Welcome to my Journey with The MidLife Crafters! This is not just a name, but a concept that embodies the fusion of creativity and technology and life decisions... a journey I'm excited to share with you.
How I Got Here:
Not one more day…not one more minute. That’s where my mindset was the morning I sent the email quitting my job. I couldn’t do one more Zoom call; not one more meeting, not one more discussion on the same thing we had already talked to death, but done nothing about; not one more second of watching “upper management” smile in people’s faces and then plot against them behind closed doors. I was done. I was done fretting and regretting. I was done watching my joy and peace slip away. The moment I hit send on that email, I felt a thousand pounds of weight lift off my shoulders. I felt a smile on my face…not just any smile, but the kind of smile that comes from inside your very soul that can even change the way you look. I was free, liberated from the chains of what had become a toxic environment for me.
Let me be really honest…ten seconds after I hit 'send' on that email, I realized I didn’t have any income coming in and had just given up my health insurance. That was a slightly different feeling. I was still free, but now I was free on a really tight budget.
I wasn’t entirely crazy (depending on who you ask). There was money in the bank, and I could budget it well enough to find a new job or start something new for myself. The idea of "start something new" was gradually rising to the forefront, but I wanted a backup plan just in case. After talking with some great friends I trust more than myself, I explored what it would take to get an Insurance Adjuster License... and I did it. After a couple of online courses and a state test later, I became a licensed independent insurance adjuster in Kentucky. Hooray! There are good opportunities and decent money in that work, but I wasn’t quite ready to commit to that. So what to do?
I have always had a pseudo-creative side. I can put together some decent sentences. My grammar and punctuation skills aren’t too shabby, and having a Grammarly subscription never hurt anything either. So I started writing. First, I wrote a Christian children’s book that wasn’t too bad at all. I had some great inspiration and discovered an absolute joy in creating it. I had written before, but now I have many more tools in my toolkit that allow me to blend my creative writing skills with my nerdy tech knowledge, bringing my thoughts and ideas to life. It was a powerful and empowering turning point. After years of being analytical, policy-driven, and number-oriented, I realized I could be creative and be good at it.
After that realization, the question became just how much of a creative person could I be? Was it just a phase, just a hobby, or was there something I could put myself in and stay in that could satisfy that need to make and the need to pay some bills too? The answer was a yes and a no. I could make some money and be creative, but I could also use my skills to work analytically and strategically. I could be both. Thus, Whitlock Enterprises was born. I can be purposeful with my work. I can take those analytical elements that I enjoy and still have a “creative division” that gives me an outlet for doing things that bring me true joy and happiness. The satisfaction of finding a balance between creativity and analytical work is truly reassuring and hopeful.
After some research and some brainstorming, I found a super-sweet laser engraving machine. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I thought that now is as good a time as any to branch out and try something new. And lo and behold…I love it. And, I’m not too bad at making that machine work. The beauty of this is that it is a combination of creativity and technology, which is the perfect blend of what I want to do!
My dear husband, Jon, retired a few years ago and is home most of the time. He is much more creative than I am, and he loves to paint and do things like that. With his assistance, we started experimenting with making different types of crafts on the new machine. The work has come out way better than I ever imagined. And with these pieces, I made a conscious decision to focus on positive and spiritual themes. The world has too many negative and dark images. I’m definitely not going to contribute anymore. I have spent a significant amount of time since quitting my job focusing on growing my spiritual life and drawing closer to God. I can do that by making things that show the beauty of the world, love for one another, and most importantly, worship the Lord.
It’s incredible how setting your mind right and deciding to take a step that is in total faith changes everything. To circle back to where we started…for me, there is complicity in doing nothing when others do wrong. When you see the actions of others having negative impacts on those that you know and care about, and you do nothing about it, you then have ownership in those bad actions. To find peace and joy, I had to leave behind what was toxic and, dare I say, corrupt in my life. And I did.
So, if you are so inclined, join the journey of The MidLife Crafters as we explore the world of being creatively technical.
In the next post, I’ll go into the details of why I call this crafting endeavor, The MidLife Crafters…and maybe I’ll spill some more tea on what caused me to make the decision I made when I made it.