There are days when I wish I was a little more of a risk taker. Having had to be the 'adult' in every situation my entire life, I never got the chance to just take the risk and see what happened. I always had someone relying on me to pay the bills, put food on the table, keep a roof over our heads. Even when I was little, I was the one who had to make sure the others got fed and off to school. My parental guidance was missing in action. I had no roll model to learn from so I did what I felt needed to be done, giving no time for trying new things. If I had one thing I regretted from my childhood it was having real parents who cared enough to really be there as parents and do their jobs!
Not that I am unhappy, not for a second. I love what I have in my life now and wouldn't change it for the world. Early on after my husband passed and after I survived my cancer scare, life looked incredibly short in comparison to how it looked before. I did take a big risk. With the help of a friend who had the same passion as I did, we opened a restaurant. It was amazing to put our love of coffees and baked goods into our daily business and survive. It was also but so worth it. One of those things I could scratch off the old bucket-list.
Since then I have had other small businesses. My art and photography would be what I would love to do fulltime but living where I do, I have not found a way to make them profitable enough to live on and honestly I don't want to be a starving artist. I like to play and travel too much. I still have people relying on me to be able to help when needed so that is not as much of an option as I would like. As I said, I need to win the lottery. Or...Maybe I need to learn to take the risk. I need to figure out what I can cut from my life to allow more to risk so in the future I can focus on mainly what I love instead of wasting hours of my day for a company who only knows me as a number and could care less if I am financially stable or successful. They care only about their bottom line. Nothing about the minions who do the daily grind to make them that money. Why is it corporate America has lost sight of the people who actually do the work? Is it all companies or just the ones I have worked for that don't seem to care? They don't give raises when they should even if you get highest marks on reviews. The insurance they offer is so bad that we pay for it only so we don't get penalized for not having it yet hope we never have to use it because we couldn't afford the deductible due to never getting the raises to get us to a livable wage. Is this the norm now in Corporate America? It makes me sad for all college kids coming into Corporate America now with hundreds of thousands in school loans not knowing that this is what it is really like.
Well, guess this is where I sign off for the day so I can log into my corporate America job and start my daily grind. Some day I will learn to take that risk, that leap of faith in myself and do what I love instead of what pays bills, sort of.
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