Chapter 14 - The Odyssey

In classic writing, there are 12 literary archetypes that are common characters in many written works of fiction. Archetypes like The Lover, The Hero and The Magician are literary staples, but today I would like to focus on one archetype that has made up a substantial part of Preferred Solutions’ story, The Explorer. The Explorer is a character naturally driven to travel and explore the unknown. A curious, driven, and motivated character, heroes like Odysseus, Huckleberry Finn and Sherlock Holmes make up members of this group. And in Preferred Solutions, our Explorer must undoubtedly be Roelien Van Der Linden. This being our first character profile, let’s take this slowly.

Like Luke Skywalker who started his journey as a farm boy on a moisture farm, Roelien starts her story with Preferred Solutions in early 2008 as a qualified pharmacist’s assistant, a rather odd place to kick off an adventure to be sure. The connective tissue that linked the two stories together, however, was the fact that at the time Roelien was working for Sally Roux’s sister-in-law. And via this link Roelien received the call to a new adventure. Rico and Sally invited her to join Preferred Solutions with the promise of “the new challenge” that would be waiting for her. This temptation would prove to be too much to resist. So, after she accepted the offer, she started her work and training.

This would start a 10-year adventure across the digital oceans that Pastel and Sage exist in. Like Odysseus, Roelien, as a well-loved Pastel Payroll specialist, would crisscross these seas time and time again, meeting many and helping even more as the quality of her work ever increased. But change is as inevitable as ever. With tens-of-thousands of hours under her belt, Roelien would find herself at the precipice of a unique choice. Greater opportunities lay across the physical oceans, far in the North. But her work would move with her, as Rico and Sally agreed that Roelien could continue her Preferred Solutions adventure in the United Kingdom. And as she said her goodbyes to the friends she had made along the way, Roelien turned toward a new horizon, a new Odyssey beyond the horizon.