Hi everyone! I know it’s been a while since you heard from me. I took a break longer than I anticipated. Covid has been a lot to deal with, but I have to get back to consistency with this blog. I will let you all know when I plan on taking breaks. It’s not fair to leave all of you hanging, but I appreciate everyone who stuck around with me during this time. I thought it would be fun for all of you to get reacquainted with me again. I want to start with a light-hearted post for my first entry back to blogging. I can’t think of a better way to start a post than with music. The songs below are in heavy rotation within my playlist at the moment. The list changes often, but the list below includes my current favorites.
St. Vincent
Savior
Masseducation
Slow Disco
Down
My Baby Wants A Baby
The Strangers
Cheerleader
Digital Witness
Celine Dion
Lying Down
Flying On My Own
Tinashe
Naturally
333
Undo (Back To My Heart)
X
I Can See The Future
Solange
Don’t You Wait
Don’t Touch My Hair
Taylor Swift
Cruel Summer
Doja Cat
You Right
Woman
I hope you enjoyed learning more about me via my playlist. Please share your current playlist below and let me know if some of the songs or artists are your favorites. I’ll chat with you all in the next post!
I want to extend a special thank you to Emma Grace Brown for contributing to the guest blog for this week. You can contact her at emma@emmagracebrown.com or her contact form from her website emmagracebrown.com/meet-emma.
Do you feel the call to switch careers to follow your passion? CNBC cited a survey showing that 49% of respondents had a dramatic career change, and 65% of the respondents who hadn’t yet switched have considered it. Changing careers to pursue your passion can be scary, but these pointers below can help.
Dream Big
Allow yourself to daydream about your passion and how it could become your career if there were no potential barriers. A straightforward strategy is to pretend you won the lottery, so money isn’t an issue, or imagine there’s no way you can fail. What would you do? Brainstorm ways to make those dreams a reality and earn income from your passion.
Consider Ways to Make Your Passion Profitable
Think of ways you can make your passion profitable. If travel is your passion, you might find a job in the travel or hospitality industry, work as a travel agent for an established company, or create your travel agency. Starting a monetized travel blog or YouTube channel and creating online courses, ebooks, and other products about traveling is another option.
Try Job Shadowing
When you have an idea of what you want to do, search for businesses that do the same thing. Joblist suggests reaching out to see if you can do a job shadow experience with them. You will get an opportunity to test out the career or know if you want to start a similar business.
Create a Concrete Plan
A clear career path or business plan helps provide a roadmap to success. If your passion requires a specific degree, research colleges that offer the program and determine how long it takes to earn it. To start a business, you may need a special certification or license. If landscaping is your passion, you may need a commercial pesticide applicator license.
Find Mentors
Connecting with mentors who have successfully made a similar career switch can give you expert insight. If your goal is to start your bakery, consider joining other bakery or restaurant owners. Ask them questions and soak up any knowledge you can get from them to make your journey easier.
Start a Business
Choosing the correct business structure is essential if you decide to start a business related to your passion. It affects your liability, business operation details, and how you pay taxes. For example, forming a limited liability company (LLC) provides more protection for your assets in case of bankruptcy or a lawsuit.
Go Back to School
If you’re starting your own business and passion project, you may need to gain some new skills to ensure it’s profitable. Earning an MBA will allow you to build your knowledge in leadership, business operations, communication, and marketing. If you enroll in an online program, you’ll have the flexibility to start planning your business while you learn. Online learning is also considerably more affordable than in-person learning.
Follow Your Passion
Switching careers to follow your passion can give you a more fulfilling career while paying the bills. Follow the above advice, and you’ll be open for business!
It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post. I must admit that I found it extremely difficult to be creative these past few weeks. Absolutely nothing was inspiring, nor had I felt compelled to write. I searched the internet to find something to assist with overcoming writer’s block. I found helpful information, but nothing was still working. I felt like at this point; my blog was over. It would cease to exist, and then a loss in viewership followed by a decline in followers. I turned to nature to gain some inspiration. I figured the issue must be my surroundings. I need to change my environment to aid in my writer’s block. That would help for a bit, but I still had no energy to write anything. Anything that I did write wasn’t worth publishing, to be honest. There was no passion in the content, so I didn’t bother completing it. Honestly, I have no idea how I managed to write this piece. An idea finally came to me, I put pen to paper and went for it.
The whole point of all that rambling is that it’s okay to take a break. Sometimes you need to step away to make things better. There’s nothing wrong with realizing you don’t have it, nor do you need to for that matter. Listen to your body when it’s trying to tell you something. My body was letting me know how emotionally, physically, and mentally drained it was. I’ve been on the go for about a month and a half. The only thing I was doing is work, work, and more work. When I get like this, I find it very difficult to stop and smell the roses. It may have something to do with not being in a relationship, so I don’t have much to occupy my time. I keep saying I need to stop doing that and live life better. It’s easier said than done let me tell you. However, if I don’t make a considerate effort, I’ll continue to fail miserably at it.
We all make excuses myself included about how I’ll do it tomorrow or only if I had more time. The truth is there’s not always tomorrow and the best time is the present. Start planning that trip, try out that new restaurant, respond to that unread message and most importantly use those vacation/sick days. You can’t show up for others until you show up for you first.
Thkeya's Reflections on Life 