You know that awesome feeling when everything is going right in your world? I’m not a pessimist by any stretch, but I’m starting to feel like if you’re on top of your game and things are going great, start preparing for something not-so-great to happen. It’s logical if you think about it – things can’t go great 24/7/365…. something has to happen. I’m not saying it’s going to be a life-changing bad thing, but just be prepared to fall off cloud nine every once-in-a-while.

The reason I say this is because recently, as of a few weeks ago, I was told my services were no longer required at my full-time job. Ouch. Now, to be fair to my former employer, who was also a friend, I actually had ambitions of changing jobs at some point and I was in a semi-active search for something new. Needless to say, I wasn’t at all prepared to suddenly be without a job come Monday morning.

So, what do you do? Most of you reading this have probably lost a job at some point – and it’s a pretty ugly feeling. Though, in a weird way, I was sort of relieved (I wasn’t happy with the job, but I would grin and bear it). It still felt a lot like a break-up. What did I do wrong? Am I not pretty anymore? Seriously though, I was feeling pretty down for the first week, mostly out of fear of knowing the paychecks have suddenly stopped. I was released back into the wild by my work master.

Then, literally the next day, my truck breaks down. Yeah, it was quite a week. Lose job on Monday, and your truck on Tuesday.

So with all this happening, I decided to get back to what I know best – how to make money. I started picking up extra freelance writing gigs, and I started buying stuff to resell for a profit on eBay. I started taking in scrap copper/metal to U Scrap – our local scrap yard located between Waterloo and Columbia. I took on some extra web development gigs. Just anything I could do to stay afloat.

Not only has all this been a fun challenge, it’s also an excellent way to keep my mind clear and focused on the positive while trying to secure new employment, which certainly isn’t as easy as it once was. Something will come through eventually, I’m sure of it.

The point I’m trying to drive home here is that no matter what, you need to make an effort to make progress. Even if it’s a little tiny thing that seems completely insignificant, you never know what it might lead to. I had trouble with that in the beginning and thankfully some wise old owls reassured me that everything would be okay if I kept moving forward.

And they were right.