Focusing on Life - Week 11

Another difficult photo prompt from Sally this week...Endless Possibilities.

“This week pay attention to your surroundings and your daily activities and show us what holds endless possibilities for you.”

I did have a few ideas. I could photograph a pile of fabric beside my sewing machine to represent the endless possibilities of what I could make...clothing, quilts, cat toys, costumes.

Or I could photograph my jewelry making tools & supplies with tons of beads to represent all the things that I could create with them...earrings, bracelets, necklaces, prayer beads.

Then it occurred to me that each new day presents us with ‘endless possibilities’. And that is significantly influenced by choices, the ones we make for ourselves and others, or the ones that others make around us. And what about the butterfly effect where, theoretically, the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in one country can cause a hurricane on the other side the world.

Take for example, that fateful day in November 2009 when I was called into my supervisors’ office and told that I was being laid off from the IT company where I'd been employed for 3 years. I was devastated but that one event put me on the path to new and wonderful possibilities.

I chose not to sit at home and sulk for weeks on end.  Within three days, I was at an employment centre and registered for a back-to-work program beginning in January 2010. Someone had dropped out that very day, opening up a spot. Otherwise, I would have had to wait another six weeks for the next session to begin.

For our final ‘project’, we had to select an ad from the paper for a position that we thought we qualified for, compose a cover letter, customize our new resume and apply for the job. I GOT THE JOB! And I’m still working there today.

It’s a shipping supplies company and I'm in customer service. One day a fellow came in looking for reclosable bags for his product.  I chose to ask him what his company manufactured. I discovered that he made pewter pendants, keychains and pins. I could have left it at that but I chose to ask him if he’d ever made cloak clasps. A lot of people were asking me for them at events we attended.

Celtic Cats Cloak Clasp

He’d never heard of cloak clasps but we arranged to meet later that week to discuss the possibility of collaborating on this. To make a long story short (oops, too late), he now makes pewter cloak clasps, several different designs, and sells them exclusively through my company, Jasper Moon. And, I’m selling a lot of his pewter pendants too.

But I would never have met him in a million years if I had not lost my old job and made the series of choices that I did after that. Ironically enough, six months later, that IT company went out of business and the people who were left there never received all the money that was owed to them. It turned out to be a lucky break for me to get out of there when I did.

So, to conclude...I try to look at each new day as being full of 'endless possibilities'. When I leave my driveway in the morning, which direction will I go? Left or right, I can still end up at the same physical location but what opportunities or possibilities will I encounter one way that I wouldn’t if I went the other? Isn’t life grand, full of excitement and 'endless possibilities'?