Restoration

I grew up on a sailboat. Pretty sure I was conceived on a sailboat too. Well at least that is what I tell myself. Water means everything to me. I am a Pisces, if you believe in that type of stuff. Many of the characteristics all make sense to me. The biggest one…I'm a dreamer. That is for sure. I have a million ideas and know that someday they will all become reality. At least that is what I keep telling myself. My husband, however, probably wants the reality to set in sooner than later. I am babbling. My father loved his sailboats. We had many. He even bought an old wooden sailboat to restore. It sat in our front yard until it was too far gone to repair. My point? Restoring ourselves is hard. Really hard. It takes a vast amount of courage and belief in your purpose. It takes a strong sense of character and a support system around you that is not afraid to tell you like it is. It takes time.

We go through many transitions in our lives and to those just starting out on your adventure I want to leave you with some advice. Make sense of who you are. Seems pretty generic, I know, but bear with me here. Through the years in my career, I changed my course several times. I often think back to the movie “Sliding Doors” or, in current times, any multi-dimensional narrative out there in movie land. So many options to take. Which ones are the best? How does a person decide that question? Is it financial stability? Career progress? Save a marriage? Health related? How do you make a choice that will affect you for the rest of your life? I wish I knew the right answer, but I can only share my experiences. The answer is... all of the above.

My career has been a roller coaster. All over the place. (Yep, a Pisces). Did I make the right decisions along the way? I left journalism school for business school. Switched degree programs and universities. Why? In looking back, I think it was because of fear. Yes, fear. I was in magazine and book publishing and I didn’t want to move to New York. Idiot!!!! So, I left Journalism and started over in business school. Seems so prosaic now, but it was retail, merchandising and management. Ooooo much more exciting! This restored my faith in having a career. After all, business is everywhere. Stores are everywhere. So many options for a career path;  buying, management, recruiting, operations, merchandising… I was revitalized! Until I wasn’t.

The one thing I know to be true is people need to believe in you. It only takes one to make you feel like crap and self-implode. I had that happen to me at the height of my career. So, I left and started fulfilling one of my crazy dreams. Entrepreneurship. I started my own business. I thought it would be a dream come true. I would be around for the masses who have experienced all that I have. I wanted to ensure they had the support I never had. I wanted to fill a mentor void I so desperately craved. I have, and I continue to do so, but I discovered I needed more along the way to fulfill the needs of others.  MORE KNOWLEDGE! Even after 20 plus years working in retail developing employees to be their best selves and leading many businesses to success, I wanted more. So, I made the decision to advance myself into the world of strategic HR. I have decided that in order to achieve all that I want, I need to know everything there is to start from scratch. I need this to revive a part of me that embraces employee empowerment and development processes.

I never thought it would be so hard starting over. At my age, a Gen Xer, starting over can be a crazy adventure in determination and deprivation. Studying for the PHR exam has been an eye-opening experience. I haven’t taken an exam or studied, for that matter, in 25 years. My brain has had to reach back into long-forgotten memories to figure out how. Through the course of this new adventure, I have learned so much more than I could have ever imagined. I have learned that many of the leaders, I have worked for over the years, should never have had those positions in the first place. I learned we drank too much Kool-Aid. Retail management means you are your own HR department. You learn from experience. Your policies were probably copied and pasted from other companies and your operations are a hatchet job of ifs and probable’s. Perhaps an employment lawyer signed off on your handbooks, but did they? Now I know this truth. I have taken classes and read over 1700 pages of text. I have learned from those in positions of policy and observed from afar just how much is needed out there. 

Now comes the tough part. What do I do with this newfound knowledge? Reinvent myself…again? I think back on the sailboat rotting in my parents’ yard. Am I going to end up like that? A pile of wood with good intentions of becoming something better or will I sail on the waves of Lake Superior with the wind at my back and set a course of discovery? Will I restore the person who had all the conviction to change the world one store at a time? The Pisces in me says I will discover a new land and live up to my potential. I better get to it.