In June of 2011, I was sitting in my corner office in a building filled with co-workers and managers I liked and respected where we did important work that I enjoyed, and I had a moment.

I’d had enough.

“Enough” for me wasn’t defined as “I never want to see anyone in this building again and I hope it burns to the ground”, it was simply… enough.

I started my life in office environments before I was 6. My parents owned a franchise and it was their life. I was an only child and so I spent most of my time in the office watching my parents run their very successful business. It was no surprise then that when I got my first job, it was as an evening and weekend receptionist, not a paper route or a retail job. From the age of 14 on there have only minor breaks in my office employment (mostly for school, in the arts – not business – go figure). I thrive in this type of environment because if there’s one thing I know, it’s business.

But on Wednesday, June 23 at roughly 11 am, I’d simply reached my limit. I’d had enough.

Enough had been building for a while for me. I’ve always run my own businesses, or at least, had side projects that I ran with zest and pizzazz, and it had occurred to me that I just wasn’t doing the kind of work I really wanted to be doing.

I wanted to work directly with people who needed support and assistance to make their businesses truly great. These are wonderful, beautiful people who are simply stuck in the way that we all get stuck sometimes, and just need a helping hand to guide them. These people – these small business owners – are out there doing some of the best, most important work in the world and I wanted to help them do it.

So I did.

I left my very stable, very good job in the non-profit arts sector and struck out on my own.

And I’ve never been happier.

In 2010, my guiding word for the year was “CHANGE”, and there was a lot of it. In 2011, my guiding word was “GROWTH”, and there was a lot of that, too. But with growth comes change, and it would seem that the kind of growth I did in 2011 led to a huge amount of change – deep, groundbreaking, life-changing change.

That makes my 2012 a year of growth again, but instead I choose “ADVANCEMENT”.

I’m going to take my world and build on it. I’ve changed the administrative workflow on my online magazine. It’s going to revolutionize the way we provide content to our readers. We’re going to be a force to be reckoned with. I’m taking classes to build on my pre-existing skills (have the ability to self-teach is an asset, being completely self-taught is sometimes not). And I’m going to attend to my sprouting business like the world’s best gardener.

Hello 2012. We’re going to awesome things together.

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