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.