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Dahlonega Nugget Marketing Consultant Lindsey McLamb writes about getting the chance to return to one of her favorite towns—Dahlonega!
It’s a phrase many have uttered, sometimes shouted.
“I’M BACK!”
Michael Jordan, Eminem, The Terminator, and Randy Quaid as he sacrifices himself to defeat the aliens in Independence Day, to name a few.
Now it’s my turn. I’M BACK! To Dahlonega that is. Not that anyone, especially Nugget readers, would have known that I’ve been gone.
Just another face in the UNG student crowd, I made it through my *ahem* five years of college. Like many UNG students, I thought by the time I graduated I would know what I wanted to do. And maybe some students figured it out, I however, did not.
Armed with my Art Marketing degree (yes, that’s a thing), I tiptoed my way out into the big world.
Fast forward seven years to 2020 and I’ve found a stable, reliable job in Gainesville doing product photography and graphic design for a local company. (I’m sure many of you know what’s coming next.)
Then COVID hits and suddenly everything is unstable. I continued going to work throughout the shutdown, and I thought I was going to make it through unscathed, but right before Christmas 2020, I was laid off.
Suddenly I’m that girl who just graduated all over again, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Except now I have a family to take care of, bills to pay, and the world seems crazier than ever.
And just a few weeks later at approximately 9 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, 2020 reared its ugly head. My grandfather passed away. I stumbled blindly into 2021.
Lost. Depressed. Anxious. As I suffered through months of job applications, skills tests, job fairs, and interviews, my mind kept going back to some wise words I received from my UNG professor. “Do what you love, and the opportunities will find you.”
But what do I even love? Because while I love hiking, art, reading, and my dear family, there aren’t that many realistic, financially stable opportunities in those areas.
After some thought, I realized I also love helping people, solving problems, and community. I started looking for jobs that would allow me to do those things. No more applying for every single job I come across. No more making exceptions because I’m worried that I’ll never find something.
And once I stopped spreading myself thin, I was able to focus on the jobs that really mattered. I had three interviews lined up, and then I landed second interviews with two of them.
And while both were great opportunities, one of them brought me back to Dahlonega, a town I fell in love with the moment I drove over the hill and witnessed the beauty of the college and the square nestled up against the awe-inspiring backdrop of the Appalachian Mountains.
A view that, to this day, never fails to lift my heart every morning on my way to work. I’m back Dahlonega, and like Randy Quaid in Independence Day (without the self-sacrifice), I feel like I am where I’m supposed to be.