Three weeks ago today was my last day at one of my jobs. Last Thursday marked the end of my second job, and Friday, the last day of my third job. I was burned out. At the spry age of 18, I bound off to college ready to take over the music business world. I had dreams of spending 300+ days a year on the road as a tour manager, negotiating a licensing deal with MTV, haggling with concert promoters until you get the correct door split for that night’s show, booking nationwide tours. The list goes on and on. These are all things I did go on to accomplish, plus a lot more (oh, except for the 300+ days on the road, I maxed out at 90 one year, and that was plenty!) I’ve been in the industry long enough that it is rare for me to turn on the radio or go to a concert and not have some connection with the bands playing. The problem is, at the end of the day, there is just not much money in the music industry right now.  Yes I can continue to work 80 hours a week and just barely scrape by. Yes I could bite the bullet and go get a corporate office job in the music industry, but well I’m just not really a corporate office type of person! Plus as each year passes the time I get to spend with friends and family becomes more important to me than reaching that next milestone in my music business career.

So when the time came that I started quitting all of my jobs, I knew there was definitely a quarter life crisis settling in. This was not my first go-round with a quarter life crisis (sometime I’ll have to tell you how I cried myself through my 25th birthday.) When this quarter life crisis started weighing down on me, I decided this time I wanted to deal with things differently.  I no longer wanted to continue to work 5 jobs to just bring in a little extra cash. I wanted to take a break. A break from everything. Unwind, and really decide what was next in my life. Where I really wanted to be in 5 or 10 or 15 years. For the first time, in quite possibly my entire life, I didn’t have a plan. And it felt amazing. I was at peace with the non-plan, which is very un-Shanti-esque.

In the past three weeks I have gotten a lot done. Partly because I am determined to conquer my entire 12 things to accomplish in 2012 list, and partly because I am sans car for another 5-7 weeks. Either way, I’m in a pretty good place right now.  This whole Free Range Chick thing is keeping me pretty darn busy. Just last week I made more money off my Etsy store than I made in an average week working three jobs last year. It’s funny how sometimes when you stop planning, pushing, and worrying about things, they sometime just fall into place, and you know that you are right where you are supposed to be. Well at least until that next quarter life crisis…..