Not just no, but hell no.

If you asked me six months ago if I’d even entertain the idea of owning a business, that would have been the answer.

Not unlike most people, I prefer stability in my life. Also like most people, I loathe The Hustle. I don’t monetise my hobbies. Self-promotion? Absolute rubbish. Let me write/knit/garden in peace.

Today — on a massively zoomed out scale — we see a major shift happening within the personal and professional. Priorities, energies, the collective consciousness are changing direction. The veil is lifting; the stories and goods we’ve been sold are neither mandatory nor inevitable. People (Millennials!) have had enough and are starting to dream again.

It took my role (and those of many colleagues) being made redundant this year to align with this emerging perspective. Most of us were given 6 months until our job ended — enough time for me to think about potentialities, to sit with my discomfort and pay attention to my reactions around the grind of the job seeking process.

If I’ve seen you in person and talked about this, I probably said the following: “I look for jobs on LinkedIn and other websites, and nothing piques my interest. Either the industry is changing, or I’m changing… or both?”

I think “both” is the correct answer. A couple months into the 6-month buffer, I signed up for career counselling. I credit my counsellor, Unzela Haider, for helping me pry the lid off my own mind. My sessions with her clarified and defined my personal values. We identified transferrable skills and discussed my mental saboteurs and how to use them for my advantage.

During this period of introspection, some personal themes and patterns of thought emerged. I won’t share the specifics here — but this is when I began to internalise that just because I’ve been walking a path that suited me for a good, long while doesn’t mean I have to stay on it. If we contain multitudes, this redundancy is a perfect opportunity for exploring what else we can do.

What a blessing it is to have the space to seek your own truth, to be ardently curious about what comes next. By the end of my counselling, I was imagining new beginnings, even applying to be an apprentice viennoiserie baker at a chronically hip local bakery… because why the hell not?

When my first week of unemployment came around, I already made my decision to work in wine. I’d also arranged coffee dates, volunteering afternoons, and other ways for me to be available to support communities important to me (finally, I can be in my PTA mom era!). I also felt bolstered by a few trusted people asking me to work on projects with them now that I had time.

After a few weeks of putting myself in front of people, and them telling me, “yes, please!”, I was in a place I felt good about build something for myself. I don’t have it 100% thought out, but I see its shape and have a plan. I know what I want and what I’m capable of.

And that’s how two weeks ago, I officially registered my own business: Pour Decisions Communications.