It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

I know, I know, I’m not the most consistent when it comes to writing on here, but typically I have kept up with posts to my Instagram as well as Facebook page.

But even those have gone dormant, and besides a few posts made to my Mic’s Adventure Facebook page at the beginning of August about Skratch (which weren’t advertisements BTW, I seriously just got the new flavors and wanted to share my experience since I do love Skratch), there has been nothing between February and now.

Why?

In February I got the news, that after putting in 11 loyal years at my company I worked for, I was being let go.

It wasn’t a surprise to me, to be honest, working for an east coast company from the west coast, but the timing was more of a surprise.

I won’t go into the details, but in the end, I was left having to make some serious life choices right away, mainly “how am I going to survive in Bellevue on unemployment?”

And so begun my quest to find work.

A quest that many close to me, who knew my background, worked with or for me, thought would be easy enough.

It wasn’t.

In fact, by the time September rolled around, I had put out nearly 600 resumes for positions all over the Northwest, had tens of people critique my resume, hiring managers for companies who submitted internally, friends who did the same, with less than two handfuls of callbacks, and less than a handful of interviews in those 6 months, I was left empty handed, all leads had dried up.

I was devastated not really knowing what I was going to do.

In July (sorry for the timeline skips!), I had already been trying to plan how I was going to make it through the next 6 months, year, and so on.

Everything I thought of, everything I came up with, kept leading me back to one common theme, and pretty obvious.

Whatever my next step was, whatever my next career was, I was going to turn my back on what I had been doing over the last two decades.

I knew I wanted to be involved with the outdoors, doing something, becoming a better advocate, and more so, getting people excited about it.

So it would come as no surprise that in August, while riding with Evan Plews, owner of Ridge Cyclesport in Wenatchee, the foundation of my future started to be built on the Sage Hill trails.

We started to discuss his business, where it was, where he wanted to take it. We talked about my vision of how I envisioned a bike shop, how important it is to drive community and be community driven.

We talked about the modern retail shop, and how it must adapt and overcome the ongoing pressures of big box stores, and internet sales.

Most importantly, we found out that our visions aligned.

So with that, as my time in Seattle ticked down, and the end of September came, and I packed all my things into a trailer to be hauled to my parents for storage, we continued to talk, and on September 11^th, I loaded up some clothes and my mountain bike into the back of my Xterra to start my new life here in Wenatchee as Evan’s first full-time employee at Ridge Cyclesport, a rather big deviation from my previous career.

Evan has done an amazing job on building a strong loyal community around his brand here locally, as well as across the northwest.

He’s poured his heart into this business, and it shows, and I look forward to pouring mine into it, and building it along with him through its next steps, including some awesome changes that will be happening within the next 3 months.

I won’t lie, I still think about where I wanted my career to go, but then I think of the last 11 years in Seattle and how much I couldn’t wait to escape it every weekend, and how the last few years, I couldn’t wait to find the opportunity to move out of there.

It looks like my hand was finally forced, and has directed me where my heart and passions are.

There are projects I will still work on. Products I have been working on for years, that now align with what I am doing, and will be able to I believe focus more on in my off time, now that I feel a better sense of purpose, and now that I can finally take a deep breath without the worry of where my next paycheck is going to come from.

And most importantly, I look forward to this whole new adventure.

Until Next time

-Mic