Part IV: You Were Looking for Me?

I returned home to Los Angeles with a great sense of accomplishment. My debts were paid. I was free. Thank you, Universe.

Yes, I was relieved and free. But I still had no idea what I would be doing for a living or what my next step would be to create some kind of business and to maintain my freedom. I was deeply driven to be on my own and not work for anyone else. I couldn’t stand the thought of structured “employment” (I’d had jobs before but it just wasn’t ME). Yet I knew I had to think about creating a sense of security for myself and a foundation for a life. I was not trained or skilled for anything professional but I seemed to communicate well with people. I just knew that I wanted to be on my own. I had enough of a taste of it to know that was at the top of the list.

As stated, I had no sense of direction about what I would do next, but I do recall contemplating the qualities that I would want in a business and career. To the best of my memory, those qualities included:

Freedom. I wanted my own hours. I was always a night person and I didn’t want to live by anyone else’s time clock. I wanted to live by my own schedule and come and go as I please.

Self Expression. I knew I had a creative side and although I didn’t know the channel through which it would express itself, I just knew that I wanted to express myself in some way that was unique and interesting.

Social. I wanted to meet and deal with new and different people. I wanted to be in a field that had a social as well as business side.

But all of this was temporarily pushed to the back of my mind because…

First things first…

I had accomplished something very important in my growth toward a prosperity consciousness. I had applied the principles that I learned and overcame the “impossible” challenge. They said it couldn’t be done and I did it! Selling the Brancusi was indeed a major milestone in my life and my growth. It increased my confidence in the laws and in my ability to apply them to create what I wanted in life. It gave me even more of a drive to remain independent in the business world. There was only one thing to do at that moment. The only thing…

Celebrate and reward myself! :-)

I mentioned earlier that I loved fashionable clothes. Well, I had seen a beautiful outfit in a magazine some time before. It was a Calvin Klein ensemble: A wool hip-length open jacket with soft but structured shoulders, long rolled lapels and rolled cuffs – it reminded me of a modernized 40s movie star look. It was beautiful. The rest of the outfit included a wrap sweater and slim gabardine skirt. The fabrics looked gorgeous and even though it was wool, I wanted it. I couldn’t resist. True, we have very little “winter” here in Los Angeles, but I could just “feel” myself in that ensemble. I drooled over it. I had to have it.

So I decided to treat myself with some of my well-earned commission money. I called the upscale stores that carried Calvin Klein in search of the outfit and no one had it. It was long gone if they had carried it at all. After all, the magazines show fashions that may not be available in all parts of the country. Also, I had temporarily forgotten about the timing of the fashion industry and how specifically seasonal it is with regard to retail. By the time the season rolls around when you would actually wear those clothes, those lines are considered “last season” and have sold out long before to make room for the new season’s lines being sent to stores. In other words, if you want specific fashion in winter clothes, you better start shopping in summer and fall or hope you get lucky if you hit sales racks early enough. You find fall and winter clothes on the racks when it’s 100º out and summer clothes on the racks when it’s snowing outside (well, we don’t have snow in Los Angeles, but you know what I mean).

Well, that was a longwinded way of stating that the outfit I wanted was apparently no longer on this planet. I even called the department stores back East to search. Finally, I called Calvin Klein in New York. Not Calvin himself, but his company. They knew the outfit I was referring to and the magazine layout. They told me it was way too late. They did not believe I would find it anywhere. Definitely last season. I understood. It was the beginning of February – and winter by most accounts in North America – and how could I even think that a winter outfit would be available? Ridiculous. What was I thinking? (Note sarcasm).

But the person I spoke with did give me a faint glimmer of hope. She looked up the stores in Los Angeles that had purchased that particular outfit. And she mentioned one store that I had not called – The Broadway in Century City (Century City is the highrise business community adjacent to Beverly Hills which includes a large shopping center). That was the only store in the chain that purchased it and she said she would doubt there would be any pieces left because they would have been put on sale long ago. I hadn’t called the Broadway because although it carried good “bridge” lines, it didn’t have much of a “designer” department and wouldn’t be in the same league as the upscale stores where you would expect to find the top Calvin Klein fashion lines (Saks, Neiman’s, etc).

I called The Broadway in Century City. I asked for the right department and a woman answered the phone. Her name was Cira. She told me that she was not the regular saleswoman in that department and the person in charge was off that evening and there was no one filling in. She said she worked in the adjacent fur department and just happened to picked up the phone. She said she would help me if she could.

She told me she would do her best to check the sales racks to see if they had any of the pieces I was looking for. The woman at Calvin Klein in New York had given me the style numbers of the items, so I gave them to Cira along with the description of each piece. We agreed that she would call me back if she found anything. Even if I just found the beautiful jacket, I could wear it with other things.

A short time later, Cira called me to tell me that she found three of the Calvin Klein pieces on the sales rack. Those three items were the EXACT three pieces I was searching for. Those three pieces were all MY SIZE! Those three pieces were all at THIRD MARKDOWN! Third markdown! They had been reduced in price three times and were sitting in the Broadway in Century City waiting for me to find them. No one could buy those items because they belonged to me in consciousness from the moment I saw them in the magazine. The Universe had them on hold just for me and the Universe made sure that they were within MY budget, not Calvin Klein’s budget. :-)

I told Cira to hold and protect those pieces until I got there. And I went to pick them up. By the time I got to the store and met Cira, she had found another of the same jacket, one size larger and a different color. (The price was right, they both fit, so I took them both).

As I was trying on the outfits, Cira asked me what I did. I told her that I was a free lance business woman looking for my next project. I told her that I had just sold a piece of art for someone and was looking for another opportunity. She said…

“I have been looking for you for two and a half years.”

To be continued…

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