I'm not sure I'm really footloose and fancy free at this point, but I am most certainly on the road to being a real, honest-to-goodness trained travel agent. I am now all set to attend a week of intense training in Dallas at the end of June. It's the last week of school, so I'm missing a school play and at least one end-of-year party. So much for working from home so I can be with the kids when they need me most.
That said, Young MC threw up at school yesterday and I went and got him. I brought him home, snuggled a bit, then got right back to work. Perhaps I will miss some important things, but I am still here far more easily and often than I was in the past.
I can tell my learning curve is just beginning. Every time I've changed jobs, it has taken me a year or so to feel comfortable in the new role. I don't expect things to be any different this time. Granted, it's a larger change than ever... opening my own business. I have more responsibility than ever and less experience than ever. I need to stop writing this paragraph before I terrify myself.
It has been just over a month since I become "funemployed" and I have not looked back. I see the library every day, and now it seems like an item from a distant past. The new manager hasn't started yet full time, so my old office still sits largely unoccupied. I am looking forward to going back in another few weeks and seeing her there and my presence erased. Life is funny like that. Something that was once the center of your existence can be relegated to the back of the attic in no time at all.
I am working on a small booking already for friends and although the commission won't be remarkable, it will be a commission and more immediately present. While I work on this, I realize that my CRM will have to be REALLY good. I am hoping to get some good tips on best practices for tracking clients and staying on top of their bookings. I can see how easy it would be for something to slip through the cracks.
But for now, I will keep on learning and plugging along. I have taken one or two Disney trainings now and one Universal training. I figure the easiest thing is to start with what I know. Plus, it's not like those tests aren't also helping me plan my own immediate vacations...
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
It's Alive!
This week is not even halfway over and it has been quite exciting for me. My Tax ID arrived first thing Monday morning, and that has started the boulder rolling down the hill. Monday afternoon brought a new bank account for Outlander Travel LLC and today, I started the process of signing on with a host to get access to large group discounts, computer booking systems, and most importantly at this point, training. After they do the background and credit check on me, I should be good to go. My first training will be in Dallas at the end of June and when I return from there, I should be quite ready to handle most inquiries. Best of all, I am signing on for a larger split than I thought. More money in my pocket right away! Yay!
This whole process has been very interesting. I am very concerned with having all my ducks in a row, although it would seem that many people enter into this without that. I am looking forward to learning more to see if that is really true, or just an impression I get from the reading. I will say, it is a lot to do and it is not giving me as much time to do projects around the house.
Some of that is because so many things are backed up. There have been several things I needed to do for months (even years) that I kept putting off. Gradually, I am working through those. It seems to be taking forever to clear that backlog, but in reality, it has just been a little over three weeks since my last day at the library and I have really been quite productive. I am hoping that once more of that is cleared out, I will have more time to work and get through the daily routines. I also hope that starting a business is as top-heavy as I think it is, meaning a lot of this ground work will make for easier days once things are moving right along. A lot of what is taking up my time right now are tasks I should only need to do once... Or at least less than once a year.
At this point, it looks like my target date of July 1 is going to be spot on!
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Enter Sandman
So three weeks at home has given me an excellent amount of time to transition from elation for finally starting to work to make a lifelong dream happen and move into paralyzing fear for the same reason. I've been scared ever since before I made the decision to leave my day job. In fact, fear was the biggest factor in keeping a day job for so long. But now, all signs point to "do this" and even so... well... scary!
It doesn't help that filing the legal mumbo jumbo to get things moving is a slower process than I had hoped. Add that anxiety to the fact that I have exactly zero training in this area and will need to do quite a bit of that before I can even hope to make my first sale and suddenly, the fear magnifies. A sane, logical person such as myself is left wondering why the hell someone with no experience or knowledge of the inside of the travel industry would venture down this road at the ripe old age of 40.
But then I remember that I am not the first person to change careers midway through life. In fact, I've interviewed a lot of career changers for library jobs. And I've hired them. And frankly, they work out seriously well. A mid-life change is often far more thought out than a fresh-from-college career. You've had time to think about what you truly want and value in a career, and you've learned what working is all about. It's a serious advantage.
And still scary as hell.
Sometime next week (hopefully early) I will have a Tax ID number and I can proceed with getting my training started under my new company name. I believe that alone will help allay the fear a bit, as most of my fear is based on what I don't know. There isn't a job I've had that I've walked into knowing much about beyond my education and previous experience. Each one brought new challenges and new things I had to learn to succeed. The key difference was that I was going to get a paycheck while I learned. Having my own business isn't like that at all.
Scary.
Still, I feel good about everything and have no regrets. I have heard from my colleagues back at the library and frankly, the stories they tell do nothing to make me pine for my old office or my old computer or my old to do list. Laundry and cleaning out cat boxes win hands down. And that's saying something.
It doesn't help that filing the legal mumbo jumbo to get things moving is a slower process than I had hoped. Add that anxiety to the fact that I have exactly zero training in this area and will need to do quite a bit of that before I can even hope to make my first sale and suddenly, the fear magnifies. A sane, logical person such as myself is left wondering why the hell someone with no experience or knowledge of the inside of the travel industry would venture down this road at the ripe old age of 40.
But then I remember that I am not the first person to change careers midway through life. In fact, I've interviewed a lot of career changers for library jobs. And I've hired them. And frankly, they work out seriously well. A mid-life change is often far more thought out than a fresh-from-college career. You've had time to think about what you truly want and value in a career, and you've learned what working is all about. It's a serious advantage.
And still scary as hell.
Sometime next week (hopefully early) I will have a Tax ID number and I can proceed with getting my training started under my new company name. I believe that alone will help allay the fear a bit, as most of my fear is based on what I don't know. There isn't a job I've had that I've walked into knowing much about beyond my education and previous experience. Each one brought new challenges and new things I had to learn to succeed. The key difference was that I was going to get a paycheck while I learned. Having my own business isn't like that at all.
Scary.
Still, I feel good about everything and have no regrets. I have heard from my colleagues back at the library and frankly, the stories they tell do nothing to make me pine for my old office or my old computer or my old to do list. Laundry and cleaning out cat boxes win hands down. And that's saying something.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Rhythms
Life has a rhythm. We have patterns and routines we do everyday. We build our lives around those routines. And then, sometimes, we change them all.
So far, I have only been home for two work days. It's really rare that I took a day off of work to be home like a staycation, but I often had a day off in the week when I worked the weekend. So it's not like being able to get things done around the house is foreign to me. So here on Day Two, I am still feeling like I am on a sort of vacation. I am getting tons done, but I haven't quite grasped that this is life will be like from now on.
Today, I brought the laundry into the mix. I had to beat it into submission a bit, because although Chris is an excellent doer of laundry, he doesn't go looking for trouble. He lets trouble find him. Translation: Athena had about two weeks worth of dirty clothes crammed into her closet. This explains why she keeps saying she has no pajamas to wear when I know I just bought her several sets only a few weeks ago.
Since these first two weeks are all about cleaning and getting organized, the natural rhythms of the weeks will not really form right away. I can't form routines around rooms that are not as they should be. At work, I would be putting out fires that sprung up in already orderly and normal routine. But here, nothing is normal and everything is far from ordinary. Although I put a good three hours in on Athena's room today, I only feel that I have done about half the work required in it. Fortunately, her brother is not nearly as slovenly, so I will be able to put three hours into his room and have it organized, neat, and have all the books cataloged complete with metadata and subject tags. Seriously.
The reward I will feel when these two weeks is over, even if I am not completely finished, is going to be significant and profound. That seems ridiculous, but so be it. We have lived in a constant state of frenzy and disorganization for way too long. I am so excited to have the chance to finally wrangle it in at least a bit. I know that things will never be perfect, but I also know that we can definitely improve things by a large margin.
So far, I have only been home for two work days. It's really rare that I took a day off of work to be home like a staycation, but I often had a day off in the week when I worked the weekend. So it's not like being able to get things done around the house is foreign to me. So here on Day Two, I am still feeling like I am on a sort of vacation. I am getting tons done, but I haven't quite grasped that this is life will be like from now on.
Today, I brought the laundry into the mix. I had to beat it into submission a bit, because although Chris is an excellent doer of laundry, he doesn't go looking for trouble. He lets trouble find him. Translation: Athena had about two weeks worth of dirty clothes crammed into her closet. This explains why she keeps saying she has no pajamas to wear when I know I just bought her several sets only a few weeks ago.
Since these first two weeks are all about cleaning and getting organized, the natural rhythms of the weeks will not really form right away. I can't form routines around rooms that are not as they should be. At work, I would be putting out fires that sprung up in already orderly and normal routine. But here, nothing is normal and everything is far from ordinary. Although I put a good three hours in on Athena's room today, I only feel that I have done about half the work required in it. Fortunately, her brother is not nearly as slovenly, so I will be able to put three hours into his room and have it organized, neat, and have all the books cataloged complete with metadata and subject tags. Seriously.
The reward I will feel when these two weeks is over, even if I am not completely finished, is going to be significant and profound. That seems ridiculous, but so be it. We have lived in a constant state of frenzy and disorganization for way too long. I am so excited to have the chance to finally wrangle it in at least a bit. I know that things will never be perfect, but I also know that we can definitely improve things by a large margin.
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