WWPDD? Bringing It Around Full Circle

Dealing in Disappointment Exposed by Rage, by Sherrel Lee

WWPDD? Bringing It Around Full Circle

Have you ever had one of those "how the heck did I get here?" moments?

I mean, bear with me here, but honestly when I was in high school and college no one ever said to me, "Hey, Liz did you know that you'd sell houses for a living one day?"
or
"You'll give up a near six-figure career selling those houses to help some guys found and open a brewery from scratch?"
or
"You'll be one of about a million authors who self publish or small publish books?"

I'm gonna tell you it's been a pretty weird ride that finds me on the cusp of 50 years old, unemployed, wishing I could write for a living and knowing better from real-time experience.
As I was finishing up my degree in English Lit at the University of Louisville, I was feeling at a bit of loose ends. I didn't want to go to graduate school. The man I loved had decamped to Nashville for his MBA. So I got out my fancy typewriter (yes, I am that old) and started sending out resumes down south. I knew what I wanted. It was in Nashville. I applied for a secretarial job at United Way in Williamson County, got a call, got an interview and was handed a "territory" to develop. I was determined to be overqualified to be a secretary.
Future Spouse got his MBA but because his area was automotive, we moved from Nashville to the Middle West in a hot minute once he had his degree, set up our lives in Oxford, Ohio. I hauled out the old typewriter and landed a job at the Hamilton Ohio Journal-News as "Special Sections Editor." This meant I wrote (and took photos for) those little inserts you used to get in your old fashioned paper that looked like "news articles" but that were actually bought-and-paid-for ads.

While in Oxford, I converted Future Spouse to Current Spouse, we had a lovely wedding in Cincinnati, and moved nearly immediately back to Kentucky so He could run a small car dealership. I had my first Wenchling while there, and made the (in hindsight I can say this with the full force of, well, "hindsight") bad decision to try to work while adjusting to life as a new Mom.

After about a year, the siren call of Ford Motor Company lead us to our lives in Michigan. I continued to struggle with the "staying at home" thing. I did not consider myself mentally or emotionally cut out for it. I picked up a little editing job, and then I got hired at the Ann Arbor Art Association (now "Art Center") as a membership director. While there, we bought a house, right about the same time we discovered there would be another blessed member of the Crowe's nest.
Once that Wenchling joined our happy little crew, I dropped back to working half time. Then left there and branched out doing a bit of "free lance marketing consulting" and one of my clients advised that I was "good at this" (one assumes "marketing") and that I should make "real money" and get my real estate license. So I did. I was trained by one of Ann Arbor's original brokers, Jim Anderson and made a bit of money but nearly lost my mind trying to juggle two little kids around the whacked-out schedule a real estate agent just starting out must manage. The memory of feeding them fast food in the mini van while trying to calm buyers down during a particularly crappy house inspection is one I wish I could slice right out of my brain.

At the same moment that I discovered Current Spouse and I had really crappy timing vis a vis a vasectomy scheduling and there would be a 3rd Wenchling in the universe, he got an offer to go overseas. So we went. 2 years in Japan, 1 in Kansas, 2 in Istanbul and 2 more in England and we found ourselves back around in the proverbial circle, buying a house in Ann Arbor, with a 13 year old, a 10 year old and a 7 year old. I got my real estate license back and took up with the Charles Reinhart Company.
Thus began 7 years of starting from scratch, building my business all the while managing 3 very busy kids (and a couple of dogs---yeah I'm certifiable).
Then, in 2008 I was approached by a former neighbor about a project--a "craft brewery" which made me laugh because not only did I not like beer, I had no idea what the hell they were talking about with this "craft" thing. I drink wine, dudes. Maybe some bourbon. Not beer.
"No problem," they claimed. "We want your amazing marketing skills and contacts. We'll teach you the beer bit."
Well, they did that and in 2010 we opened a brewery on West Stadium. I had a blog. I set up social networking, I painted walls, shopped for supplies, mopped more floors than I wish to remember, learned the business by slinging beer at every event I could find in addition to opening the bar and closing it up every day for the better part of 6 months. We grew. I hired staff. I hired a manager. We opened a rental hall. Then, it was determined that my help was no longer needed.
Hence the "unemployed" bit of this story.

It still smarts. But I had written a few books by then and thought "Okay, I'll do this full time, no problem." But the problem exists and it's a big one. It's one most authors understand. One simply doesn't "make a living" as an author without: a. a big publisher behind them or b. the sort of explosive viral thing that the Joe Konraths and Hugh Howeys and others of their ilk manage to build. And that kind of thing is sort of "yesterday's news" if you know what I mean.
So, the dilemma....what to do....what to do....what to do....
Time to circle back around. It took me a few years but I found my way in real estate and by golly I'm doing it again.
It's sort of a square circle, with corners delineating the various major milestones of my career trajectory, such as it is. I've been derailed a few times, necessary relocations for the primary breadwinner combined with motherhood will do that to a gal. But I'm at a place now, with 2 kids out of the nest other than their various circling back for money, plus the third perched on the edge, ready to launch herself out, where I don't have to worry so much about sports practices, piano lessons, after school snacks and what not. Why not?

Why not indeed.
I have walked into so many Reinhart offices and meetings in the last couple of months and been made to feel so completely welcomed it seems pretty obvious that I left something I never should have.
And so, I'm back.

I will keep writing books. There is plenty of downtime in the early years of this job. I might be able to channel it into some fun new "Ann Arbor real estate based novels."
I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to say that "reinvention" is the name of my game. And while it's not a total reinvention this time, in a way, I'm in such a different place now, after all my years spent in the beer and book publishing business it feel like I'm coming at it as a raw rookie.
Depressing?
No, not really.
But definitely challenging.