Hanging Out Your Mother Of Reinvention Blues To Dry

I've been laid off from my job for almost 18 months now. I worked in accounting for about three years for a company that ran their business like it was the 1970s.  My job mostly included good organizational and people skills. Most everything I did was done manually from filling out vouchers to paying the bills. Finding a job like that again is pretty slim in the day and age of computer savvy businesses. So I'm re-inventing myself and trying to figure out what to do.


I started my Etsy shop a few months after I got laid off. It took awhile to feel comfortable navigating my way around "Etsyworld." After a few months and with some help from other shop owners my business started falling into place.  I have obsessed about my business and spent hours online researching the ways of Etsy. I've been on FaceBook, Tweeter, making Treasury collections and tweaking my shop daily for hours at a time. My shop is coming along just fine but I'm still in the reinvention mode of finding what works for me and what is best for me.

I want to change some things in my life and I'm trying to figure all of it out. For the most part I feel  happy about my life. I'm making new friends, trying to eat healthier, trying to stay positive and to live my life in a fuller way. Change is scary and you have to check yourself and your motivation. You can't want to change because you admire something in someone else and want to be just like them. What they are doing for themselves may not be the right thing for you to be doing for your life. You have to stop and sit and ponder what it is you really want and need for you. How can you reinvent yourself and create a "new" you ?

Fear has held me back in my life many times. Fear of failure, fear of looking stupid, fear of rejection, fear of being alone, fear of being poor, fear of gaining weight, fear of old age and the list goes on. So how do you take all of the ideas in your head that you have about how you want to be and turn them into something solid and concrete? I can sit and spin my wheels and try to come up with ideas and ways to change but if I give up or say it's too hard, then I will never take the steps I need to make the change.

When I got divorced ten years ago after being married almost 25 years the biggest obstacle I faced was reinventing myself. My kids were grown, I was alone in a new place, I was loosing my business and I was starting to date after all of those years of being married. I was like a fish out of water making bad decisions and running around like a chicken with no head. It took me several years after bad relationships, moves, jobs and sorrows to finally be comfortable in my new skin. To this day I'm not so sure I'm all that comfortable in it anyway.

Life is a  series of changes from moves, jobs, new relationships, friends, pets, cars, goals, aging, children, grandchildren and many other happenings of life. It's all in the way you deal with it that really affects your life for the good or for the not so good.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels restless at times and desires change and who wants to be who they are inside and quit hiding it away out of fear of rejection. How do you deal with change or the reinvention of yourself? Do you let fear hold you back? Do you feel insane and alone in these feelings? I know I'm not alone in what I feel.  I think by having the courage to talk about these things I'm helping myself and hopefully someone else too.
Does that make sense?

This post is not about anything vintage....my apologies.