After my husband died, I made a vow to myself to find my self-confidence, to strengthen and listen to my inner voice, and to allow myself to be my authentic self. The problem is that I’m no longer even sure who that is. When someone asks me what I want most out of life, I can’t honestly say. I’ve done plenty of meditations, hoping to discover what lights my fire or what might be my highest calling. Every fall, I start wondering whether I should continue paying my spring travel agency fees for one more year, and I always wind up giving in and doing so because I’m just not sure. I make lists of pros and cons, ask friends, pray about it, and meditate on it. And then, just when I think I’m ready to hang it up, I find an inspiration that makes me want to keep doing it.
The problem is, I set out to make it something fun to do. It was a way for me to supplement our income a little and afford me the ability to pay for travel and hobbies on my own. I had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and I was tired of having to ask my husband to work my fun into his budget. I felt like I was having to beg. That’s another story for another day, but suffice it to say that I needed something that I could control, and this little work-from-home travel agency thing seemed like the perfect fit. It was never supposed to be a full-time job.
I started it with a friend. We did the training, came up with our name and logo, built a website, and started booking group cruises for our friends and family. My friend bailed out pretty quickly. I think she figured out that it just didn’t sell itself, and all those friends and family she hoped to sell vacations to were still doing it on their own instead of giving their business to her.
I worried about it at the time, but I found other people to help me. They weren’t travel agents, but they were craft instructors, and they had access to potential clients I didn’t have on my own. Keeping up with the travel aspect was easy, but creating high-quality workshops and amenities for our groups was a lot of work. I enjoyed coming up with the ideas. The ladies who contracted to help me were skilled and experienced. Unfortunately, some of them were less than diligent about meeting their obligations, and one even turned traitorous, beginning to stir up the other members of the group. It was an ugly situation, and I cried many tears over it before I cut ties with all of them and started over again. For a time, the business was growing, I had a trustworthy group of organizers, and we were running several cruises every year with different groups. Then COVID hit.
I waited a long time after the cruise industry and the American government gave the all-clear to travel again before I started thinking about my travel business. I’ve written numerous articles on this blog about what my family was going through at that time. Eventually, I got up the nerve to try again, and instead of going back to my crafting groups, I decided to try my hand at hosting a metaphysical group. Christen and Amber were on board, and we considered doing a Modern Musings cruise. I partnered with the owner of a local metaphysical store, and we organized a highly successful cruise. In the end, it became his group, not mine. I just completed the travel portion, and he organized all the classes. And since he wanted to do it in the fall, right in the middle of the school year, Amber didn’t even get to go.
Still, it went a long way towards rebuilding my confidence in myself and my business, and the store owner came back to me with a request for a group trip to Paris, which I’ve also mentioned frequently. Along with that, we also planned a cruise to Alaska, but I had a hard time convincing him to focus on promoting both trips simultaneously. I didn’t speak up. In the end, we ran out of time to encourage the Alaskan trip, and it was cancelled. Then the store owner found a different travel agent to handle his next trip, and I have not taken any steps to grow or promote my business since. Instead, I’ve been sitting here wondering if I should just give it up altogether.
Then, something interesting happened. Remember that inspiration that always hits me right when I’m ready to give up? I attended a conference last fall and was inspired all over again. I’ve had a few brief conversations with a friend about starting up another crafting cruise, and I have an abundance of ideas I’ve been collecting for it, but six months later, I just haven’t been able to make myself commit. Additionally, this conference inspired me to consider organizing a wellness or goal-setting cruise. I was even inspired to consider teaching a class (or two) at the conference next year to attract new customers, podcast listeners, and blog readers. But all of these things would need support – human support. I can’t do it alone. And here, once again, is the fear. What if I can’t get anyone to help me? Or what if they volunteer, but they don’t really help? What if we can’t get enough participants like the Alaskan cruise? What if…. That fear freezes me.
Last fall, on our Living Fearlessly podcast, Christen suggested reframing that “what if” into an “even if,” and I can see how that could work for many things, but I’m not sure how it applies in this case. I suppose that if I try and it fails, that could be an answer to give up, but then I am tormented by what I should do with all that inspiration. Is it the teaching that I’m inspired to do? Or is it the organizing? It comes back again to the indecision of not knowing what I really want. How much of what I desire is governed by fear? If the fear wasn’t there, would I want this or that? If I had no fear, what would I choose? If I knew I could not fail, what would I choose?
That’s the big question, isn’t it? Or is it really, “How can I do it all?” Right now, I have no answers, but I look forward to exploring the options in more detail as the year progresses.
