Non-fiction Short Stories
Date Published: July 20, 2025
Life isn’t always about big, dramatic moments. Sometimes, the most meaningful experiences are tucked into the folds of our everyday routines—quiet, funny, touching, and occasionally bittersweet. Enjoying the Ride and the Short Stories Along the Way is a heartwarming collection of true short stories drawn from the life of Jennifer Vaughan Lague, an entrepreneur, mother, and grandmother who believes that life is best lived with humor, love, and a touch of perspective.
Highlights include:
🌹 A mysterious rose in the yard that says more than words ever could
👩👧 A heartfelt tribute to motherhood and all its messy beauty
🔥 Cozy memories of childhood, tangled hair, and The Muppet Show
🎄 Hilarious moments of parenting during the holidays
👣 A candid reminder not to let fear hold you back from fully living
Last month I did something crazy. I quit my job.
For the past 17 years I’ve worked as the business manager of
my husband’s Certified Public Accounting firm, well OUR firm, as he says. He
loves his work, but I never got a warm fuzzy about it.
Four days a week, I drove to the office, sat at my desk and
did my work. It was never anything more than just a job to me; something that
was convenient, because I could be home when the kids were home and I was lucky
enough to spend my days with my husband.
Then one afternoon, one of our clients came in and wanted to
speak with me about this little Facebook group I administer in my spare time.
He sat across the table from me as we discussed the group, my intentions and
the events I’d been planning. Then he looked at me and said, “What the hell are
you doing here?”
Called me out, just like that.
I looked right back at him and said, “I don’t know.”
He could tell it wasn’t something that was really making me
happy.
People should love what they do, right?
Within a week later, I’d cut back my hours and started
training others to do my work.
Here it is, the end of the summer and I’m in the process of
starting my own business. It’s still very much in the early stages of planning,
but it’s going to feed my soul. My new career will give me purpose and a reason
to hop out of bed in the morning.
It will be something that I love doing — just not sure what
the “it” is quite yet.
Yesterday I had to fill out a form that included “place of
employment” and I left it blank. I wanted to write those “thinking dots,” you
know the little blinking dots that appear when someone is writing back to you
in a text.
Those thinking dots also reminded me I haven’t been
unemployed since I was 13 years old.
The first job I ever had was as a personal assistant to a
former soap opera star who lived in our town. I spent hours, literally hours,
sorting business cards and hanging up her clothes in multiple closets. She had
just moved back to town from Thailand. I was in awe of her things. One
afternoon I hung up skirts for at least 3 hours — just skirts. She would offer
to let me keep older things; too bad, she was a size 2 and I was only 13.
I actually worked three jobs at that age. My other two were
as a day camp counselor during the summer weeks and a waitress at a catering
facility on the weekends. I met some very interesting people.
Since the day I was old enough to get working papers, I’ve
never, ever been unemployed. Just to type that word, unemployed, is a little
scary to me, but actually more exciting because of the upcoming possibilities.
Luckily, I have the support of my husband during this time
of reinventing myself. He seems to acknowledge and appreciate my special kind
of crazy — but maybe he’s really just enjoying the peace and quiet at the
office without his wife pestering him.
In the meantime, I’m hoping to cross some items off of my
bucket list and learn some new skills.
Hopefully, you’ll come along and enjoy the ride with me.
No comments:
Post a Comment