Turning Points

I was in Dallas last week speaking at the Dallas Area Romance Writer's Conference (which is a great, small, conference by the way).  I talked about the stuff I do to keep myself sane in this batshit crazy business, and let me tell you, it's an ongoing process.  Things are changing so quickly that you really have to have a center or you can get all twisted up.  But you know, with every turn in the road, there is a new path, a new door, and something new to be discovered and experienced.

I speak from experience.  I was thinking back to some significant turning points in my life, and was kind of surprised that I've had a few really good ones.  All of them have led to another phase of my life that may I recall with fondness.  That doesn't mean they were easy.  It just means that hindsight is very rosy .

Here are my top five turning points in chronological order:

1.  Leaving home and moving away.  I only went to Lubbock at first, but I left the nest and I never returned.  I have been living my own life, my own way, since I was eighteen.

2.  Moving to Washington, DC:  Perhaps I should have said graduating from college, or getting my first professional job in Dallas, but that move set the course of my first career, and I have to say, it was not only successful, it taught me more than anything I ever could have learned in a classroom.   Not all good, but mostly

3.  Marriage.  Oh, vey.  I don't need to explain to anyone here how marriage changes you for better and for worse, right?  For me, it uncovered a whole other side of me.

4.  Selling my first book.  It was the Devil's Love, and I honestly walked into my second career knowing absolutely nothing about it.  I wanted to write a book.  I tried to write one, and then I sent it off.  That was a blind turning point.  I had no idea where it would lead me.

5.  I would like to say getting an 8 month old baby was the greatest turning point of my life, and it was.  I was giving temporary custody of a child for three and a half years, and that event had the most profound impact on me as a person.  It was, in a word, phenomenal.

What are your top five turning points?  Or three?  Or the Big One?