Years ago (maybe 5), I registered a trade name and domain of Joyful Life Insights. Originally, I was thinking this would be the name for my intuitive canine behavior consulting business. However, even after constantly adding to my education, I did not think I knew enough to do what I wanted to do. I had my degree and an ever increasing number of certificates in related fields, but it still didn’t seem like enough. Added to that was the fact that even though I put in a lot of work and effort into building what I thought I wanted this business to be, things still did not seem clear to me. I knew I wanted to make the lives of animals and people, specifically their relationships with each other, better, but I wasn’t sure what skills and knowledge I should use to best achieve that goal.
To make a super long story short, I literally put Joyful Life Insights into a digital folder labeled “Miscellaneous Work”, which also contains things like files and documents from past freelance and independent contracting work. But, it never completely disappeared from my life. When I created this website, I used Joyful Life Insights as a blog post label, intending to maybe create posts that provided information about animals that would help people have a greater appreciation for the animals in their life. But again, this really didn’t go anywhere and I didn’t feel much motivation to continue past one post (or maybe there were more, but not many if there were).
While Joyful Life Insights now floated around in the digital world and in the back of my mind without a known purpose, I did a lot more work in the realm of writing, visual art, and education, and learned more about myself along the way. About 6 or 7 months ago I started to feel strongly like I needed to transition from one of my current jobs into something different. This confused me a bit at first because I found out I was really good at doing this other job and experienced way more success in this job than I thought possible. (Although it should not surprise me that I experienced this success because it was pretty much exactly what I had prayed for and put in my affirmation notebooks and digital slide shows. More about that at another time.) But, I found there were certain aspects of this job that made it mentally and energetically, and consequently physically, exhausting for me. I made a few changes to the way I did the job, which did really help, but I still find myself feeling like I would so much rather be doing something else than this job, at least the amount that I am doing each week right now.
Like with any big decision that comes my way, I prayed about this a lot. A LOT. And throughout, God has provided me with the same message that in a nutshell says that it is a very good idea for me to transition into doing other work and it will allow me to have a healthier life. Plus, this doesn’t mean that I was wasting my time with the other job. It was a job that helped others and also helped me during a difficult time in the world. It was a job that allowed me to thrive, be part-time self-employed, and make my life better during this time. But now, it’s time for me to use that experience and grow and still make a positive difference in others’ lives, just in different ways.
There are a few different things I am working on and getting ready to set up, but in the last month, I had some very strong guidance to focus on Joyful Life Insights again. There are some ideas I have for it, which ironically are not that far from my original plans, but not surprisingly, I’m still not 100% sure what Joyful Life Insights is supposed to be. And now, rather than allowing more and more days to pass as I try to get more of a feel for how I should proceed, I thought I’d take some action in at least one direction I feel Joyful Life Insights might go.
I know how much positive, encouraging, and uplifting words can totally change things for the better, both for the receiver and the giver of those words. These words can provide hope, erase fears, change perspectives, and encourage peace and happiness to grow in our souls. So, for now anyway, I’ll start posting one blog entry per week with thoughtful, and hopefully insightful, words that I’ll write with the intention of spreading more joy in the world, both for humans and animals, even if those words reach just one person. (And, yo. This whole blog thing is still kind of weird for me to be doing myself even though I read other people’s blogs, so… Yeah, not really sure about things right now, but like I said, I just needed to take some sort of action for Joyful Life Insights and hopefully this will be the first step toward what it’s really meant to be.)
Thanks for reading!