I am pretty confident that every time I visit California I wonder why I booked a return flight home. I try and remind myself that it’s okay because Indiana is where my family and friends are, but then I get home and I see the gray skies and I think “screw family and friends, the sunshine makes me happier than those people.” I apologize to any family and friends that I may have just offended, but I think we all know that the ocean beats you. I’m kidding. Kinda. But for real – you know how you wake up somewhere and you say out loud “what a gorgeous day it’s going to be!” and then you wake up the next morning and say the same thing and then on the fifth day you are all “shut up, we get it, it’s another gorgeous day and this type of life does exist for people who are much smarter than I..” and then you question every life decision that got you to the point of not living somewhere sunny and warm? The moral of the story is that I had a lot of heart to heart talks with myself last week.
Back to what I was saying though, the rainbow. Color was EVERYWHERE at this place. So much so that I considered putting on my leprechaun outfit and prancing around throwing out pots of gold but then I remembered I didn’t pack any gold [fail] so there I was, my normal non-leprechaun self, prancing around but not actually talking to anybody I didn’t know because I am extremely extroverted like that. Oops.
It was at this colorful conference that I had one of those life-changing epiphanies when one of the speakers was talking about her business and in response to the question of “if you could have done one thing different what would it be?” she said “for years I made my business be a giant zig-zag by pulling myself in directions that I didn’t need to go, when the whole time it could have been one straight path”. I think I cried a little. ONE STRAIGHT PATH! You mean I don’t have to be a crazy animal try to do everything all of the time?
And so then I put in my two weeks at my j-o-b and well…the rest is about to be history.
I have much more to share on that crazy topic in the coming weeks but for now, I’ll leave you with a picture of me casually walking in a parking lot holding an insane amount of colorful balloons while thinking one thing…
California, I think you may have just changed my life.