The home office has served me well since 2014 when I left the corporate world to start my own consulting business (which then miserably failed) and then when I started with Adopt & Embrace and now, Rapid Circle.

I like going in there every day to do my work. It’s a good space with plenty of lighting albeit freezing cold in winter and sweltering hot in summer but otherwise, it’s my work space and filming area. It does the job for now.

Yesterday I was moving about some furniture to vacuum the dust and I stopped to look at my books.

The shelves in that room are filled with non fiction business and learning and development books. There are some folders from old Navy training days, references that I still use a few times a year plus my husband has his old accounting texts.

Over the years, I culled a lot of them and some paperwork too and now looking through what’s left of it, I looked at it with bemusement and thought how glad I’d be to get rid of it all when I retire. I wouldn’t need those texts anymore on e-learning, reference books on training design, handbooks on consulting.

I loved my book collection as they were all mainly work horses. I bought handbooks and references that I could use repeatedly from authors who were experts in their fields. Everything from training, learning, business process, consulting, business, career planning, project management, presentation skills, leadership and management, I’ve got them all.

If I got rid of them now, the only ones I’d keep would be those about writing.

I say that I can’t wait to get rid of them but I know a part of me will find it hard simply because I had a relationship with many of these books.

Most of them are dog eared, full of post it notes, filled with my marginalia and I remember the projects I used them for. It’ll be sad to let them go because it’ll be similar to saying goodbye to my own identity and creating a new one.

I’m not ready yet to do this just yet but as I was cleaning the study, the thought that I’ll need to repurpose this room over the years will be my new challenge.

Who will I be in the near and long term future?