It may be April Fool’s Day, but this is no joke!

I’m back online with a renewed energy and focus.  I’ve been MIA for the last few months.  I apologize to anyone who used to follow my blog religiously.  But the good news is that I plan to schedule more time to reviving the livelihood of SeeTheEnd.

A lot has happened over the last several months.  It’s a bit overwhelming to try and put all my thoughts in writing.  There are so many things that I want to tell you all (and I will tell you everything eventually).  But for now, in order to keep my blogs relatively short, I’ll just start with the most recent and work backwards.

To start things off, I’ll let you in on some news that sounds worse than it really is.  I recently became a victim to this crazy economic recession.  That’s right, I got laid off.  The funny thing about this is that everyone has a knee-jerk reaching to come up to me and tell me how sorry they are to hear that I lost my job.  But in reality, I’ve been happier since leaving my former company than I have been in a long time.  I was not only a loyal employee for the last 4 years, but I was the top sales agent consistently throughout my career with them.  But now that I have time to reflect, I really see how people can easily become stagnant in a workplace.  Everything seems so comfortable, even if you’re not completely happy.  So I have taken this minor set back and am using it to my full advantage.  I’m surging forward and working to pursue other opportunities that will inevitably provide me with more satisfaction than I had previously.  So please, don’t feel sorry for me.  Be excited for me and the changes I will be experiencing in the coming months (no matter how terrifying some of those changes may seem now).

Although I’m very excited to be moving forward, I am also scared (which is a good thing). I have many different paths in front of me to started working down. I’m not afraid of picking the wrong path. Rather, I’m afraid I can’t pick as many paths as I’d like. I consider myself a jack-of-all-trades. My experience is primarily in sales and account management. But I tend to succeed in any environment I am put in. For example, look at my Skate For Hope. Not exactly something that many Sales people would ever consider. But I jumped into this venture with both feet. Failure is not something I accept (with the exception of a few University Engineering courses I took… but that’s another story).

Today I met up with a former client of mine for a breakfast networking event here in Vancouver. I’ve never been to a networking event like this before. I was a bit intimidated for about 30 seconds until I started talking to some of the great people there. As I sat at my table listening to the various speakers, I quickly understood that this was more than just networking. This was a community or a family of like-minded people just looking to help each others businesses in anyway possible. And I was welcomed with open arms. I was able to make a few great connections which may help me towards finding a new career opportunity.

Later in the afternoon, I walked downtown to check out the Massive Technology Trade Show. I’ve been to this venue in the past, but it’s been a couple years. After walking around and checking out some of the vendors for a while, I started to bump into some former colleagues and acquaintances. I ended up staying and chatting with people for a few hours.

All in all, it was a great day for making connections. There’s so much talk about the recession right now. But I believe if you’re determined and don’t buy into all the propaganda fed to us from the media, there really are a lot of opportunities out there. I’m not denying that thousands of people are being laid off. But while many huge corporations are struggling and failing, there are even more smaller businesses thriving.

I ended my day with one of my favorite passed-times. Soccer. Growing up in Ontario, I always associate soccer with the late spring and summer. So to be playing outside in March is still a bit foreign to me. Nevertheless, I’m always up for a chance to play. Tonight was no exception. Sure, it was only about 4 degrees, and pouring rain. But who am I to turn down a match! Most of my team showed up to brave the elements, too. The outcome was not quite as we hoped, but soccer is still fun even when you lose. And I’m happy to say it only took a couple hours to dry out and regain the feeling in my finger tips!