Starting over...and enjoying it this time

[TxZen]

I am finding my new career path to be quite enjoyable. I have about 1 year of college ahead of me and I am picking up experience working for free with a few different businesses in town. I love the exploring, the getting to know about things I honestly never knew existed, the lingo, the pace, such a different industry for me from the healthcare I have known over the past 22 years. I feel 18 again. :) It's exciting!!!

Has anyone else here started over, career wise, and found you surely enjoyed the process? Thanks.

[Zoe Girl]

What is the new career field? I may be taking a serious shift so I will watch your progress.

[TxZen]

Marketing and Communications. Many moons ago, I worked for a catering company. I enjoyed it so much. I enjoyed scouting the locations, working with the client to deliver a quality product, going to product shows, sending out snail mail to drum up business, etc. When I worked at my last job, part of building a new hospital was having to come up with ways to attract patients and their families to our facility and our departments in particular. We had to make up logos, sayings, figure out how we were going to sell this "idea", go out and do customer point of contact informational sessions, make sure we were monitoring our progress, etc. I was also able to work on projects outside my department and scope- Bras for a Cause, Veteran's Day Project, new business developments and even teaching a class on critical thinking skills and another on privacy. I held a public class on how to use your medical records and information for your best outcome and I had to choose the venue, make up the marketing material, recruit customers and do a little PR with some local companies and I loved it.

I have been looking for a more creative outlet for my skills and abilities and just something new. I also enjoyed the creativity process and delivering a product, no matter what it was for. I received a lot of praise for my work and the Marketing Director told me in 25 years of hiring people, she has never met someone so passionate about a job that I don't get paid for nor as creative and outside the box thinking. She also told me she would disown me as a friend if I didn't act on my abilities. :)

[SteveinMN]

I was a computer geek (performance-testing software) at a Fortune 100 company. When I switched to being a sole-proprietor photographer, there were many duties I never had before. Buying tools, defining my market, actual marketing, filling out forms for licenses and insurance, creating business cards, finding overflow temporary help. It was nice that I was no longer one cog in a huge machine. I did it. Or I didn't. Yes, I found a whole lot of energy to do that. Even after a day working the HSSJ. :-)