Great idea for a club! I'm in even though I already quit my job about 3 years ago. Not for the first time actually. I started off working as a translator so I can totally relate to you leaving your job! I still find the process of translating fascinating but as a job it was simply awful and when I noticed that I was dreading Mondays I knew it was time to change.
Actually, for me dreading Mondays is always a clear sign that I never ignore.
So I found a job in a software company and quickly discovered that programming would be for me. I studied and read everything I could and ended up working in big banks in Australia and London (UK). I loved it for about 10 years until the IT industry changed and "outsourcing" became the new way of doing (or rather screwing up) software projects. So, there I was again .. frustrated at work and .. dreading Mondays ..
I was tired of living in London by that time and on a holiday to Granada in the South of Spain I imagined how lovely it would be to live in one of those pretty white houses in the old part of town. Now what?
Why not give it a go? If it didn't work out I could still pack my bags and go elsewhere. But what would I do to earn a living? So I asked myself what I would most love to do if I had no constraints to worry about. At the time I was making a dress while listening to flamenco music. And there it was - the idea for my new career: be my own boss making flamenco dresses. In the back of my mind there was always this dream of having my own business but I never felt it to be feasible for me in IT. But sewing was a different matter. I knew how to sew, had all the basic equipment to get started, would be able to work from home so no need to invest a lot of money to get it off the ground. The more I thought about it the more I realised that there was nothing really stopping me.
To make a long story short (or at least somewhat shorter :-) I decided to take the plunge and move to Spain. A couple of things helped a lot:
- From the years in IT I had some savings
- When I told my boss that I was leaving he suggested that I keep working for the bank remotely from Spain, which I did for the first 8 months. This took the pressure of having to live off the new business straight away.
- I did speak enough Spanish to defend myself. Once there this made it easy to get started and learn to speak well quickly.
- It wasn't the first time I had changed country or career so it wasn't all that scary.
The first skirt I sold to a little flamenco shop. The first big project was making 12 identical outfits for a flamenco school's end of term performance and things just slowly but steadily grew from there. I do no marketing at all - word of mouth keeps me busy these days. Check out my newly created website/blog to see what I'm doing.
Fazit: I haven't regretted it for a second. It isn't always easy. Sometimes I feel that I work harder for less money than ever but seeing dresses I have made on a flamenco stage gives me a satisfaction no job has ever provided and I'll never have to wonder what would have been if I had ..
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