Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Jacque Goes to Nashville

Last weekend my husband gave me a wonderful gift: a weekend away to do something that was just for me.

My fellow Moms, Dads and family caretakers of every kind understand what a gift that is.

You see, I am sort of in the midst of what could be a mid-life crisis. I say "sort of" because there is no way I can be old enough to be in mid-life, right?

Anyway, I have felt very unmotivated and unrewarded in my job over the past several years. Not a good thing when it comprises 50+ hours of my life each week.

For a while I have been asking questions like:
  • What would I rather be doing?
  • What's my passion?
  • What's my purpose in life?
  • What do I want to be when I grow up?
  • Why do I have this much stress over preparing an email for someone else to send that no one will read when there are people in Africa with no clean drinking water?
The result of the dissatisfaction with my job has been that I have changed jobs (within the same company) 4 times in 4 years. Yeah, it didn't make a darn bit of difference.

So what, you ask, does all this have to do with Nashville? Hold your horses, I'm getting there.

I went to Nashville to attend Jon Acuff's Quitter Conference. I have been reading Jon's blog Stuff Christians Like since the day it was launched around 4 years ago. Jon's writing is mostly hilarious and sometimes soul-wrenching as he focuses on what it means to be a Christian. He is also someone who was a self-professed serial "quitter," who had 8 different jobs in 8 years trying to find that one dream job. Once he did get his dream job, he wrote a book called Quitter to help others rediscover their passions and get out of the "I'm a _____ but I want to be a ______" rut. People like me.

You see, I'm a communications manager but I want to be a millionaire philanthropist stay-at-home Mom.

Ok, well perhaps that one is a bit unrealistic, especially with the current economic environment and my lack of wealthy relatives.

More realistically, I'm a communications manager but I want to be writer. Or a coach. Or a dozen other things different from what I am doing now.

The question is how do I get from here to there?

And that's why I went to Nashville. To hang out with 183 other "Quitters" who want to make to their dream job a reality.

Do I know what my dream job is? Nope. Still not sure. But this past weekend gave me lots of time to think and consider and wonder and ponder. And that, my friends, is a gift.

And even better than all that, I got to stay in the best accommodations that the Nashville area offers: Chez Saxon.

Thank you Karen Marie, Dale and Claire for welcoming me into your beautiful home and making me feel like family. And when Claire releases her first CD I can tell everyone I knew her when!
(Me, Claire, Karen Marie)

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