I am not a risk taker. I’m a play it safer. Hard core. I don’t take chances. But I’m about to take a big risk, do something potentially stupid, and hope it doesn’t blow up in my face.
My nonprofit job has officially come to an end. I’ve been looking, but honestly, even the things I’ve applied for, I’m finding I don’t really want. I want to focus on grant writing. It appeals to me for about a million reasons. And it’s something I think I have a lot of potential to be good at.
Former boss told me I should just do it. Get a website. Put myself out there. I won’t get experience if I’m not doing it. Of course I raised questions and expressed doubts. That’s what I do. I’m a realist. But he thinks I should do it. And so does The Boy. And increasingly, so do I.
I talked to my manager and DM at the store–there are no full time positions open right now (which figures, but I don’t begrudge the girl who got the last one, she’s my friend and she needs it). But because I’m a ‘valuable part of the team’ and I’m flexible with both schedule and ability I’ve been given a raise and the promise of a solid schedule of hours through the holidays, and they will re-evaluate in January. Which sounds good to me. There is some solid money to be made in grant writing if I can get started. The really good part is that I am working on a contract with a friend who runs a nonprofit to do some work for her organization–which would be great to get me started.
I might be turning down some other options, passing up some things in effort to give this a shot. The Boy is behind it because we can work with my income from the store coupled with his income in the mean time (we really just need to get through a couple of months before I’d start seeing income from this other avenue). I’m at do or die time, though. I have to decide if I’m going to try to take an established path or forge my own. And as scary as it is, I think I want to forge my own path and see what happens.
Like Jillian Michaels says repeatedly in Unlimited you need to be able to clearly visualize what you want. I can see this. I can see myself running in the mornings, working–reading, researching, writing–then heading to the store for a shift. I can envision myself driving to meetings in different parts of the state during my off time from the store, and spreading my business cards through every possible networking opportunity. I can see it happening. Which I guess I should take as a good sign. 🙂