The beginning of a new year is a good time to pause and reflect on your life and think about what’s working and what’s not. To paraphrase Thoreau, are you really going confidently in the direction of your dreams and living the life you imagined?
If not, what can you do about it?
The first step to changing your life is you. If you never have the courage to dream that impossible dream, you certainly can’t start taking steps to make it happen. If you feel trapped in a cubicle and stuck in a 9 to 5 job you loathe, maybe it’s time to embrace the idea of leaving the cubicle forever. (I did and I’ve never regretted it.)
Frankly, I think there’s something wrong with the whole concept of cubicles. It’s wrong to stuff people into little boxes and expect them to work. There was a time in my life where I would have done anything for a door. I was working as an editor at a publishing company where presumably to save money, they made the cubicle walls only 4 feet high. Most people would realize that editors need peace and quiet to do their work. Yet apparently the temptation to yell over four-foot high cubicle walls is just too great because people constantly yelled over my wall across the room to folks on the other side of the building.
These days, I do have a door and the only thing I hear is the occasional groan of a dog lazily rolling over to get more comfortable. My four dogs are far better office-mates than the people I worked with at the publishing company. For one thing, the dogs get extra credit points for never, ever using a speaker phone.
In any case, the process of getting from depressed technical editor toiling away in a tiny cubicle in San Diego to happy self-employed publisher working amidst the forests of Idaho has been a long, strange trip. It hasn’t always been easy, but it all started with an idea.
I hate the overused term “think outside the box” but in order to dream big, you do need to let your mind wander. In our case, the tiny germ of an idea that completely changed our life came about while we were on vacation walking around a tiny mountain town in the rain back in 1994. We realized that some of the people who lived there might be telecommuting and it didn’t matter where they lived.
Sometimes big ideas are so simple you could miss them, if you aren’t really paying attention. But we didn’t miss this one. The idea of being “location independent” set us on the path of self-employment and restructuring our life into one we love. The Internet was our ticket out of the big city and the hideous cubicles of Corporate America. Two months after our idea, we got a business license and Logical Expressions was born. Two years later, in 1996, we realized our dream of moving ourselves, our cats, and our business to the mountains of Idaho.
A couple of years ago we decided to become publishers. Now we have published 8 books and one software program. It all starts with an idea. So as we forge ahead into a new year, I encourage you to go out for a walk. Let your mind wander. Think about what your life could be. Whether it’s changing jobs, losing weight, moving, or starting a business, you are the one with the power to make it happen. Then go forth and make this year the best one yet.