and I’m still trying to ‘make it happen’ but as Elton John once said: “I’m still standing”. More importantly, I’ve had a chance to take stock and accept my reality and come up with a new plan, a different plan. I now have a new dream because ever since my Europe trip I have been hit by the travel bug and I’ve decided to incorporate my love of travel with my career. I’ve taken another look at self-employment and made that my new mission. I already have two clients and presumably, a third is coming aboard. The third client is good news of course, but it comes from the disappointment of not getting my ‘dream job’ working as a virtual real estate assistant (to clarify a virtual assistant means working from home). Instead, they offered me design/marketing piece work as it becomes available. This holds much promise and I plan on filling the spaces in between driving for Uber Eats. Uber Eats may not be remote work, but I’m still my own boss and eventually, I plan to have all my days filled working remotely doing interesting tasks from transcription to graphic design (including social media) and everything in between. The future holds much promise…
Has anyone else reinvented themselves? I’d love to hear your stories and I welcome any advice you may have as it relates to my new journey.