In October of 2007, I found myself in a really precarious place. I was working for a company that I had longed to work for and yet I was miserable. I could list a million reasons that have nothing to do with me about my own misery but I can take responsibility for that which was mine. And mine at that time was that I was in WAY over my head. I was a director at a Fortune 250 company, I had a department of over 20 people reporting to me, I had a backlog of over $17 million dollars. This was the big time and I was failing miserably. I had to dig us out of a pit and I had no shovel and no axe with which to do it. During a confrontation with my boss about our dire straits, I said the following:
"I don't know what you want from me, I am working 14 hours a day"
and his response?
"Maybe you need to start working 16"
and in that moment, I was done. I said to the universe, get me outta here! I don't care what you come up with (and I really didn't) - I knew I needed to be out by December 31 for my own sanity.
And then my friend Jen presented an idea to me - come to Utah for a month and work at the Sundance Film Festival. And I did exactly that. I gave up a 6 figure job to make $8 an hour. I had customers tell me my job must be so stressful - ya know, when films that they wanted to see were sold out. I just smiled and said "nope, I love this". And I did.
But I was also a mess in that month. I was holding tight to a truly hopeless relationship. I wept for hours on a futon in the middle of Salt Lake City - I recounted every hour of that relationship. The wonderful moments and the slights and as I tallied them up, there were more slights than wonderful moments. I stopped referring to that person as my boyfriend which was LONG overdue and I put an ad on match.com. I came home from Utah with a renewed spirit to go and change my life. In a lot of way I succeeded, in a number I came up short but I learned a ton about myself and what I can make happen when I need to and where I still have work to do.
I was thinking of this time last night as I have started to reread "Eat, Pray, Love" - which I read during the trip to Utah. I'm reading it as such a different person than I was then. Our stories were the same, yet different. Certainly no one was paying me to spend a year in Italy, India and Bali to find my head, heart and soul but I did step WAY out of my comfort zone and explored the world in a way I never thought I would.
Thank god for risk taking.
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