In April of 2009, I recognized that I was, and had been for a long time, gratefully accepting a paycheck while working a job I did not enjoy. From that light bulb moment, this website was born in concept even though it took me well over thirteen months to evolve the idea into reality. One great motivating factor was the termination of my two year plus employment on July 24, 2009.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I like and thoroughly enjoy the people I worked with, loved the company’s mission and goals and feel grateful for the experience. However, since re-entering the workplace in 2004, I’ve mentally felt like the round peg being forced into a square hole. While I’m pretty good at what I do, I was missing that personal satisfaction I think most people look for from my work. Add to that the 70 plus hour work weeks on average, and I’ve spent a lot of downtime vegetating in front of the television or with a book in hand and little to no time actually figuring out a few crucial questions that have been floating around my brain for well over a decade.
These questions can be summed up as:
- Who am I really?
- What do I want from life?
- What is/are my passion(s)?
- How can I make a living while living passionately, finding personal fulfillment and figuring out what I like to do and what I want from life?
- How can I make a living while being kind to myself, my friends and my family including spending quality time with them?
I know, I know… everyone has these questions, right? And most people are out there punching the 9 to 5 plus clock in order to make the money needed. Passions are for the really rich or really poor and the bulk of us, the in-between, just hope we have enough time and energy on the weekends to cater to our likes and wants. Right?
Not exactly. First, I can’t believe it has to be that way. I know many people who live a life following their passions and pursuing their individual goals. Second, I think it is easier to know what we don’t want than to figure out what it is we do want. When once to describe my perfect job, I was only able to express all the things I did not want – my perfect job was an amalgam of dislikes, irritants and clients I wished to avoid and based entirely on negativity. Not once did I – nor could I – provide a positive description of the kind of job that would be perfect for me for two reasons: 1) I have no idea what I want and 2) I did know that the options available to me at that time were boundaries confining me to a job or jobs that I had no passion for doing.
In October of 2009, I decided to use this website as a personal journal to discover the things I do like. My goal was nothing short of figuring out who I am as a person and what passions, goals and positive traits make up that person. What actually happened was I started my own company and business BOOMED. While this is great, I lost sight of my questions, my goals and my desire to find balance in my life.
But that’s the beauty of life. You can always dust yourself off and get right back on track again. So in July of 2010, one year after walking away from gainful employment and ten months after starting my own company, I moved to California in pursuit of the perfect wave, and with one goal in mind: live my passions daily. We’re one year plus in and so far, so good.
My name is Jeri Gloege. I am obsessed with my daughter’s freckles, making the perfect cup of coffee, and finding the perfect shade of green, and taking a picture of it. I have a love/hate relationship with my hair. I live with my amazing daughter, one orange tabby who hates cats, one black lab who is obsessed with licking his little, orange, fuzzy counterpart and two insane puppies named Marzi and Rascal whose antics keep us in stitches on a daily basis. The rest I’ll figure out as I go along.
If you want to email me, please do so at jeri at lifeinflux dot com.
You will also find me on facebook and very soon on flickr. I’m sure I’m other places at random on the Interweb, too.
