Fast Forward

You know how sometimes, you’ll be watching a movie, it’ll get to a really interesting part, and then – boom – they jump ahead five years and you’re left thinking “uhhh, what just happened?”

Yeah, this post is kind of like that.

After my first three posts – which I was actually pretty happy with! – everyday life took over and I quickly lost that new-found motivation to keep at it. Or maybe I just didn’t have anything particularly pressing to say. But having recently read a book all about the power of writing things down, I feel that it’s important to get back into the blogging swing of things – so here goes!

The past ten months have been busy and interesting, to say the least. My voice lessons have been going really well, and for a while I was learning in leaps and bounds – now it’s more like fits and spurts, but it’s still a lot of fun. I feel like I keep hitting plateaus, then breaking through a barrier and making more progress – whenever I start to get discouraged, I just remind  myself that it hasn’t been that long since I started studying! When I think of how much progress I made over the course of just 9 months, that bolsters me and gives me the confidence I need to keep going.

Last year, right around the time I was just beginning voice lessons, I was also doing a lot of soul-searching, career-wise. I was extremely unhappy in my current job role, and being overworked on top of that only added fuel to the fire of my desire to find my true calling. I had several visits with a career coach, took the inevitable batch of evaluations and tests, did a lot of self-analysis and online research, and prayed constantly for inspiration and guidance. In the end, I decided that working in the events world was the best path for me – it tied into my theater background, it was interesting, fast-paced, and fun, and it was something I felt I’d be good at.

Of course, I had no idea how I was going to break into the field, and right on the heels of this decision, I started to feel that my true calling was music, so that only made things more confusing. But I do believe in the power of prayer, and that God/the universe/whatever you want to call it guides you and puts you on the path to the right experiences for your own personal growth. Honestly, what happened next felt like nothing short of divine intervention.

The group my team is a part of at work suddenly went through an unexpected and radical re-organization, and my own team – which had previously been focused on global business reporting and sales programs – was suddenly a global events team. Overnight, I went from spreadsheets, PowerPoint reports, programming and reporting (YAWN) to planning internal events for our management teams at the highest levels in our company, in such exotic locations as Milan, Madrid, and Maui. I truly can’t ascribe this amazing, timely, perfect happening to anything other than God’s plan.

Side note: Now, look, this isn’t meant to be a religious blog, and I know not everyone who reads it will believe what I believe. I’m totally fine with that – but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to edit out my own beliefs in the telling of my story. It’s MY story, after all.

So fast forward to today: I’ve been in my new event planning role for 6 months, and it is crazy-super-busy, stressful, amazingly fast-paced, and I’m on a huge learning curve – but I love it!! It’s really energized me and given me new hope that I can last in the corporate world for a while longer – years instead of months (or days!). Rather than going through the exhausting, emotionally draining and time-consuming work of trying to break into the field by finding an entry-level position with a new company, I’ve been given this amazing opportunity to learn this new field while staying at a company where I feel comfortable, and where I’ve already invested nearly six years of my life and career, working with people I know and like. What a gift!

Oh, and all my hard work, long hours, and dedication in my previous role finally paid off big-time this past year with not one, but TWO promotions and raises! So I finally feel appreciated, like I’m getting the recognition and respect I deserve, I enjoy my work, and the increase in my salary is helping me to fund my next plan: The Great Escape. Stay tuned for more on that.

In the end, I think I’m going to look back on this past year as a huge turning point in my life. Just one year ago, I was miserable in my job, felt overworked and underpaid and unappreciated, hadn’t yet (re)discovered singing, had never been to an opera or the ballet (I’ve since seen three), didn’t know some of the most amazing people and resources that are in my life today…the difference between then and now is pretty darn amazing. This past year really was all about moving forward, FAST. And reflecting on that has just made me even more excited to see what else is in store.