Serendipity

Serendipity...the faculty of making fortunate decisions by accident.

It's one of those words that just doesn’t come across my radar very often, but it’s a word that I like to read and/or speak...like wanderlust...or canoodling. I love hearing about celebrities being spotted canoodling, partly because I’m strangely fascinated by celebrities, and partly because I love the word!

But I digress. I read the word “serendipity” last week, and other than thinking about how much I like the word, I quickly forgot about it.

Then something happened.

After almost a year of procrastinating, I started reading “Eat Pray Love”. I was in tears by the end of the first page. While I’m not finished with the book yet (I can’t bear to read too many chapters at once), it’s definitely made me look deep and hard at my own life. What do I really want out of life? A family? Yes (soon, hopefully!). To keep traveling, both to my beloved Italy and to many other places? Yes. A job I look forward to going to? Yes.

Therein lies my problem. I can’t imagine looking forward to going to a place every day that controls my life, a place that tells me when I can take vacation and for how long, a place that tells me I can only spend so much time at home after I have a baby, a place that limits my salary based on some arbitrary salary range.

As I am in the midst of this job search, something keeps telling me that, even after I find a job with more vacation time, I am still going to feel trapped. It's my life, shouldn't I be allowed to make these decisions for myself?

So I've been pondering various options. I'm sure I must have some hidden talent which would allow me to make a living doing something I enjoy and that I am good at. But what might that talent be? What do I enjoy? And where might those two things intersect?

Here's where serendipity stepped in and perhaps helped me out. Last week I was skimming the local newspaper. I don't read it very often, but this day I saw it sitting on a table at work and picked it up.

Right there staring at me from the front page of the Life & Style section was a fascinating article. I don't want to say what it's about yet, as I'm afraid typing it will somehow jinx it! Anyway, it involves a training program for something that I find very interesting and that I think I would be very good at. I've done a bit of research over the last few days, and the woman who does this is apparently rather well-known for her expertise in this area...and as luck would have it, she offers her training program right here in Reno!

I'm going to meet with her to discuss the training and potential for this field. The training is expensive, but I'd rather spend some money now to make it all worthwhile in the end.

"Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for." ~ Lawrence Block