We are both extremely excited and constantly talking about where we will be this time next year, what will we be doing, where will we be working......which brings me to Career Changes.
Since February this year, I have been working Saturday mornings at a little Fruit & Veg Market in Hastings which is run from a beautiful property belonging to Mark and Chris. They sell fresh local fruit and vegetables from the Mornington Peninsula and their own hand made jams, vinegars, cordials/syrups and their own fruit and vegetables when they have surplus.
We had been shopping there for over 6 months for our fruit & veg and we got to telling Mark about our upcoming travels and that we'll be looking to work on Farms and do some WWOOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) and we could do with some experience in different kinds of jobs. Anyhoo, it serendipitously came about that Mark needed someone to help out Saturday mornings and offered me the job!
It has been a great experience and I enjoy saying 'Hello' to the regulars, hearing them discuss their own vegie growing successes and failures with Mark, their love of fresh produce and their excitement about a new season fruit or vegetable just arriving. The skills I have learnt and rediscovered in myself will no doubt help me gain jobs as we travel and I'm very grateful to have this oppurtunity.
Mark and Chris share a similar philosophy to us and they're actually doing it..... growing their own fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products and are on a journey to live sustainably. It is inspiring and encouraging to meet people of a similar ilk and to realise it's taken them a few years to get there, but they have, by simply making a decision to change and taking the steps towards it.
If you're in the area, come and visit on the weekends at : corner of Graydens & Coolart Rds, Hastings 3915 (there are signs out the front) or you may like to visit their website which has heaps of info:
www.grow-your-own-vegetable-garden.com
My 'day' job is an Insurance Broker at Pmh Insurance Brokers (www.pmhinsurancebrokers.com.au) in Frankston and I have been there for 16 years.
Yes, you read correctly, 16 years. A length of time not often heard of these days.
The main reason for the many years.... my boss/friend/mentor Dean Pollard.
I can not express enough how much he and his wife Sue have helped Dave and I over the years and my absolute good fortune to have a 'great' boss.
'Why are you leaving then?" you may ask (and many have :)), because as I've stated earlier, we both need a change : in our living environments, experiences, work life and careers.
I know I may never have a boss like Dean again and I completely appreciate the rarity of an excellent work place.
Over my 16 years working with Dean I have grown both as a professional and as a person. He has helped to show me that life is to be enjoyed and be apart of, not endured and shy away from.
Come February 2013, I will be a blubbering mess...
Thank you!
