It’s been a week since I’ve relocated back up to Pennsylvania from South Carolina. The first few days were emotional for me. Every little thing was a trigger to me. I did a lot of crying, hugged Lucy a lot. My sister has been great during the transition. I know that I have disrupted her normal routines, but she has not complained.

While I plan on continuing the candy business on the side here in Pennsylvania, I want to go back to the corporate world, odd as it sounds, I missed it. Yes, I am a workaholic. My first week up here I have been changing address stuff, job searching / meeting with recruiters, organizing my room and getting Lucy settled into things.

I have also done a lot of thinking, I keep trying to figure out, “Why.” While I believe everything happens for a reason, I still want to know the reason and the lesson that was involved in the failure of the business and other things that happened during my journey.

In December 2014, I left Pennsylvania to go out on a journey of self-discovery. I started the journey in Charlotte, North Carolina and ended it in York, South Carolina. I did learn a lot about my self and others. Actually, this journey opened my eyes to the good, bad, and ugly of people.

In a future blog I am going to write more about adult bullying because it is a real thing and it happened to me a few times during the 3-year journey. It is not a good feeling when you are bullied as an adult. What I want to say now briefly about adult bullying is this, first, don’t bully someone. If you are an adult and you know you bully – DON’T, if you are a kid reading this and bully – DON’T. It isn’t cool, it is wrong, and you have no idea how your bullying will affect the person you are doing it to. The second thing I want to mention is, if someone tells you they were bullied, please do not make them feel worse by telling them they did not handle the situation correctly or you would have fought back. You never know how you will react until you are in the situation. Do not belittle their feelings or actions they took. Trust me, that was done to me and made me feel so horrible and very much alone each time I was bullied.

As I’m analyzing my three years in the south and then specifically the past year in York, I know that I was meant to be everywhere I was for a reason. I was also meant to cross the paths of various people to learn more about human nature. Even though I seen the ugliness of people, I also seen the best side of people in some families who will forever be part of my life and stuck by me through the lemons (personal and business) and never left my side or my heart.

My journey was not just to rediscover myself, such as what do I like to do, it was also a spiritual journey. I have had many spiritual guides and continue on that journey even up here in Pennsylvania. For so many years I felt lost and alone, again these were feelings I had on the inside, maybe not what was actually going on. As I have discovered over this journey, I did have my family, but since we didn’t talk openly as much as we should, I felt I was alone. That is not the feeling I have today.

My time in Charlotte taught me about the corporate world and situations I do not want to put myself in again as I journey back there. My time in York, taught me about small town politics and why you should not make decisions with just your heart. You need to listen to your gut and your brain. I made mistakes that I knew were mistakes as I was making them but I still did it because of my heart. That is how you fail at business. I’ve learned, I’ve listened and I’m ready. I will write about lemons in business and my mistakes. But in a nutshell, you need to listen to all three areas, heart, gut, and brain. If one is yelling / screaming at you, you need to listen.

The message I want to convey today to you all is this, do not give up on your dreams. Sometimes when you follow them, you fail (like I did), but that just means the dream needs tweaking. It does not mean you give up and stop following it. In actuality I did realize my dream, it may have failed for the first attempt, but how many people can say they got to live their dream.

When I was 12 years old, I wanted to own a candy store. A retail candy store made sense when I was 12, it was 1981. A retail store like I did in York, SC would have flourished because we didn’t have internet ordering and other distractions to take away from sales at a physical retail store. Think about it, back in the 80’s retail stores (including small businesses) were doing great, now look at them they are closing down, stores we grew up with are either gone, will be gone or are slimmed down like Kmart, Toys R Us, Sears, Kaufmann’s, Hills, Radio Shack, etc. The list goes on and on.

My 12-year old dream just needs updated to 2018. Meaning I need to revamp my blog website to handle orders. I need to look at having a commercial kitchen to work out of instead of leasing a big space to handle selling and making. I will still be following my dreams, just not in the original way. Which is ok because I am not giving up.

Life is way too short to be fearful of failure. I feared failure instead of embracing it for what it was, a lesson. Life is also too short to just exist. We were put on this earth for a reason. Some people were put here to challenge others. Some were put here to be living angels (I have so many living angels in my life). Others were put here to do bad things to remind us that life is precious. You need to search your soul for self-discovery to find your purpose in life. I feel I’m here to help others in various ways, one way is in writing. You get to read about things I’ve gone through and how I’ve dealt with them. I may not deal with things the same way others would, but it gives you options and things to think about.

Look deep into your dreams and do some soul searching. Find out why you are here. Get out there in the world and live! Follow your dreams no matter how big or small.

Song quote alert again…. Another Garth Brooks song, “Standing Outside The Fire” (written by Jenny L. Yates and Garth Brooks). The chorus in the song really resonates:
Life is not tried it is merely survived
If you’re standing outside the fire

Live – do not merely survive!!! God knows I’m not standing outside the fire anymore – I’m right in the middle “dancing” seeing what I can do next.