A Real Goal Getter: Part V

So why haven't I been living my life right? Where do I start?

Many people graduate from college ready to tackle the world. I was exhausted. Though I had done lots of growing up, I struggled until the last gasp and was so eager to be done with it all that I skipped my own graduation ceremony. I was putting my belongings in a U-Haul truck when the rest in my class were tossing their caps in the air.

I was ready to go home and regroup.

Outwardly, I did regroup. I helped out my family, not always joyfully, but my grandmother was dying of lung cancer and it was a stressful time. When she died, I began looking for work.

That’s when it hit me that I had no idea what I wanted to do. It was terrifying. I swam for the first shore I could find. A job offer came in the town where my aunt and uncle lived, and I took it, despite the fact that it only required a high school diploma. I knew I had to get back out of the house, so I took the first thing offered to me. It was a start, I reasoned, and I could always look for something else once I got my feet under me.

So I swam for the nearest shore.

The shore is the responsible place to be. No one can fault you for going to work, singing in the church choir and paying your bills on time. I wasn't miserable either. I made a home in that North Georgia town. I met people from all walks of life. I became a Catholic, finding a larger family in a community that embraced me. I took on the role of youth minister to the teens I had befriended, and did it as a volunteer because the church was too small to pay me. I shared myself with the family I had created there, and the people shared their lives with me, becoming my friends.

Something was still wrong though. Something was missing.

So when the opportunity came to travel with my company, I took it. I went to Dayton, Ohio. I went to Charlotte. I went to Carol Stream, Illinois. I went to Santa Clara, California. I went to Atlanta.

And something interesting developed on the Atlanta assignment. It was a startup project, and when I arrived I barely had a place to sit, with a computer that wasn’t even networked. I thought they were silly to spend so much money on me when I was able to do so little. But I had seen the extravagant spending that went on with new accounts, so I didn’t give it a lot of thought. The account reps, however, had other things in mind.

Part of the contract specified having a designer on staff. As it turned out, the designer they had selected for the project had just gotten a government job. They were scrambling to find another before they had to tell the customer that he was leaving. One of the customer service reps had transferred from my location a few years earlier, and knew that I was interested in leaving as well. She put my name in the hat, and they asked for my services so I’d travel down there. When I got there, they asked if I wanted the job.

Promises were made to convince me I was making a good move. I’d learn new software. I’d learn web design. I’d take classes. This was the missing piece, I believed. I was taking a new direction in my career. I was moving to Atlanta.

That was June 2000. I commuted for almost 2 months until I found a house to move into. Once relocated, I became absorbed in getting the design area organized, getting designs migrated to our system and adjusting to life with a commute significantly longer than six minutes.

A year later, the twin towers collapsed in New York City, and with them the opportunities that came with working on a highly successful and profitable account. What began as a new path out into open water and new adventures became a stressful package of financial insecurity. I don't intend to distract from the significant tragedy 9-11 was, but its impact was felt all the way down to Atlanta, Georgia.

For me, it was time to swim back to the shore.


--Laura