Posted by Forest on May 30, 2008
While prepping the house for sale last weekend, I ran out of boxes and knew that we had plenty of empty ones in the “book room” at my business partner’s house. So I drove over there to get some boxes and we ended up having an impromptu meeting where we basically talked over the future of the business and I essentially quit. As much as I love the book business, there are just more important things that are taking up my time these days.
We hashed out a quick plan on what the split was going to look like and we both left satisfied. I’m getting a payout and he’s going to continue on with the business with his wife taking over my spot. There were no hard feelings and it’s all good — we’re still great friends.
While it only lasted a little over a year for me and it didn’t make me rich (financially), I really treasure the experience I gained. In college, I was an English major which is close to the furthest away from a Business major (maybe Art is a tad further) that you can be. So I’ve learned a lot about “business” over the last year and whether you like it or not, it seems the world runs on Business and not literature. Sad, but true.
Still, I’m looking forward to taking all the knowledge I gained over the last year and applying it to my next venture, whatever that may be.
Posted by Forest on May 28, 2008
When I graduated from college, I moved back home with my parents. I didn’t have a job lined up, I didn’t have any prospects, and I didn’t really have a clue of what I wanted to do. In fact, I thought what I wanted to do was go back to school for a completely different subject because my odds looked so slim with a Literature degree, and frankly, I didn’t want an Englishy job if they were giving them away. I was burned out, depressed, and moving back in with my parents wasn’t really going to help my state of mind. As my friends landed jobs and got their first places to live, I felt like a big loser. At the time, I didn’t know that I was part of a larger phenomenon that is still going on and has it’s own name:
The Boomerang Generation.
It turns out it wasn’t so bad living with my parents after college. I continued to live with them as I enrolled at a different university that fall to study biology. Then I dropped out after a week. Then I returned to my alma mater and studied biology there. That lasted almost two months. Then I took the LSAT. Then I almost joined the Navy. While all this was going on, I was cleaning office buildings at night, living with my parents, and sinking into a feeling that I would never know what I wanted to do with my life.
After considerable effort, I worked myself out of the funk I was in and started to look for a job in the English field. It took a while, but eventually I landed a job working the night shift as a caption editor, which basically consisted of watching a TV show and creating the closed captioning for deaf people to read. Not a terrible gig, but the hours were 3:30 pm to Midnight. Not ideal; especially Friday nights. Woof.
However, it was a full-time job and I began my search for a new place to live.
Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about my first place.
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