Welcome to my new world...
So here I am, finally melding my true loves - blending life coaching and design into one world!
How did I get here? It's been no easy feat...
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February 2022, has been a month of crazy dates. Not dinner dates. More like significant anniversary dates. Some of you may know of my long, long (it feels very, very long) history working as a nurse. It's been a great job that has seen me travel the globe and meet some of the most amazing humans on the planet.
However, in the last 8 years of my nursing career, things drastically changed. The structure, changed, the people changed, and I changed. The job I once loved wasn't the same anymore. On the 19th of February, 2021, I reached my tipping point. I found it an impossible environment to thrive in and whilst others were willing to settle among it, I couldn't. I had so much to explore in life. So much to offer, but I was slowly being drained of it all.
My creativity had been calling me for years. Yelling, actually. And it took a complete breakdown that lasted the better part of the past year for me to realise what I'd been tolerating, how broken I had become and what it was that I really wanted to do with my life. Walking away that day, saved my life. Literally. I had no clue what I was going to do but I knew I couldn't go back. Not for another second. I was done.
I met with a friend two days later for coffee. We hadn't seen each other for a year. She asked me the life changing question, "Could you live on an island...?" 80 days later, I walked through the front door of my new home after selling my old home of 18 years. With possessions purged, I drove onto a barge with my little dog at my side and I sailed to my tiny island and began life all over again. It was exhausting, exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure but there has not been one regret about leaving that old life behind. Not one.
I went with the clear vision of finding me again. Pursuing my creative love of design and also finishing my studies I'd started a year earlier to become a life coach.
I started my foray into the design world about ten years ago. Dabbling in fabric design and then discovering my love for illustration. It's been my saviour and the gratitude I have for this craft is indescribable. It's kept me sane.
I've also been bolstered by a daily meditation practise.
It's become my rock and I feel my world sliding south whenever I veer from its path. It's helped anchor me to what's real, explore what's imagined to reframe and rewrite the stories I tell myself. And it's been crucial for focus in the past year as I approached the end of my studies. I needed a career change where I could really help people, and co create a better way forward with them - without unwanted bureaucracy blocking the way. And I found it in life coaching.
Which leads me back to the February anniversaries... I started contemplating the renewal of my nursing rego. Do I? Don't I? On the 16th Feb, I jumped on the AHPRA site to investigate my options and realised the following day was my 36 year anniversary of registering as a nurse. (It really does feel longer...). but there it was in cold hard digital print, 17th Feb, 1986. For those of you playing at home, this makes me ancient yet more motivated now than I've ever been. It's amazing how alive you can feel when you purge the decay from your life.
The irony of the dates wasn't lost. I started my nursing career on the 17 Feb and left on the 19th Feb, 36 years later. So there lay Friday, the 18th Feb...the meat in the sandwich! I was due to sit my final life coaching exam, so when I checked in for a booking date, the 18th sat vacant and welcoming. It was obvious. It had to be done. So I booked it, crossing fingers that I would pass and not taint the significant career anniversary run. The following Monday came the joyous news that I'd passed and so the18th of Feb joined the anniversary ranks.
To add to the happy occasions, then came Saturday the 20th. It was my first big attempt (tiny island big...so not that big at all...) selling my greeting card designs at the local market. And to my delight, they sold. And it was good !
The icing on the cake was the Sunday, the 21st Feb, marking the year anniversary of the conservation with a good friend that sent me on the trajectory of a lifetime. I still sometimes can't believe I am here, nestled among all the beautiful wildlife, the ocean a two minute stroll away. It really is my creative paradise and the perfect place to thrive.
So in closing, if you have a big wild dream that is hankering for your attention - take notice, be courageous and back yourself.
It's totally, totally worth it...