Friday Chats: Shoot for the Moon, Land in the Stars

It has been a little over 2 months since I left my full-time government job to pursue my nutrition private practice. I wanted to share how things have been going, but I also wanted to share a note about life and happiness.

I never talked about this in the blog before but I was really unhappy at my old job. I was only there for 10 months, but I was miserable the whole time. I cried several times per week and started developing anxiety on Sundays knowing I had to go back to work on Monday. I had never experienced anything like that before in my entire life. I accepted the job for a huge pay increase and not working any weekends or holidays but I quickly realized that those things didn’t matter when I considered how unhappy I was.

To be completely honest, my job situation is what gave me the motivation I needed to start my own private practice. I have always dreamed of owning my own business and now that I’m finished with my education, this seemed like the push I needed to move forward. I always said that I wanted to start my business part-time, but deep down my hope was to become busy enough to transition to full-time.

I started working on the back end of my practice in October of last year and officially launched things to the public in January. After all of the hours upon hours I spent setting up my business and website, I then rolled through the winter and spring working even harder on marketing and trying to start my client base. I woke up at 5am every morning, worked all day at my FT job and then spent 2 hours of commuting before I could even start on my business stuff in the evenings. The best way I can describe it is “hustle”.

I got to a fork in the road in the spring, and it’s a place many entrepreneurs find themselves: My full-time job was holding me back from growing my private practice, but I couldn’t afford to rely solely on my private practice for income. This went on for several months- all while being miserable and depleting all of my mental energy at my FT job. It got to a point where my schedule was completely crazy and I had to ask myself how important it was for me to continue to pursue growing my private practice. The answer? very important.

Despite saving money like it was going out of style and having a nice financial cushion, I didn’t want to just quit my job with no safety net. But one day the stars aligned, and I was offered a PRN inpatient clinical job AND a part-time wellness job all in the same week. I knew that this would be enough to get me by, so I took a leap of faith and I put in my notice at my full-time job (insert peace out emjoi here).

So here I am! My schedule has continued to be crazy over the past two months, maybe even crazier than before between my two jobs and seeing clients. I am working weekends, holidays, nights, and all the times   But something kind of bizarre is that I am a million times happier with my career than I’ve ever been. I feel very fulfilled when I meet with clients and know that I am helping them. I love that I have some control over my schedule and that I am no longer commuting an absurd amount every day. I love that I can take time off of work when I choose. Last year, I missed my best friend’s friday night wedding because I didn’t have enough PTO to take the day off of work. I knew then how important it was for me to have autonomy over my schedule to not miss out on life experiences. Now that I’m on my own, I got to see B get an award in Texas in July, and I traveled to Kentucky and Massachusetts to meet his entire family at a family reunion after we got engaged. These are things I never would have been able to do without making this career change, and I would hate to think about how it would’ve felt to miss out on them.

My point of sharing this experience so far is to let you know how worth it this has been to live my life more for things that I value- feeling worth in my career, being able to experience life with the people I care about, and living in a state of mental peace and happiness. Taking that leap of faith was scary but it was worth it. So if you feel like there is something major in your life that could be changed for the better but are scared then I say- go for it! Shoot for the stars. Things may not end up the way you had envisioned initially, but if you make smart decisions and trust your gut then I bet you will end up in a happier situation.

Thanks for letting me share this with you today. I hope you have a great weekend!