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Alison Stewart: This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I am grateful you are here. Quick bit of housekeeping, remember, submissions for the Public Song Project close tonight. Go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject to send us a song and see the guidelines, maybe you'll have a burst of creativity in this last day.

Today on the show, we're going to hear from a journalist who got the reclusive author of the seminal book The Outsiders on the record. His piece for the Smithsonian Magazine is called S.E Hinton is Tired of Talking About the Outsiders. No one else is. We'll hear from him later on in the show. We'll also talk to opera baritone Will Liverman about his Lincoln Center debut as a solo recitalist. You may remember he was in the Met Opera's first-ever production by a Balck composer, and this fall, he'll star in the second.

We'll learn about a fantastic retelling of Homer's The Odyssey set in Harlem. That is in the plan, so let's get this started with a leap of faith.

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What if you could change your job right now? Just take up something new, learn something new, or follow that dream you've had for years. What if? At age 40, Alisha Fernandez Miranda, a CEO of IG Advisors, did that, left her job, and became an intern four times at an art dealer, a theater, a hotel, and a fitness company. Before stepping into the unknown, the mom to twins knew she had what she needed in her life, but realized she hadn't considered what she wanted, so she decided to take a leap of faith.

Fernandez Miranda began telling others she would "Be taking a series of mini sabbaticals." The journey of self-discovery is a subject of her new book, My What If Year. Alisha Fernandez Miranda joins us today. She is now the host of the award-winning podcast Quit Your Day Job, interviewing people who have worked in careers most people have pinned up on their vision boards. Her memoir, My What If Year, is out now. Welcome, Alisha.

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: Alison, thank you so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, get in on this conversation. What big life changes have you made recently in the pursuit of your own happiness? Have you ever switched career? How did the people in your life react to the decision? Maybe you're thinking about making a change. How long have you thought about doing so? What are you afraid of? What do you want to do? Tell us your story. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Our phone lines are open and our screeners are standing by.

You can also reach out on social media @allofitwnyc, that is both Twitter and Instagram. We want to know what big life changes you've made recently in the pursuit of your own happiness, hear about if you want to switch careers, or you have switched careers, we want to hear your story. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. All right, Alisha, what was the moment you decided, "I'm going to make a change"?

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: It really happened over a long period of time, I think. I was approaching 40, I was living the life I had set out to live, CEO of my own business, kids, husband, was living in London, and I really just felt stuck. I felt empty. I kept asking myself this question that you're asking all the listeners out there, "What if I did something else? What else could there be?" I had had this idea based on a lifetime love of musical theater. I would do anything, if they would let me sit in the rehearsal room with them.

I would get coffee, sweep floors, clean the bathrooms, really didn't matter. I told no one about that idea until a fateful girls' weekend with two of my best friends in January, 2019. We were having martini after martini, because we were away from the kids, and we started this conversation and posed that question, what if, and I blurted out, "What if I was like an intern?" What if I just left my job, went and tried theater, or these other jobs I was interested in?

That conversation snowballed from there. We left the next day. They forgot about it, but I didn't. That was the beginning of this whole journey.

Alison Stewart: What were you most afraid of?

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: I was afraid for many, many months before I decided to do it, and then afraid for quite a long time after I started doing it. It just felt so risky. It felt like I had invested so much in my career and life until that point. The idea of turning my back on it, or leaving it behind, was very, very frightening. I was really afraid of disappointing the people around me, disappointing my parents, whose opinion had always mattered so much to me, all of my various relatives who, classic immigrant story, came over from Cuba with nothing.

We're here to support you, to succeed, and what that meant, and what it would mean if I put that definition of success behind me and then went to do something else. I was afraid of leaving my kids and my husband. I was really afraid he would forget everything and not know how to feed them, and there'd be constant calls. [laughs] I would say there's probably nothing I was not afraid of. Almost everything that I could have worried about going wrong, probably cycled through my head at some point.

Alison Stewart: Well, let's break down in at least the first part, the family fear. You get up the courage. What was your pitch to your family, once you decided you were going to do this? How did you tell them?

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: I was talking to my husband. My husband and I talk a lot. We worked together. We built this company together, so that was a really big part of our discussion, because me stepping back meant that he was going to have to step back in. Also, we'd built these companies together. He was disappointed that I wasn't happy being exactly where I was and that I didn't want to continue with that.

I sold it to my family and everyone else as these short breaks, "I'm going to go, I'm going to have these little sabbaticals, then I'm going to come back, and everything will be fine." I will be feeling better. I will stop crying into my coffee every morning when I wake up. This is the thing that I need to do. It took a little while, but I think they were on board. My parents, they've always been really supportive. They always gave me their opinion and then let me do what I want to do with it, and they've always loved musical theater.

I think, actually, when it really became real, my dad was like, "Can I come be your intern on your internship, to go and do this?" I don't think any of us, and I certainly didn't, anticipate what a big change it would end up being, because we were billing it as these very small, very small steps.

Alison Stewart: You are someone who is accustomed to being successful. You went to Harvard, you started your own business, you were running things. Where did the fear of failure come in? You probably haven't failed a whole heck of a lot. [laughs]

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: Not until I started this internship, and then I was failing every day, because my life, really, I was always afraid of failure. It seemed like the worst thing that could possibly happen to me. It meant that when I was making choices about what I was going to do, especially as I got older and had increasing obligations and responsibilities, I was choosing the things that had a very low probability of failure.

Things that I knew I could be good at, things that I knew I could be successful at, and really making sure that I was doubling down on those areas that I already felt like I was going to be good at, and I was going to be able to succeed at. As a result, it meant that I was terrified of failure, still, through reaching 40, and that I was not doing things that I might have loved or cherished, that really brought me joy, or that I was passionate about, for a long time.

Maybe I wasn't that good at them, or as good as I was at other things, that I needed to proceed. I really would say I spent the large majority of my life being terrified of failure, and now trying very hard to flip that on its head.

Alison Stewart: You also are very open about the fact that you were an aggressive people pleaser. When you think about decisions you've made in your life, what's one that you've made in your life that really was about pleasing other people?

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: My very first job, real job, out of graduate school. I went to work for a business consulting strategy firm, one of these big, national ones. They were called Monitor Group. They don't exist anymore. I knew nothing about business. Like, really, I had studied women's studies, and art history. I had gotten this job because they were recruiting, it was a salary and assigning bonus, and a great title, and I was very unsure about it at many points of the journey, but everybody was so encouraging.

"This is such a great step for you. This is going to set you up for your career." I took the job, I moved to New York. I was working insane hours, I was working for pharmaceutical companies doing marketing strategy. I was so, so miserable, but the idea, that was probably one of the earliest times in my life where it really felt like I couldn't not do this, because everybody else thinks this is such a good idea, I need to stick it out. How bad could it really be, if everyone is so happy that I'm doing it?

Alison Stewart: My guest is Alisha Fernandez Miranda, the name of the book is My What If Year: A Memoir. Alisha decided to just try new things and become an intern. Let's take some calls. We've got a couple people who have made some life changes. Alisha, let's talk to Antonio, calling in from Bayside, Queens. Antonio, how are you?

Antonio: Hey, how's it going, everyone? Very well, I hope you're all doing well, but yes, I made a transition to a different career in 2017. I was a graphic designer for a number of years, a mechanical designer for signage and whatnot. Then I was just really interested in web development. Well, first web design, because of the natural overlap to graphic design, and then I caught the bug and did a boot camp, and the rest is history.

Now I'm a front-end web developer, I work for an insurance company, work from home, and it's pretty cool. It really helps with my six-year-old daughter, which I love so much. Her name is Aria, just had to throw her in there.

Alison Stewart: Love and shout-out to Aria. Antonio, thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Brian from Georgetown, DC. Hi, Brian.

Brian: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I am in my mid-50s, I owned a restaurant for 15 years in New York City. In 2021, I went back to school, got a master's degree in public health, and just sold my restaurant. I am now a 54-year-old intern for the FDA.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Wow. Tell us about your internship. How's it going?

Brian: It just started, February 1st. It's really an independent research project, overseen by somebody at the FDA on the distribution of the vaccine in California, and how distribution serves as a form of communication that wasn't always in line with the public health communication that was coming from official sources. I'm super excited, after the 25-year restaurant career, to be doing something totally different, to be learning all the time, to have new challenges, and to be looking forward to a future where I'm going to be excited about new things, as opposed to this career.

Well, I loved the restaurant business. I had a great career, but it stopped being interesting and new to me. I'm really excited about this.

Alison Stewart: Brian, good luck to you. Thanks for calling in. Listeners, what big life changes have you made recently, in the pursuit of your own happiness? Have you switched careers maybe a little bit later in life? How did people around you react? Are you thinking about making a change? Have you thought about it for a long time? Why? Or why aren't you doing it? 212-433-9692 212-433-WNYC, or you can hit us up on social media, @allofitWNYC.

Alisha, we're getting a lot of response, and this makes sense. A lot of people are saying, "I'd love to do this, but I financially can't, I don't have the wherewithal, there's no way that I could really think about doing something this dramatic, given my particular circumstances." Are there any things that you can guide people towards? Smaller things they can do, things that clearly wouldn't put them in danger, wouldn't put them in a situation where their needs won't be met?

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: Absolutely. I really am grateful for and recognize the amount of privilege that I had, in being able to undertake this project, in large part that had been working for years to start my own business where I was my own boss, and so could work things out financially. I wasn't actually taking an enormous risk right away by doing this. I was still working my other job early in the morning, in the evenings, and on the weekends, to make sure that things were still continuing on.

I love this question because I really do think that the idea of taking a huge leap seems terrifying. It seemed terrifying to me at the beginning. There are so many things that we can do to just try to rekindle those sparks that we were feeling, maybe when we were younger, to think about learning new skills. There's just so many things out there that can be done in a smaller or shorter amount of time. You could go and take a class in something that you're very interested in, in the evenings, on the weekends, online.

There are so many classes that you can now take for free, to learn or build a new skill that's going to get you to where you want to go. There are hobbies, going to museums, or reading books that you haven't read in a long time. Whatever it is that sparks joy in you, you need to just try your best to do it and fit it in where you can. I don't think that to get to a whole What If, you necessarily have to do it all at once. I don't think that you have to make such a drastic change.

I think really trying to redirect your focus, "What do I truly want? What is outside of my job ,and maybe my family, that brings me joy, and how can I start incorporating that into my life in small ways?" It's these tiny, tiny little one-degree pivots, that might get you to a 180 at some point. You don't have to do it all at once.

Alison Stewart: How did you decide where you wanted to intern?

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: On this night, the Martini field night, I had a long list. Not everything on that list ended up making it into the shortlist. I knew for sure, musical theater was number one, that was the first internship that I took on. I was able to sit in on a classic Stage Company production of Assassins, and production opening on Broadway in Lincoln Center of Flying Over Sunset, through a friend's dad, who hooked me up with that opportunity.

Then I had a whole really nice color-coded schedule set out, but I decided to do this project in 2020. I started my first internship. I left on February 29th, 2020, to come to New York. Then when COVID happened, everything changed. Theater shut down immediately, I had to rush home, pack up my kids, get my family inside, school was out, and all of a sudden we were homeschooling. My second internship was entirely based on, "What can I do from my living room?"

I did not want to give up the project. One of the only things that was really booming during the pandemic was online fitness. I reached out to another friend who was trying to pivot to doing virtual fitness. She allowed me to do an internship from my living room that involved two dozen exercise classes from all over the world, and market-testing them for her. Then the other two were also things I had just really been passionate about. I minored in art history and never worked in art.

Working for an art dealer, or being in the art field, was top of my list. Then had always been interested in restaurants, hotels, and hospitality. That was my fourth internship.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Alisha Fernandez Miranda, the name of her book is My What If Year: A Memoir. We're taking calls about your What If Year, Your What If Future. We'll hear from you, callers, after a break, and more with Alisha. This is All Of It.

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This is All Of It. My guest is Alisha Fernandez Miranda, she has written the book My What If Year: A Memoir, also the host of the Quit Your Day Job Podcast. Let's take some calls, Alisha. Lakshmi is calling in from Warren, New Jersey. Hi, Lakshmi.

Lakshmi: Hey, hi. Thank you for taking my call.

Alison Stewart: Tell us about where you are.

Lakshmi: Yes, I'm in the process of-- Actually, I've already signed up with a fitness company, they do franchising. I'm in the process of opening my fitness studio, a Pilates studio. It's something 200% different than what my career has been. I've always been in technology. I've been working on technology companies. Basically, I wanted to do something totally different from technology, and fitness actually fit into the module.

One thing I would definitely advise all your listeners is-- I've been wanting to do something of my own for the longest, and I was never a risk-taker. Also, I guess I did not believe I could do it. I think you have to take risk if you want to do something on your own. Even if it fails, in the first round, you learn something new, you're reinventing yourself, and you're in the process of doing something that you enjoy. It's bound to be successful.

Alison Stewart: Lakshmi, thank you so much for calling in. Alisha, did you have a moment when you thought you'd made a horrible mistake by doing this?

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: Several, more than one. As I started these internships, I was really, really bad at a lot of it. Going back to your question about not being afraid of failure, I found myself going to work every day and failing at everything. I didn't know the right vocabulary, I messed up projects that I was supposed to be doing, because I didn't understand how to post on social media, which was a classic intern task. At 40, I was like, "Well, I don't know how to do this."

When I worked in the restaurant, I was so clumsy. I dropped plates of food, I spilled an entire bottle of Coke on myself, I checked people into the wrong room. I had many days where I got back home, after what I was doing, and just thought, "Why? Why am I putting myself through this? I have a job that I'm already good at. I can just go back and do that anytime." Even in the mistakes, even in the failures, that spark of something new was so exciting.

I hear it in all of the listeners that are calling in today, that feeling of doing something that you haven't done before, of trying something that you might not be good at, that little bit of risk in there. It was enough to keep me going, because it was really exhilarating to keep doing that day after day, in spite of the fact that I was really, truly terrible at so many aspects of interning.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Sherry, from Manhattan. Hi, Sherry. Sherry, are you there? I wonder-- Sherry is coming on, let's see, Sherry coming online. Maybe Sherry's coming online, maybe Sherry's not coming-- Oh, there you are, Sherry, hi. We hear you now, go for it.

Sherry: Hi. For years, I was an art handler in museums and galleries, decided that I needed more skills and insurance, went back to school, and became a watchmaker. I have been a watchmaker for the last 26 years. Then I realized that I needed something to do that was interesting when I retired, so I went back to school to become a Buddhist chaplain.

Alison Stewart: Love it.

Sherry: That is what I've been doing on the weekend. I do my watchmaking gig during the week, and I'm a chaplain on the weekends.

Alison Stewart: Sherry has lived a very interesting life, from what I'm taking away from that call. Let's talk to Scott, from Morristown, New Jersey. Hi, Scott.

Scott: Hi, Alison. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm great. How are you?

Scott: Fine. I have a story. I went to an Ivy League school and graduated with an art history degree, right when Reagan was defunding all of the foundations that were funding museums where I wanted to work. I decided, "Hey, I'll go into-- Here's another one, graphic design." I did that for about four years. I got a Mac, the first year the Macs were available. I could work as many hours, make as much money as I wanted, for about five or six years, until that business changed, because then everybody had computers.

Then there's another recession, and I thought, "Maybe I should be doing something with more people," because I was working in my basement on all my graphic design work. I basically worked at IKEA, learned about kitchens. They fired me. I bought a kitchen showroom from the store, went home, put it in my own house, then I said, "You know what, this isn't bad." I've been a home improvement contractor. It was scary, because I had to go out, make estimates, make people happy, but it was solving people's problems, was this wonderful transition.

Alison Stewart: Scott, thank you for calling in. We appreciate it. Alisha, in your internships, what was something about the world-- We'll talk about theater, because we do a lot of theater here, obviously, or in terms of working at an art dealer, that you didn't really understand before you got into it, and now you have a much clearer understanding of how that business works?

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: I think with theater, because that was just always something, as an audience member, I have always been so passionate about my whole life. I truly had no idea how what you see on stage is just the tip of the iceberg, and everything underneath that goes on to support a production happening. One of the best days of my internship was actually not in the rehearsal room, although all of those days were magical, but it was in the offices of the classic stage company, with a stack of filing.

Just going through all of the different pieces that they needed to make a production run. Everything, from waste management, to making sure the building was meeting its various inspections. This is not the fun stuff that ends up on stage, but you need all of these different pieces. The other thing was, even with the creative team, watching how every tiny-- Whether it's the fix of a mic or a new wig, every little piece has a huge part to play in the overall production.

It's like a living organism, and everybody needed to be on top of their game, communicating and collaborating well to work together. I just naively had absolutely no idea what it took to actually mount a production like that, the number of people, the amount of dedication, all the jobs that are beyond just the people who are showing up on stage. That was actually really inspiring. It meant that I could think about, what are the things I could do, if I ever did want to pursue a career in theater, that aren't singing, dancing, tapping, or folding playbills, which, also, I enjoy doing.

Alison Stewart: You were very candid in this part of the book, about-- Some people weren't that psyched that you were there. There were people who are like, "Why is she here? Who is she? Out of my way."

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: I tried to put a big smile on my face. I got some great advice from a very good family friend of mine, John Weidman, who's a legendary theater writer. He had been helping me connect, and he said, "Do not show up there like one of these Harvard-grad, Patagonia-wearing tourists, who are just going to come in and be on vacation in these people's place of work." I really took that to heart. I really tried hard to be respectful and humble, but it definitely took some people more convincing than others.

I don't look like the typical intern. I'm older, and not necessarily the person that they expected. In that very first internship, especially, I learned very quickly that I needed to make myself as useful as possible, really just be humble and helpful, be quiet, listen, learn, and only get involved where it felt relevant and necessary. It was a big change, after running my own company for so many years.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Giuliana, from Montclair. Hi, Giuliana.

Giuliana: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Alison Stewart: What's going on with you?

Giuliana: I wanted to say that I always wanted to work in New York City, in an advertising agency. I'm from Brazil, originally. I came here, did that [unintelligible 00:25:11] school program, and did it for, I don't know, two decades, almost, and did what I wanted to do, but then it came to a point I wasn't satisfied and fulfilled. I had a side hustle, a little hobby that became a side hustle, which, then, I started to think about whether I could make a living out of it. It was a big decision.

It was very scary because all the pressure, and all that, but I made it work until I didn't, because the pandemic happened. My side hustle was creating high-end invitations for weddings. I was able to go back to my advertising job. My point is that sometimes we make the big decisions in life, and we think it's forever, but I had almost two decades of experience, so I was able to go back and realize I could do that again. It was very natural.

I liked it again, because I had taken a break, until I didn't, and then I decided to quit again. Now I'm doing my full-time business, because weddings are back and everything. That was just my point, is that things are fluid and they move, so you just have to watch out for when is the right time to do. There's never a right time, so jump and go with it.

Alison Stewart: Giuliana, thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Ruth, calling in from Queens. Hi, Ruth.

Ruth: Hi. Just want to say that I had a 20-year career on Wall Street, and then I got laid off. At the same time, my husband was also switching careers. He was in advertising all his career, and then he went back to school to become a physical therapist. At the time when he was in school, I was supposed to manage the house, pay the mortgage, four kids, but then I got laid off, so now what do we do? Well, I decided to become a full-time beekeeper. I was a hobbyist for two years, and then decided to make a little business out of it.

Now, about 10 years later, I am actually pulled over, because I just went to check the bees on Staten Island. I'm the head beekeeper at the Children's Museum there, and I'm on my way to the Brooklyn Environmental Center. I'm the beekeeper there. Of course, I keep my own bees. Then I created a little company called HoneyGramz, where we help saving the bees by donating to local nonprofits to build raised beds and plant pollinator-friendly flowers.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in, Ruth. I love that story. Alisha, your book, it's a memoir. It's about the day-to-day things you had to do, the coffee you had to get, the things you learned, but it's really a story on two levels. It's a story about your practical aspect of it, and then there's also, we talked on a little bit, at the emotional part of this, the part of this is coming back to your authentic self, that maybe got put to the side because of you had certain expectations about success, or maybe you had very real expectations for how to survive, but that idea of checking back in with what you want.

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: It's so important. Also, for being a mom. I had twins. It was not easy to have them, and then it was not easy to raise them. I've spent so many years really, really focused on being a mom, and then when you added a job and making money on top of that, there wasn't really time for anything else. There was no time for sitting and checking in, and thinking, "What do I want to be doing? Am I happy where I am?" I think I was on autopilot.

I think that was probably where I needed to be, for that time in my life. It's not criticizing it, but once the twins got a little bit older, they turned eight, they were in school reliably, all day, once I had this chance to sit alone in quiet repose with myself for a while, that is when a lot of the cracks begin to show, that I think I had been painting over for a very long time. I think it happens to all of us at different stages in our life, when we're very, very busy, and we're pursuing all of these different things.

It's very easy to forget about the person at the center of it. For me, it was really giving myself the permission to say, "Okay, what do I want? I want to do something just for me, what is that, and how can I make that happen?" I felt really guilty a lot of the time. I felt so guilty for wanting to put myself first, for wanting to pursue something that meant that it was going to affect my husband and children, and that was going to affect our family finances, but the opportunities that have come out of it are so much richer than I could have possibly imagined.

Practically, yes, but emotionally too, how I feel as a person when I get up every morning. It's been life-changing, and I'm so glad I took the time to do it.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Jay, calling in from Woodhaven. Hey, Jay.

Jay: Hi. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing great. Tell us about your change.

Jay: Yes. I was in the IT field for over 20 years, and I was let go. I said to myself, "I've always wanted to do something to help people," and I've always gravitated towards older people, towards grandmothers and stuff. I went to work at a food pantry, and I loved it. I've been there for three years now, and it's just so fulfilling to be able to make bags of food for elderly people that are in need. I have some Russian ladies that, for instance, who referred to me as an angel. Where can you get that? It's just so fulfilling.

I'm in the process, though, of thinking too, that perhaps I need to reinvent myself again, because I had an accident and I'm probably disabled now.

Alison Stewart: I'm sorry.

Jay: I'm going to have to figure something out, to perhaps do at home.

Alison Stewart: Jay, I think you have put so much good karma in the world, that I'm really hoping it comes back to you. Really appreciate you taking the time, and what you did with your career change. If you need some inspiration, check out the book My What If Year: A Memoir, my guest has been Alisha Fernandez Miranda. Thanks for sharing your journey with us, Alisha.

Alisha Fernandez Miranda: Thank you, and thank you for everyone who called in. I love, love hearing other stories of people who have done the same thing.

 

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