It All Starts Now
MONTH 1 RECAP
What happened since leaving my program manager career at the beginning of February 2019 and the path to an intentional life.
Quit Your Day Job
I took everyone by surprise, including my boss, when I delivered my formal resignation from my career at a Fortune 500 company. It had been less than two years since I graduated from college. “Where are you going?” was the first question off every tongue. I could never come up with a particularly good answer, usually murmuring something about mountaineering, going abroad, or “Life’s too short to hate your job”.
What I was actually interested in doing would be a much longer explanation few would understand. The concept of leaving the comfort of the nine-to-five corporate lifeboat and jumping into an ocean of uncertainty terrified many of my peers. As a scuba diver, I knew that the worlds I love are never enjoyed from the surface.
What was I accomplishing? How was I growing? When I look back on my life, what will I be proud of? So instead, I decided to swim.
The Pursuit of an Intentional Life
I prepared to leave my career for the past year and a half by minimizing belongings and expenses, driving an old Subaru named Oswald, paying off my student loans and practicing adventure shoots as a weekend warrior. Meanwhile, in my program management career, I was overwhelmed, sick from stress, and crumbling from constant negativity. I felt completely out of place as the only young woman in my department, being told I needed to “conform” by my team lead while I sat quietly in my cubicle full of plants and backpacking photos. I spent every day at a job I loathed while staring out the window at snow-capped mountains on the horizon, daydreaming about a life I could have lived.
I started a new chapter for my life. My true interest was to chase the potential for immense personal growth outside of my corporate role by becoming a creative. I now propagate my own network of connections and design my own business models. I am intentional with my day-to-day tasks to build upon my skills and acquire new ones with bigger goals in mind. There is no linear path for the aspiring creative to success. They must make their own way.
Instead of eight hours in a cubicle, I spend twelve hours a day on creative projects, researching, and trip planning. I have become more mindful with my finances, by learning to live with less. I attend workout classes before the light of dawn and climb alone as part of a self-guided mountaineer training plan. This month has been a crash course in the discipline required for self-employment. I continue to wake up early, work late, and dream big.
I spent my first three weeks of my fresh start establishing my professional website, a feat that dragged on and was eventually swept under the rug for the past year. This new chapter will be taking notebooks full of creative project concepts I wrote and bringing ideas to life.
Let’s get started.
February Project Accomplishments
Designed and completed my first Painting Travel Palette
First Digital designs on the iPad Pro
Snowboarding Photography at Whistler, BC
Snow camping at Skyline Lake, WA
Sunset Kayaking shoot at Deception Pass, WA
Upcoming
3-Day Photography Workshop in the Olympic Peninsula
Mountaineering School Instructing
Climbing training
Daniel Smith Watercolors and two Da Vinci Travel Brushes in a Tin Palette Box
Skyline Lake Snow Camping - 17 Degrees and windy
Deception Pass Kayaking Adventure Shoot
