What a year.
2011 is a year I will remember for a number of reasons. It started off in a scary and exciting way.
In the midst of high unemployment, lousy job opportunities and much uncertainty amongst consumers (both personal and business) with regard to spending, I left my safe job of 14 years for the realm of self employment. It started off pretty easily. While not employed with my former company, I did remain as a consultant role for what was supposed to be an ongoing basis.
The environment was still “safe.” And then in June, the rug was pulled out from under me.
My former employer told me through the human resources person that the consulting arrangement we had worked out was ending. Worse yet, there was no notice. They said, “The check you get this week, will be your last.” I continued to stay on, but without guaranteed hours and now there was a big dilemma in my household. Having guaranteed income made it easy for me not to hustle. Having this happen literally brought to my knees. I was questioning whether I had done the right thing. I was begging God for guidance. What I kept coming back to was Proverbs 3:5
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
That’s what I had to do. I had to let go. This lesson was no greater than when an opportunity arose for me to manage a project for a company and lead that part of the company when it was completed. There was an issue however. My wife and I have been feeling for a long time that the Atlanta area is where we needed to be (we live in the Daytona Beach, FL area right now). This company was in Daytona Beach. I knew the guy and thought, “I can do this job remotely. He’ll be ok with that.”
He wasn’t.
Immediately, we started to dash plans for moving to Atlanta. After all, here was a great work opportunity right? We decided to trust God. We made the decision to go to Atlanta regardless. Less than a week later God said, “Check this out.” I got a call from the guy I was working with and he said, “You can work remotely. It will be our Atlanta location.”
So we are planning a Spring move to the Atlanta area. We are very excited. Along with those challenges, some great stuff did happen in 2011:
- I wrote about 50 blog posts for ChurchMag. I love writing for this blog and having Eric Dye as the editor is awesome. He’s a great guy and things are going to be even better in 2012.
- Back in October of 2010, John asked me to write a 10 part series about being an “IT Noob.” It was one of the most difficult undertakings I had done as a blogger. I finally got around to it this past Summer and I was thrilled at the response. Even more gratifying was finding out the series was turned into an e-book. You can get it for free by signing up for the Church Mag newsletter!
- I swapped out my beloved Nikon gear for Canon for the purpose of getting into video. Moving from still imagery to video created a whole new set of challenges. But it’s been fun. Here is one video I did for a business (the one ironically I will be working with. Doing this video started off those discussions):
- My son and I are going to do these coding lessons together starting next week with Treehouse.
I can’t wait to get started this year!
What do you have on the horizon for 2012?
Share with us some of your 2011 highlights (or lowlights)!
John (TentBlogger) says
incredible job…! can’t wait to see what happens this year!
Jay Caruso says
Thanks John!
Eric Dye says
I love this.
Thank you for being a part of ChruchMag, Jay!
Jay Caruso says
Thanks dude! It’s great working with you on this.
Jason Bradley says
Great post and great timing for a read for me too. I just left one employer to go back to another. I went from the corporate culture, to a startup, back to corporate. I really liked the startup job, but felt as though the Lord wanted me to leave. Once I made the decision, he continued to give me confirmation for leaving. I have had to continue to trust the Lorf as you did and I too turned to Proverbs 3:5. It’s been 2 days into the new position and I haven’t had this much peace in a long time.