Hello,
I hope this note finds you well. I've been home from Spain for a month or so now and have had a chance to visit with many of you! After visiting with family and friend, the inevitable question needed to be addressed: now what? What career/job did I want to do next? Heck if I know!
I find myself feeling very timid about just jumping into something new. Perhaps this is because any type of training I go through (currently I'm considering travel school), will cost an arm and a leg. Teaching is where I thought my passion was but now I feel like there is something else I'd enjoy doing better. I really like the idea of being an expert at something because to be honest, I really like feeling important, wanted, needed.
I'm not sure what my dream job would be and I feel very lost overall. I've been trying to soul search and figure out what I want to do for almost 2 years now! So far I'm interested in travel, healthcare, and the non-profit sector. Spain happened because I decided that I needed an adventure to travel and to try something new. Why Spain? I'm a Spanish speaker and wanted to improve my skills. I often refer to myself as a language geek! While it was very scary to go somewhere around the world where I didn't know anyone, it was also an amazing experience and a great time for personal growth. Sometimes I still can't believe I made that all happen!
Upon returning from my trip I started reading the book, The Happiness Project. In this book, the other gives a few tips about figuring out what you want and one thing she did that helped her was start a blog. This book came to me highly recommended by a friend and I'd recommend it to anyone. It's not a self-help book per se, but gives some really great ideas about improving life overall from the author's own trial and error methods in her life. So the other night after reading the section about starting a blog, I began to think about what I like to do that could be a blog. The thing that came to me was: something travel related. I had a wonderful time traveling in Europe last summer and in Spain this past summer/fall. When I got the travel bug, I got it bad! So I started considering turning my travels blog from Spain into a tips for travelers type blog. I did a fair amount of advising when I worked at ExOfficio as customers would often treat us like travel advisers and not just travel clothing salespeople.
My travel blog is likely to happen, just for fun if nothing else. I feel a little bit awkward about it because right as I was brainstorming this idea, a good friend of mine started a travel blog. While it's fabulous to share a passion, I don't want to step on her toes. We'll see. I think it would be fun to have some sort of side project to work on (besides my knitting, of course) and writing is something I enjoy and would like to improve upon.
In my job searching, I've stumbled across a few travel advising jobs and thought they sounded like fun. I've applied for them and tried to follow up, but so far to no avail. The search goes on! If you have any helpful tips or insight, I'd really appreciate it.
Take care and be well. Cuidate mucho!
Ashley
