I have a phenomenal rant brewing. Oh, it’s juicy. It’s funny as hell as well as ridiculously disconcerting. Never a dull moment ’round here.
The problem? I’ll need to go into the Witness Protection Program to be able to share it. *drat* I apologize for teasing you and leaving you high and dry. But that’s what we girls do sometimes. 😉
Had a fun Passion Party at the home of one of my loyal readers. The last blog may have destroyed my life, but maybe this one is improving it!
Anyway, had a great time and am going to retire myself to bed soon — got a million and one things to do tomorrow before I head out of town on Sunday. Blogging will be light to nonexistent for the next three weeks — behave yourselves without me and come back soon!
On iTunes: Leonard Cohen, “In My Secret Life”
Went to a Mary Kay function this evening. Was kind of hoping to network, but the environment didn’t really provide so much for that. But I did win $5, so that was OK by me — that’s a one-way turnpike toll!
There was some heavy-duty recruiting going on, and I’m not opposed to someday becoming a Mary Kay rep, but right now, I’ve got to really put more energy into my Passion Parties endeavor first. I did love the team spirit and all the honors the MK reps got this evening, but the thing is, they’re like carpenter ants — you can’t shake a dead rat without hitting a Mary Kay rep in your area. But Passion Parties reps are so much fewer in numbers, although that number is growing exponentially. But I am one of 6,000 in my chosen sales business, where there are thousands upon thousands of makeup salespeople.
The girls at the MK party were adorable, particularly because they loved my Nine West shoes that are ironically the same pink as the corporate MK logo. I didn’t even try to match! I had just never worn the shoes and wanted to dress in expensive attire, even though I’m not exactly making any money right now. 😉
Going into this, I was kind of worried that they would be eyeballing my makeup (as I am a Cover Girl/Maybelline/L’Oreal fan — whatever’s on sale at Wal-Mart!) with distaste. But nobody seemed to take much notice. My skin was on its best behavior today (hurrah!) so I didn’t see any point in trying to hide it under gobs of cosmetics.
The thing is, these woman-friendly sales businesses (and especially these functions) are truly empowering. I mean, I expected to walk in and see a bunch of supermodel-types. And while there were some truly striking women, well, the rest looked like me — with the exception of the two ridiculously young and skinny girls in the row in front of me, nearly everyone else had curves and laugh lines and some creases in their skirts from sitting all day. And it’s the little things like that that make me feel OK about me — and maybe even better, sometimes. Not better than anyone, by any means, but I get a big reminder to quit disassembling myself feature by feature in the mirror like I did when I was a pre-teen. I remember that I am attractive enough, successful enough, innovative enough … maybe I just need to up my own motivation and confidence.
And that will come in time (although it needs to come soon!). Right now, I’m still licking some fresh wounds, and that’s OK — I’ve never really taken the time to detox from all the insanity of my first 30 years. I look forward to taking on the next 30 with a clearer mind as well as vision of where I want to be by then. And not just *where* I want to be, but also *how* I want to be. The successes I’ve achieved in my life have come at a cost, but I’m smarter and stronger for it. And I’m more prepared for whatever comes next — and it had better be good! — because I will have a greater appreciation and even readiness for it.
And if you would like to have a fun girls’ night in with samples of yummy body products and toys that go buzz in the night, please e-mail me at passion AT thisdomainDOTcom. It’s never too early to start your holiday shopping! One thing my team and I are going to do are baskets I want to call “Human Hot Fudge Sundae” — Hot Fudge flavored lube, Cherry lube, Marshmallow whipped cream and Banana lube. Who can resist THAT?!?! 😉
On iTunes: Tracy Chapman, “Baby Can I Hold You”
*updated*
For all my crowing about how much I love working at home (and I do, believe me), it’s starting to have its downsides.
One, the fridge is five yards away. Damn sammiches. 😉
Even though my deal with myself is to only smoke while I am at the computer, well, I’ve burned through two packs of Camel Lights in the past two days. I don’t even remember lighting most of them!
I’ve gone through my supply of chai tea and french vanilla hot chocolate.
I’m mostly caught up on e-mails, but with a long trip out of town looming, I know I will come back to six million messages and listserv digests and whatnot.
I’m trying to think positively about my three weeks away from home. I mean, this is the girl who hasn’t taken a vacation since 1995, and that was my first-ever escape from my day-to-day life. I guess I’m worried because, not only will I not be getting paid for my time away, this is also valuable time I will be losing in looking for new projects.
On the other hand, I keep thinking that I will find freelance leads while I’m gone. Or maybe, with no real ties to here or anywhere in the country, I may decide to sell all my crap on Craig’s List and move elsewhere. Stranger things have happened, and I’ve proven that I’m not opposed to walking out on my current life and starting anew anywhere but here.
Anyway, today logic is battling with hope. I want hope to win out. Truly I do. But the pile of unpaid bills (gaah — didn’t I just pay those last month?) is mocking me. As is the pile of work I’m doing right now — it’s begging for my care and attention (I’ve given everything at least one to two edits; I just need the wherewithall to do the third and final once-over).
The work is good for me, actually. The assignment is a familiar one, and I’ve found unexpected joy in things that used to drain me. Distance is such a blessing. I wish this assignment could recur, actually, but alas, to everything there is a season, and this leaf blew off the branch and will be replaced by a whole new tree. And, in that, I guess there is the story of my life right now. Maybe it’s time to kill off the roots and take the seed elsewhere.
I see my future, with all its splendor and sunlight. It’s just getting through the “right now” that’s the challenge.
UPDATE
Zach Braff said it best in a Quarter-Life Crisis interview:
“The way I describe it is it’s like being long overdue for the next chapter of your life to open up, I think everyone can relate to that, life is a series of beginnings and changes, and then there’s times in your life where you’re like ‘I am so due for an epiphany, I am so due for something new to happen to me, a new girl, a new job, an epiphany, somebody please send me an epiphany.'”
On iTunes: Willa Ford, “I Wanna Be Bad”
1. I don’t have any human contact unless I initiate it.
2. I play with my cats whenever I want.
3. I can eat pickles and peanut butter and nobody asks me any stupid questions about it (and the answer is “not likely” in case you were going to ask!).
4. I can thaw something for dinner by taking it out of the freezer and going to work until it’s ready to cook (e.g., no microwave thawing required).
5. I smoke at my desk without pissing anybody off.
6. My bathroom is not funky and my coffee is fabulous.
7. My lunches are awesome — I make the best damn sammiches on the planet! (Next to Primanti’s, of course. Nobody can reach that level of supreme goodness. Well, maybe Fat Head’s, but both are 250 miles from here, as is the tempation of sweet potato fries from Uncle Sam’s.)
And with that, it is time for a dinner break. 😉
On iTunes: Bowling for Soup, “1985”
I am liking this freelance gig.
So I got up early, spent four hours getting my car fixed, came home for lunch, went to the post office, met Angie for a cigarette/chat session at the mall, got an eye exam (and bought some new trendy BeBe frames), made dinner and now, at 6:30 p.m., am ready to start working.
And the cool thing is that I can work well into the night, which I always did before but AFTER a full workday. Not anymore, friends. My workday starts and ends when I want it (or need it) to.
It’s the little things that make me do a happy dance, ya know? 🙂
On iTunes: Sixpence None the Richer, “Don’t Dream, It’s Over”
It’s always weird when you see your old job posted in the classifieds. It’s like, hey, that’s MY job. What are they doing advertising it? LOL. Then you remember that you left that long-term relationship. You broke up with them. And that’s how it should be treated — like the end of a caring relationship that had its ups and downs, but somehow, you’re going to be better off without each other. Everyone is raw and unsure in the aftermath of the breakup, but you know that nothing lasts forever and that the “right” match is out there for both you and your employer.
I finally have some irons in the fire for my freelance business. In fact, I’ll be working quite a bit this week. And getting the first client is always the hardest, so I can go to other clients and say that I’m in high demand so they’d better book me quickly! LOL.
I was just e-mailing with a dear friend about a (romantic) breakup that shook me to my core. He kept giving me every reason under the sun to leave, but I stuck it out. Did I think I was going to be some kind of hero or martyr, waiting through the bad that never seemed to end? But there truly were moments of happiness and comfort that I wouldn’t trade for the world — that’s what kept me there so long. But when I left and got some perspective (and he invited me back), I saw very clearly that we had both changed. But we changed so much that what we had in common didn’t exist anymore. And maybe it never did, but we didn’t know that at the time. In any event, you’ve got to learn what you can — whether from the job or from the romantic pairing — and take it with you into your next realm.
I guess I’ve always regarded breakups of any sort as a chance for people to work out their personal stuff and that, if the timing is ever right, they can get back together and see what can happen. But more often than not, the relationship probably should have ended long before it did. Or maybe it did end earlier and everyone pretended not to notice. But you really can’t go back and fix things. The best you can do is apologize for what you did wrong, in retrospect, and definitely not apologize for becoming a better person after all is said and done.
But that’s not to say the door isn’t open for you to achieve some sort of peace or truce. Life is just one big series of stepping stones and scenic stops along the bustling highways. You can’t always go back, but sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can visit, even if it’s only for a few moments in your mind.
On iTunes: Melissa Ferrick, “Taste”
I’m reading some great Sept. 11, 2001, tributes around the Web, and well, I don’t have a whole lot to add, being that the theme of the day is honoring heroes and I wasn’t much of one at that point in my life. But being that this is my “professional” blog, I will relate my experiences then to the ones I have now in relation to earning a living.
Sept. 11, three years ago, really did something to the mindset of the American worker. Think of how many people now work at home who used to commute to a physical office every day. Now that I am among those ranks, I do have to say that for all the horror of the tragedy we all witnessed, our world is turning in a better direction, at least insofar as work.
I guess before I blather on any further, I need to explain where I was on Sept. 11, 2001. I was sitting in a hellacious meeting. I mean, a really torturous, out-of-control, insipid and mind-numbing weekly meeting with some people I tolerated and others I absolutely abhored. As I was walking to said bonfire of the vanities, my mom called to inform me about the fall of the Twin Towers. Twin calls, actually — when she called again to report the second one, I had asked if she had just seen a repeat of the first tower being hit. She assured me that it was new footage — breaking news.
So I went to my earth-shatteringly painful meeting, only to be informed about the Pentagon hit. Then a little while into the horrific meeting, I heard about the plane crash in Somerset County, Pa.
And I didn’t, as my grandmother used to say, know whether to shit or go blind.
I panicked. I wanted to call my friend Jodie who lived in Johnstown (in Somerset County). I wanted to be with anyone but those strangers in that room. I needed some kind of comfort (and it did cross my mind that Southern Comfort would have sufficed). I needed some familiarity, some warmth, some kind of safety net.
The meeting from hell continued, after the CEO made us all stop and observe a moment of silence for those who had lost their lives that morning. And while I did feel a bit better to have a chance to connect with my higher self, well, someone else in the meeting went into a full-fledged panic attack. We were running around, getting her cool, wet towels and calling 911. I ended up calling 911 after 45 minutes had gone by, asking when they were planning to come save this woman’s life (we were four blocks from the nearest hospital). The operator said that there was a huge influx of panic attacks in the city, and everyone was in their cars, clogging the roads, so a unit was on its way but there was no telling when it could arrive.
Long story short, she was fine. We were all fine … eventually. But what I loathe to admit was that, during that moment of silence, I hoped that the building I was in would be hit with a plane. Yeah, when do you expect to read a thought like THAT in a Sept. 11, 2001, memorial post? But bear with me for a second. It’s not that I really wanted for myself or anyone to perish — I’m not that sadistic. 🙂 But I realized how woefully unhappy I was in my life. I’d made many sacrifices for my job, and while I fundamentally loved what I did, I was masking my general unhappiness every day under a cloak of Suzy Sunshine-esque mannerisms.
And what struck me more than anything was that people died for their jobs, fundamentally. I’m not talking about the firefighters and police and other good samaritans who restored our faith in humanity. Oh, no, I’m talking about the office workers who were counting on just another ordinary day in the workforce so that they could get a paycheck. I didn’t live in Washington, D.C., at the time (and BOY did my mom freak out when I decided to move to the nation’s capital, but that’s a story for another day). But I realized that I could very well have been one of the people jumping to my death to escape a burning building. I could have been trapped in a stairwell with other unsuspecting people, praying for my life. I could have died a very unhappy woman in an environment I had grown to dread.
But I didn’t. I am fortunate to have lived to make the changes in my life so many others would have done. And while my contribution to the workforce and the economy is a small one, it’s still all I have to give.
So it took me three years, literally to the day, to start working from home. But this is the lesson that many people learned before me, and I hope others will follow in our paths. Someone at a previous job had a great saying, how clear-cut the employee/employer relationship is: you give them a full week of work, then they give you a paycheck for that work. End of story. That is the extent of your contract with them. But I always gave my heart and soul to any job I held. And while I can look at myself in the mirror and know that I’ve, well, rocked socks, the bottom line is that I worked too hard for what I got in return. Questions always arise whether the employer needs us more than we need them, but when we need that paycheck (commensurate or not with the effort expended), well, we need to feel like we earned every dime. At least, that’s how I’ve felt. And I still do, but if I’m going to be busting my behind, I want to be the beneficiary. And now I am. My business will only be as successful as I make it.
Anyway, I’m treading carefully here, because I don’t want future employers to read this and think I’m a walking attitude problem. But I don’t want anyone to miss the message that no matter whether you work for someone else or yourself, you need to be fulfilled by it each and every day. We come into this world with so much potential, and I truly believe that something, anything has to change by the end of each workday. In the positive sense, of course. So many people amble through their vocations, not realizing that they have the power to change their respective industries, if only they seized the opportunity. And many people don’t have that option — some are held back by politics, by superiors, by their own indecision or insecurity. We as leaders should be enabling every single person to grow to his or her heights within an organization. Most people are rebels at heart (at least, I am anyway), and when you give them parameters, they like to go beyond them. So keep setting the bar even higher, and you will be amazed at how people surpass themselves.
So, in any event, Sept. 11, 2001, is truly the start of a snowball effect on the labor of love. Whether paid or unpaid, Americans and maybe even citizens of the world have realized that whatever they want to do, they can do it and should do it before it is too late. The lesson I learned throughout my life, and it is magnified now, is that we may be born alone and die alone, but we don’t have to live alone. There is always some sort of safety net out there — friends and strangers really aren’t so different, when you think about it. We all want each other to succeed, and when we spot that spark in others, whether we’ve known them 10 minutes or 10 years, we want to help them to reach their happiness. When we can and do help, it’s a stop along the way to reaching our own.
On iTunes: Pat Benatar, “Invincible”
I’ve found myself in a strange position lately: a mentor to anyone who needs me.
It’s weird how, when your life kind of falls apart, you suddenly get a clear vision of just why you were put on this earth and what you love to do. My strength, my gift, my calling is to be a mentor — the proverbial helping hand, the gift horse, the sage, the traveler who is 10 steps ahead of you who has just been where you are right now.
The life lesson that I can share is that when it rains, it pours. In four days, I left my job, broke my phone, got my car dented by some moron, had a first date cancel on me and more stuff I’m not planning to post here. 🙂 Same thing is going on elsewhere — my former core staff of three is temporarily a staff of one. In fact, I just got a desperate call from that lone wolf, and I am glad to say that I knew how to solve the problem immediately. I know, I’m almost off the payroll, but if there is one thing I have learned, it is how to spot the opportunity in every crisis, and it’s the least I can do to share my wisdom with the next generation.
That’s actually the first logical step forward — after you’ve accepted that life is unfair, your next conquest is to defuse the situation and move out of crisis mode. After the urgency of the situation is removed, then everyone can think clearly.
I was talking to one of my dear online friends, who noted that she learns a life lesson every time I leave a comment on her site. That kind of made me giggle out loud — as I mentioned to her, there’s a moment when you realize you truly do know (or have experienced) enough to become a mentor. You realize you have dispensed solid advice, and you wonder to yourself, “When the hell did I become the grown-up?” Because, let’s face it, we all have our own mentors, and it’s unnerving to realize we have joined their ranks. But in a good way.
So again, I’ve not earned any money in my freelance business today, but my heart grew three sizes that day. 😉
On iTunes: Mary Chapin Carpenter, “Grand Central Station”
Today I spent: $200
Today I earned: $0
Perhaps I have taken my attitude of, “I’ll be fine financially … eventually — stop worrying” a little bit too far.
Spent the afternoon doing serious credit card damage at Tyson’s Corner. Didn’t bring home much, though. Got some great new sheets and some wrought-iron curtain rods and entirely too many specialty food treats from Harry & David.
Un Self-employed people should not have this much fun with money they don’t have yet. 🙂
I did pick up a freelance gig for next week. Woo hoo! I *really* lowered my rates to ensure I would get the job. The great news is that this will pay my rent next month. Hurrah! The glorious news is that I can do it from the sanctity of my own home.
I’ve applied for about a dozen other freelance leads, but I’m not sure how to dazzle people via e-mail. I figure that sending a resume and a PDF of a professional reference is a good start, but alas, I am a newbie and who only knows what protocols I am missing at this point. Live and learn, I suppose. My next goal is to write a consultant agreement, and fast!
What I need to do now is hit the Virginia lottery — I need a laptop in case any of these leads come through during the three weeks my plants will be dying that I am on vacation. Many props to go Cope for creating the Freelance Daily newsletter for us homebound employees. Sign up, friends! It’s free and you’ll love perusing employment leads that land in your inbox by 9 a.m. every weekday!
In other news, my previous week’s shopping yielded big results in my post office box today. A couple of great shirts from Old Navy (I need to be trendy even if I’m not leaving the house!) and my Passion Parties business cards awaited my arrival as well. By the way, I LOVE donations mail — drop me a line (or a contract) at P.O. Box 9663, Alex., VA 22304!
Oh, and I have a DATE tonight (Thursday). Hurrah! Here’s to hopefully finding a sane single in my neck of the woods! At least I can sport one of my new outfits — I swear, dating should be a business expense in its own right! 😉
On iTunes: Frou Frou, “Let Go”