Page 14 - 2025-01 Voices

Facing Challenges
Change - both desired and feared. We vote
for change. Spend time and money to figure myself with positive thoughts and adages
out how to change our look. Ponder how to
change the world.
However, when change reaches our
doorstep, we may have second thoughts.
What will these changes mean for us? This
is when fear may start. The year 2025 has
arrived on my doorstep. Although I cannot
prevent 2025 from stepping through my
threshold, I am a hesitant host.
At the time of my writing this, 2025 is set
up to be a year of changes. My career will
go through a revolution. My work location
is being closed and I am being laid off. A
new American president will be making
changes which the American population
will be divided on. Continued war and strife
overseas may cause changes. The greater
Toastmaster organization has made
changes to Pathways. Toastmasters
is discussing further changes. Some
reorganizing and resizing of the districts
may be in store.
How do I welcome 2025? What way is there
to make 2025 more palatable?
Things within my personal life and career
14 Voices!
Change 2025 Style
Leela Seeber
should be the easiest to address. I armor
like “The changes we dread most may
contain our salvation.” from Barbara
Kingsolver.
I specifically address my fears of being an
older person in the job market with stories
of perseverance. Julia Child did not write her
first cookbook until she was over the age of
fifty. John Glenn’s second act was moving
from being an astronaut to an American
senator. Vera Wang was an ice skater who
became a fashion designer in her forties.
Colonel Sanders rolled out his Kentucky
Fried Chicken into a franchise at the age of
62. Grandma Moses did not find success
until she picked up an artist’s brush in her
seventies. My career redirection will allow
me to explore sides of myself that have lain
dormant as I have labored in my corporate
cubicle.
The changes outside of my realm of control
are indeed more difficult to handle. Where
is all this unrest overseas going to lead us?
I am scared to speculate. So, I don’t. I avoid
“doomscrolling” the act of obsessive intake
of negative news. I find wisdom in the
serenity prayer “God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;