Tag: Work

Young Professional… Lost.

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There is a part of this crazy journey that I haven’t acknowledged here yet.

Well, actually, that isn’t quite true.

There is a part of this journey that I’ve been too embarrassed to write about. Yes, embarrassed. Hard to believe coming from someone who has poured her heart into writing about anything and everything, no matter how humiliating, on a very public forum for the past two years, right? Well, this “thing” that I’m referring to is something that has always be a part of my self-concept, a key ingredient to my own perception of my self-worth. It has been a source of pride, of motivation, of identity. And now, in the last few months, that piece of me has vanished. So for the sake of the giant empty space in this Floridian room where an elephant should be, here it is…

My career.

Or current lack thereof.

I’m going to have a moment of self-pity. A giant, dramatic, cry-me-a-river-and-build-a-bridge, world’s-smallest-violin MOMENT and let it out: I’ve been struggling, I’ve been lost, and I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself.

I could say that I’ve made a lot of sacrifices for Bill and the unbelievable career move that brought us to Florida. I left my friends, my family, my beloved San Luis Obispo, my job that I loved and that loved me back. Not to mention my heart-of-hearts home state, for whom I cry grizzly bear-sized tears from the NorCal stars in my eyes and for whom I bleed In-N-Out special sauce through the map of my “5 to the 505 to the 80 to the 680 to the 101” veins. Oh yeah, and about whom no one in Florida really cares too much. I swear, I find myself wanting to go so SNL on everyone I meet that they know without a doubt I’m a “Californian”. 

I could say that I sacrificed all of that, but that wouldn’t be fair. Bill and I made the decision together, and this adventure is the bed we made. So I can either lie in it, tossing and turning all night, or I can put on my big girl pajamas and sleep well knowing there is nothing in this world I am lacking. I still have my family, I still have my friends. San Luis Obispo hasn’t moved, and neither has California.

However, there is still that pesky gnawing in my brain that just won’t quit. The unfortunate fact is that I cannot pick up the phone and call my career to tell it how much I miss it. It’s has been eating me alive.

So what’s been happening? First, a little back story. During undergrad, I had the privilege of studying what I loved. For me, that was Psychology and Theatre Arts, which in the real world is also known as Volunteering and Bartending. I’ve never known exactly what I wanted to do, per say, but I always knew that I would find it at the end of my passions. As a college student, I worked part-time at a local pet store, then Petsmart, followed by a brief stint at Victoria’s Secret, and lastly at the Children’s Center on my university’s campus while interning in the Gender Equity Center. Fast forward to right after graduation, and you’ll find me teaching kindergarten with some respite work on the side. The teaching job was on a 1000-hour contract, and when that ran out, well, I found myself right back to the drawing board. A random encounter with a former supervisor led me to a grad program, to which I applied. At the same time wanting to make a bit of money and explore my second major, I looked into jobs at our local news station and promptly landed a job in advertising sales. Right after starting, I found out that I got into grad school. In the scheme of things, I made a swift exit from sales and cracked the books again for my MA in Counseling and Guidance for Higher Education. During those two ragged, exhausting years, I interned with the sexual assault resource, the orientation program, the study abroad office, and Career Services, all on campus. Upon graduation, luck would have it that a counselor position opened up at the site of newfound passion, and I started my position as the Career Counselor for the College of Liberal Arts a few months after being hooded.

Best. Job. Ever. 

I had found a calling. I loved my job, I loved my students, I loved my coworkers, I loved my office, I loved my WORK. It was the first time this had ever really happened to me, this whole “do what you love, love what you do” thing. It felt great.

Now, I know you know how that story goes. A little over one year from my official full-time start date, I am now unemployed and in Florida – two of the very last things I ever expected to be. 

Making the decision to move was a very tough one, especially for me but also for Bill too. A lot was going to change so drastically, and although he had a new and exciting job, he had to live with watching his wife leave many things behind. Now, I haven’t experienced that myself, but I can see it in his eyes when I mention missing my friends or work through not contributing financially out loud or fighting being the one responsible for all the cleaning and maintenance and cooking and stocking of the fridge. But here we are, and I am missing my friends and working through a lack of contribution and fighting being responsible for our everyday lives, all while applying for jobs and networking like crazy.

You see, things are not quite going according to plan. At least for me.IMG_6403

When we first started dating, we had talked about the day that would come when we had to choose between San Luis Obispo (and all that it represents for me) and Bill’s career. At that time three years ago, in the car on the way to catch a flight at the Minneapolis airport, I stated that once I graduated from grad school, I wouldn’t be tied down to a job, and I would have my master’s degree in hand. I could get a job, easy, and this all sounded like an adventure that I couldn’t wait to go on. So Bill renewed his contract for two more years while I finished up. We got married a month after graduation.

But then he didn’t get a job right away, and opportunities in California opened up right before my eyes. Opportunities that I wanted to grab but didn’t know if I should since we might be leaving, but that I grabbed anyway because we might be leaving and couldn’t know for sure. So I applied for that dream job and ultimately got it. Once I did, I worried about accepting it. What if I accept and Bill gets a call next month? It was stressing me out. I did accept, and I had an amazing, amazing year there. A year of experience added to my resume that, with that same master’s degree, meant that I was set. 

Or so I thought.

I resigned from that position on June 30th. It is now a week into September, and I’ve been job hunting since May. No job. It’s all been a mystery, really. I have been targeting all the higher education institutions in the area with major emphasis on two in particular. Of course, there weren’t any career counselor positions, knowing that of course I wouldn’t be lucky enough to continue with my passion after 26 years of searching, but there are some great schools around here. As long as I’m working with students, I’m happy. The jobs I first started applying for were the ones that I read the job descriptions and the minimum requirements and thought, “I just might be able to get this.” In other words, they were at the top of my reach with the qualifications I was bringing with me, and testing out the job market, I thought that Florida couldn’t be any harder to break into than Cal Poly. But then I kept getting emails stating that I didn’t make it through HR – the first step in the application process in the higher education. They look at your degrees and your experience, and everyone who meets those minimum requirements gets through to the selection committee, regardless of how good your materials are. You meet it, you make it. I could have written my experience out in crayon, and as long as I meet the basic criteria, I make it through the first round. So back to getting the rejection email, nobody read all that work I put into my many custom resumes, my cover letters, my awesome letters of recommendation… In fact, nobody even looked at them.

Well, I took those first couple hits as a reality check, and maybe the market is more competitive than I thought. Time to step up my game even more. So I didn’t get a director position? At least I tried. As other jobs started popping up, I began climbing down the ladder. Surely I’ll get this assistant director position. Or that one. Or this job at this obscure school over there. Or maybe at that one? What is going on here? Can I please have a job?!?!

Now, I don’t want to sound pompous here, but I’m a career counselor. My area of expertise is to help people clarify their life purpose, define their career goals, work through the job search, and much more – the very basic of which is composing a compelling resume and cover letter. I know how to do these things, and do them well. I spend hours crafting targeted resumes, rearranging my experiences in terms of relevance and scouring the job description for ways to substitute their language for mine. I have countless files on my computer labeled by institution/department/job title, each containing a separate document for every piece of the application. My cover letters are the stuff of which dreams are made. So with all of these pulled up, I’ve called HR many times for feedback. “Hello, I recently applied for ______ position and didn’t make it through HR. I was under the impression that I met the minimum requirements. Do you have any feedback for me?” Then we nitpick each part of my application and why I didn’t meet the easy-peasy minimum requirements, and then there is nothing left I can do so I hang up the phone and sulk for a minute before throwing hellfire and brimstone into the next application, practically burning a hole through my computer with fury as I compose that next magnificent cover letter. 

IMG_6404The last straw came a few weeks ago. I applied for a job at one of the aforementioned university that required a bachelor’s and two years of experience. Well, I have two bachelor’s degrees, a master’s degree, and four years of related experience. Sounds promising, right? Despite the meticulousness I put in to yet another set of materials, I got that dreaded rejection letter AGAIN, and this time I’d had it. I emailed the head of the hiring committee, who I had just shaken hands with the week before, and got no response. I called HR yet again, and I tried everything I could think of before the sweet, sweet lady on the other end of the phone lowered her voice and said, “Well, we actually don’t count master’s degrees or graduate internships as experience here.” I’m sorry… WHAT?!?!? 

I just about blew a gasket. Had an aneurysm. Broke out in hives. Exploded into a million tiny little pieces due to internal pressure.

You have GOT to be kidding me. She basically had just told me that instead of spending two years running in a goddamn hamster wheel of stress, exhaustion, and mental Iron Man competitions – you know, those two years where I gave up my social life and cried more than I didn’t cry and forgot what sleeping was and yelled at Bill for no reason and missed out on amazing things so I could sit at home in sweats and write endless research papers on waitforit HIGHER EDUCATION – and instead of busting my ass working 40 hours a week at the university where they can only pay you close to minimum wage for only half those hours and INSTEAD OF SPENDING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ON A PIECE OF PAPER THAT WOULD ENSURE ME PROFESSIONAL SECURITY… Well, I should have just gone to work. Welcome to the last few years of my life, invalidated. 

And then to make matters worse, she added, “You should start applying for positions that require less experience.” Wait, less than those positions that according to your website I should technically be overqualified for? I’m confused. 

Look, it’s not that I should have gotten those jobs. It’s not that I think I’m entitled and some sort of super-professional. A lot of them are now filled, and probably with people who could be a much better fit than me. I know this. But at least give me a chance to show you why I think I could be a great asset. At least read those PDFs that I poured my occupational heart and soul into. But no, I am being held at the gate while I watch everyone else walk proudly through to their new positions, paychecks, and health benefits.

So what now? Well, I’m at a crossroads, but not really, because none of those paths seem to be going anywhere. I did a phone interview that went well, and I’m waiting to hear back. I’m working on my real estate license again, which I’ve wanted to do for years. I’ve been hunting for the perfect fixer house to throw myself into, which proves difficult when you don’t know your area. I’ve been hanging out with some new friends, and I just went to brunch on a Monday. I’ve been reading all the books that have been piling up, decorating and redecorating, cooking (affordable) gourmet meals, and laying on the floor face-up staring at the ceiling.

IMG_6411Doesn’t that all sound great?

Well, it should. However, it seems I haven’t been able smack myself into accepting it. I’ve had this time to distress and relax and catch up, but instead I’ve been digging my heels into the ground and resisting what is. I’ve been worried about the gap on my resume and concerned for the leaps we aren’t making in our savings and buying into all the outsider comments of how this may be the perfect opportunity to start a family when we are not quite there yet. If I could just let go of all it – the anxiety, the guilt, the confusion, the embarrassment – this could actually be a very productive time. The most productive, even. I could get healthy again and accomplish cool things. I could keep educating myself and become a Pinterest rockstar. (Fishtail braids and gallery wall domination have already taken place.) And I could just keep trying and do the best that I can and enjoy life as it is.

But it’s just so hard.

If I’m being honest, though, the hardest part hasn’t been everything I’ve been ranting about for the last five pages. The hardest part has been looking in the mirror this morning and having to face who I really am. It’s been figuring out how to deal with the thoughts in my head and the feelings in my heart without having a deadline to throw myself into or a button-up and heels to hide behind. It’s been about defining myself by my personality, my intellect, and my spirit instead of my profession. Nowadays we really do identify our worth through what it is that we do instead of who it is that we are. I’m mean, think about it. The first question we ask when introducing ourselves or making small talk is “What do you do?” Shouldn’t it be “Who are you?”

So who am I, if not my job? Well, I suppose I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover, a giver, a caretaker, an artist, a storyteller, an athlete, a big heart, a listening ear, and a kind smile. I am me.

So I guess in the meantime, while waiting for this whole job thing to work itself out, maybe it’s time to shift my focus. Maybe this is a great time to concern myself instead with all those things that I am, instead of all of those things I am currently not. That, it seems, may just be the real secret to getting ahead – and the best kept one, indeed.

The Life of a News Wife

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So this is what it feels like.

In a post that went up a little while ago, I wrote that Bill and I were staring down the barrels of two vastly different paths, and each requires some major life changes in the form of a hard, massive, aneurysm-inducing decision. And then I didn’t tell you a thing about what I was talking about, like a big jerk. Well, I finally have permission to announce that we have in fact pulled the trigger, there are some major life changes underway, and I actually am about this close to have an aneurysm.

In five days, Bill and I are moving to Florida.

Yes, you read that right. FLORIDA. Just about as far as you can get from my lifelong home – my beautiful Golden State of California – without leaving the United States. It is exactly 2846 miles – or a 42-hour drive (39 with no traffic) from our home in San Luis Obispo, CA, to the front door of our new townhouse in Fort Myers, FL. That is so ridiculously far that I simply cannot handle it.

It has been a long while since I’ve posted something on this little heart-of-my-heart blog of mine, and that is because the process has been overwhelming, exciting, stressful, and exhausting.  It has been so hard for me to sit down and gather my thoughts enough to write anything coherent, and I’m pretty sure that I still can’t so bear with me. We also made the decision not to share until contracts were signed and everything was officially official, which was excruciating for me. There is nothing I wanted more than to fill you in, but I couldn’t. So here we are now, and I’m probably smacking you in the face with this news in exactly the same way I was smacked in the face two months ago.

When I chose to marry Bill, I knew that I was choosing more than just a partner in life, but a specific lifestyle as well, and one that was very different from anything and everything I’d ever known. The lifestyle of someone working in news has its glamorous side, which most of you probably recognize. Being a “local celebrity” as people often put it, people saying “hi” on the street, never having a dull day at work, the perks that come with it, and the like. These are all great, and Bill handles each of these so humbly and kindly that my face nearly falls off just watching him sometimes. However, there is a side of the business that not many realize, and that is the nomadic nature of moving up and being successful as a journalist. When Bill and I first met, I wasn’t too aware of this commitment to this imminent upheaval. I was, however, committed to him from the start, and I soon found out that he was to me as well. Going way back to one of our first dates, I divulged a secret. I told him that even though I had just started my job at the station where we both worked, I had recently been accepted to grad school and had made the decision to go. I was so nervous about telling him, mostly because I worried for the security of my paycheck for the rest of the summer and the possibility of severely disappointing my new boss, who took me under her wing and called me her little protege. What I didn’t realize until he told me later in our relationship was that my committing to a two-year grad program could have also meant I might lose Bill, squashing any dreams of marrying the hunk of a man sitting across from me. That was because the end of his first two-year contract was fast approaching, and he had just recently gotten his reel and his resume together to fly off to the next opportunity. Luckily, I didn’t lose him, and he chose to quit his job search and re-sign a new contract for another two years, allowing us to date and eventually get engaged while I finish my grad program.

Within three months of meeting, Bill took me home to Minnesota to meet his family and attend a college teammate’s wedding. It was an incredible whirlwind of a trip, but I will always remember a specific conversation we had while he drove me to the airport to catch my flight back to California. (I was leaving a few days earlier than he was for work.) After such a crazy weekend, we finally had a moment to ourselves, and Bill took the chance to address a giant elephant in the backseat of the car on that Minneapolis freeway. He explained that his business came with interesting circumstances: the promise of relocating with no promise of where. Basically, an agent, if you are lucky enough to have one, manages the job search, blasting out feelers and resume tapes all across the country, incessantly checking openings and communicating with potential landing pads. If the materials catch a station’s eye, the correspondence begins, the journalist is flown out, negotiations get underway, and – BOOM – new station, new city, new life.

As a career counselor currently working in the liberal arts, I knew this, and I explain this process to many, many students in the journalism department at my university. “It’s a difficult business. You have to work your way up from station to station. You may have to take a job in an obscure market and live in a small town for awhile to build up your experience.” It’s a fact of life. I lay it out, no fluff. In fact, Bill and I have always joked about Bangor-freaking-Maine, as the place we could end up, settle down, and live forever until we died in our sleep of old age in that god-forsaken New England town. (I apologize to anyone in Bangor, Maine. I have never been there nor known when to take my foot out of my mouth.) However, despite all this unemotional real talk, it is another beast entirely to live it. Enter into our lives Fort Myers, which I had no idea existed until about two months ago.

It’s such a strange thing, to have someone else take control of the job search, if you can even call it that, as it really should be called more of a “job wait”. Once Bill got his reel and his resume together (with a little help from his personal career counselor), he simply sent them off to his agent in Chicago. After a few edits, he continued to chug along at his current gig, sometimes going weeks without talking to the big man in Chi-Town. Then all of a sudden, things changed. Quickly. Too quickly. So quickly that almost two months later, I’m still not sure what’s happening. It was as if Bill was a fish, swimming through silent water filled with fishing lines and hooks ominously hanging still all around him. Every once in a while, one would twitch slightly, causing panic but ultimately being dubbed a false alarm. Then, in the eerie quiet while Bill and I were looking left at the hook at the end of the line from, say, Minneapolis or Las Vegas, one snapped into his gills from the right and shot us both up and out of the water into a strange foreign world, where the sun was too bright and we didn’t know how to breathe the air and the noises were deafening compared to peace below the surface.

“Where in the hell is Fort Myers, Florida?” was likely my verbatim answer, the only possible deviation being the choice of expletive I used.

So fast forward a few weeks, and here we are. Bill flew out on his own and spent two quick nights there, mostly with the station. These days were agonizing for me, as his “interview” and “orientation”, for lack of better words, lasted 13 hours without a chance to call and update his poor little bird of a wife at home. Drawing up an offer seemed to take weeks, but when it landed in Bill’s hands it was all happening way to fast. We deliberated and anguished and lamented and marinated in this crazy idea, letting our imaginations run wild with the infinite possibilities (him) and the imminent crumblings of all that is good and holy in this world (me). We talked about our life plans for careers and a family. We hashed out logistics for three grueling hours at a time. We created pros and cons lists and talked to our parents and lost sleep. I rattled on about alligators and hurricanes and humidity and nile monitor lizards eating our dog and giant-ass bugs flying into my newly frizzy and unmanageable mess of hair. We almost made a decision, and then we didn’t. We got close to saying the words, but they got stuck in our throats. One day we knew we had to go, and the next we were sure we couldn’t. And then one morning before Bill went to work, he addressed what we had discussed so many times before: that the news business can be inconducive to having a family and a home and a steady and secure life. We knew this. While some of his colleagues had made it work through the flexibility and willingness of their spouses and others simply love their careers too much to be anything but truly happy, many of our other journalist friends had faced the difficult music in this area, and we had heard their regrets firsthand. Bill confessed that he saw his soon-to-be-expiring contract as an opportunity to get out of the business, to settle in San Luis Obispo, and to allow me to shine in my dream job, and honestly, a HUGE part of me wanted that more than anything. However, part of my very nature – and one of the reasons I love my job so much – is that I can fully see the light in someone’s eyes and feel the heat radiating from the fire in their bones when their work and their passions are one in the same. It was clear that one of the most vibrant examples of this was staring me in the face with his big, beautiful blue eyes. Bill had wanted this career since the day he came out of the womb, and I knew what I had to do. “You’re right, this might be a great opportunity to get out of the business. But look at us. I have my master’s degree, you’re done with your job, we don’t have kids. There’s nothing holding us back. Maybe this is the time to lean in, to really give this business a shot, and to take this opportunity. This doesn’t happen every day, and maybe we can’t let this slip away.” I didn’t want Bill to spend the rest of his life wondering “what if?” and regretting his decision or resenting me. The next morning I sat on the edge of the bed just after Bill had woken up, swallowed hard, and said, “Let’s go to Florida.” And then we cried.

So here we are, five days from moving day. Our house is utter chaos, and our belongings have been reduced to brown boxes. Goodbye parties have happened (with a few more on the horizon), and I’ve seen some people that I love nearly and dearly for the last time for what could potentially be a very long time. I have two days left at work before I leave a job and an office that have felt more like a dream and a family than work. We have a site unseen townhouse waiting for us in a gated community we don’t know in a city I’ve never been to. I have panicked and sobbed and grieved in sadness, and I have laughed and squealed and hugged in hope.

I do have pictures and tips and ridiculous anecdotes from the journey so far, but for some reason, this doesn’t seem like the time to include those. Thank you for letting me share this with you, and I hope you know that writing this and sharing this has helped me immensely, knowing that some of you are in this with me. Please know that you are invited to follow along on our adventure of a lifetime, from the roadtrip across the southern United States to the new house to the amazing new friends and opportunities we are about to find in our tropical paradise. And even though I waver between wondering what the hell we have gotten ourselves into and feeling the thrill of an uncertain future, one thing is for sure: we’re doing this.

This is the life of a news wife.

A Milestone Birthday

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Last Tuesday, I had a birthday. A coworker held the door open for me upon arriving at my place of work. While walking together down the hall to our offices, she asked if it was a milestone birthday.

Without hesitation, I answered, “Yup! 27. The best year ever.”

She laughed, and I did too, because laughing is great. But it was the absolute truth. I do fully intend to make 27 the best one yet. So with that, I am kicking off a year of living simply, loving to the fullest, and being present. Also known as… The Best Year Ever. So here are the highlights from the day that’s the start of one for the books!

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I’m not one to post selfies, but when another fabulous coworker exclaimed, “You’re one of those people who dresses up for your birthday!” upon first seeing me at 8:30 a.m., I realized, why yes. I am. So here is the outfit I chose for the (professional) occasion, including my new favorite skirt from The Limited.

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My favorite accent piece of the day? The gift from my brother and sister-in-law – the Kate Spade Skinny Mini Bow Bracelet. (Similar here.)

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One of our new traditions at work: Bringing in treats on your birthday, just like back in elementary school. With not much of a sweet tooth and a massive savory one, I opted for bagels (gluten-full and gluten-free) and cream cheese (dairy-full and dairy-free) for my morning front-office celebration. In true high style, I even brought the toaster.

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Pink. Sprinkles. Office door surprise. They know me well.

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I don’t know which was better: the beautiful white calla lilies one of my colleagues brought me or the hilarious story of her traipsing through her garden before dawn to retrieve them (complete with enthusiastic reenactment).

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I stayed at work until exactly noon, then headed home to shed the office attire and slip into my laid-back uniform of my most comfortable of maxi dresses. I wasn’t the only one eager to begin the festivities – Indy wanted in too, as you can probably tell by the look on her face searching for any possibility for a W-A-L-K.

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The first stop was an escape to the gorgeous Kelsey See Canyon Vineyards for a picnic, peacocks, and their amazing apple wines. Danae and her husband Matt disappeared with us, guaranteeing great company in the 75 degree weather of the beautiful Central Coast.

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And what could possibly be my #1 most coveted birthday lunch? A salad from New Frontiers‘ salad bar, which fell from the salad bar gods in salad bar heaven to bless even the most blaspheming of salad-bar-non-believers with salvation from their evil ways. Converts you all will be, I swear on all that is green and holy.

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The big man himself was able to finagle his way out of work for the occasion, and we actually got to wine taste together! Small victories, everyone.

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My greatest wish for this day was to park it next to the ocean, surrounded by friends and margarita in hand. One of the best places to do this is happy hour at Marisol at the Cliffs Resort in Shell Beach. In the background you see Robert, Jeff and Jessica, as well as the nose of my most loved one in the top right corner. In the back-background, you see open sky, open ocean, and palm trees. In the foreground you see the remains of a slowly sipped shot of reposado and a strawberry margarita, planted firmly on the table directly in front of me. Read: HAPPINESS.

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Genuine relaxation is my greatest wish for any of my friends, but especially for Danae and Matt who work so hard owning their own wedding styling/coordinating business and restaurant, respectively.

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Sunshine and salt water are the best medicine.

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And so the sun set on another wonderful first day of the rest of my life. However, the sun has not set – and will not if I have anything to do with it – on my intentions to live fully for the next 51 weeks.

“And she believed that she could so she did.”

Midweek Muse: Your Inner Voice

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Yesterday, a life-changing moment occurred. I had the incredible opportunity to present to students a workshop that I had created from the ground up. It was something a little different from what had been done before, something that I thought our students might need, and something that was undoubtedly, unabashedly, from start-to-finish ME. From the moment the idea sparked to the second I finished speaking, “How to Get to Where You Don’t Know You Are Going” felt like my baby. I was so invested that I realized I have been metaphorically holding my breath, unsure of how everyone would respond. I put my entire self on the line with this thing, not too mention my sanity, working ten to eleven hour days with no lunch break (plus over the weekend) for a week straight just trying to get it done. I was completely and utterly vulnerable.

But when I saw my extremely hard-working coworkers had cleared their schedules to attend and students were sighing in relief as I told them that they will, in fact, survive all this life business, I started to feel like I was doing something great. I was making an impact. I was in MY ELEMENT. And to be honest, as students came up afterward just to thank me for the  hour, I realized I had used my voice and stayed true to who I was while creating this project. I smiled for the rest of the day, knowing I have found a workplace place that values my voice and supports me in my creativity, even when that voice and that creativity are a little off the path of what has traditionally been done.

I’ve never felt like this before, and it is really something. So as a little Wednesday inspiration, I wanted to use one of the messages from my presentation to pass on some of that feeling and support to YOU.

Don't Let the Noise

(From foryouyouyou.tumblr.com via Pinterest)

If you ever need some support in staying true to your inner voice, I’ve got your back.

When It Floods…

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You know those weeks when hardly anything goes right, nothing comes easy, and frankly, everything just kind of sucks? This was one of those weeks.

Like Thursday. Ohhhh yes, let’s talk about Thursday. A shining, pretty little example of the week in general. Before I get into details I want to establish that the week was one of those – and I know we’ve all had these – with too much to do and nowhere near enough time, energy, and patience to get it all done. Think on that for a second, and have a little sympathy. Now, that means that I needed to get into the office early. But lo and behold, the first time I slept through my alarm in all of 2013 happened to be, you guessed it! THURSDAY. Up, ready, and out the door with time to spare, but a girl’s got to eat, right? Of course this means a pit stop at Pete’s for Simply Oatmeal and Genmai Cha tea. (Sidenote: If you haven’t tried that tea, go do it. Classic Japanese green tea with roasted popped brown rice sounds weird, but it smells and tastes amazing.) Of course, the line is long and takes forever. I still get into the office early, but later than anticipated, and in general, I don’t enjoy inhaling my breakfast at my desk while trudging through email.

So then the day takes off, and it’s one thing after another flying in to push back all of the things I really have to do, like prepare for that speech I have to give to the higher-up’s advisory council and that huge presentation I have to give tomorrow and, oh yeah, that highly anticipated workshop I’m so glad I came up with two months ago that I felt was SUCH a great idea, and all the students I’m supposed to see in between. That means that even though I woke up to one of those days where I’m so constantly hungry that I’ve turned into an insatiable beast, I already know that a lunch break is out of the question. Good thing I brought the leftover Shrimp and Andouille Sausage Jambalaya that I was SO looking forward to… dropping straight upside down on the floor with a huge splat, not a single bite or ounce of integrity salvageable from the steaming ruined pile. And as luck would have it, as I’m a sniffling (read: crying at work) hunched-over mess in the middle of a main office thruway trying to clean up the disaster, an employer recruiting our students walks by. And so does an intern. The look of pity from the former and a confused look of awkward terror from the latter later, I’m left sans lunch with zero pride and no time to get a replacement  as I head back to my office to shut the door and sob while attempting to type and squint through tears at this stupid PowerPoint that’s ruining my life. If that weren’t enough, I’ll spare you the gory details of the extra hour I stayed late, the painful and emotional conversation, the unexpected dropping of money, and the changing of every stoplight in town just before I got to it when all I want is to JUST GET HOME that occupied the rest of the day.

Instead I’ll just tell you that right at the moment when I had absolutely HAD IT and fruitlessly started yelling at the asshole tailgating me in the middle of my small town just to take my anger out on somebody (ANYBODY), I also realized something else.

I realized, “This is water.”

This was water.

This is, was, and always will be… water.

If you don’t know what I mean, please watch the this video created by TheGlossary.com and inspired by a speech given by novelist David Foster Wallace:

For me, on this ugly Thursday, the realization that this was water cleared the way. All of a sudden I was able to remember the parts of my day that weren’t that bad, and oh yeah, the parts that were actually… GOOD.

The part where my husband showed up at the office with a plate of fish tacos to let me eat and work through lunch and our dog to get me to smile (if only just a little).

The part where an unprompted coworker told me I was rocking it, despite feeling like I was trudging through quicksand while trying to beat the deadlines.

The part where I actually had a job at which to have a bad day.

Or how about my favorite part, when I finally walked through the door to my home to find it warm and comforting, with pot roast and vegetables simmering on the kitchen counter, filling every room with their smell, and with the gentle humming of washer and dryer filling the silence upstairs. Indy was sitting on the couch, happy to see me. Bill came tearing down the stairs, a smile and humble pride at figuring out the Crockpot all over his face.

The funny thing about water is that the more you thrash and kick and fight it, the faster you sink. But if you stop struggling and just feel it, eventually you’ll float back up to the surface. So that begs the question… Are you going to let it all come flooding in to surround you and fill your lungs so you drown? Or are you going to stop focusing on the shit, and see the beauty and the peace and the calm lying just beyond the surface?

Your choice, love. Your choice.

It’s Wednesday and It’s 3:30 P.M.

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A while ago – on a particularly rough Wednesday, mind you – I stumbled upon an article written for the Telegraph entitled:

Women Look Their Oldest at 3.30pm Every Wednesday

As you can imagine, this was by far the most encouraging thing I have heard in awhile. After reading the article, it makes sense that this would be the particular time when all of the negative factors would come crashing into each other, creating the perfect cocktail for a complete and utter train wreck on your face. Wednesday is when work stress is at it’s peak, what with all the things you need to get done by Friday afternoon facing off with that well-intentioned-but-never-ending to-do list we all made on Monday. Add to that the natural afternoon slump we all feel in the middle of the afternoon, with lunch safely and snugly in our bellies. Then factor in that the effects of booze take a few days to show up on your skin, and we may or may not have thrown a few back over the weekend. (But with the work week we all had last week, who wouldn’t?!) Top it all off with the finding that women logged the least amount of sleep on Monday, which you guessed it, can take a few days to surface, and you’ve got a lot of fabulous women transforming into the zombies from World War Z faster that it takes you to undress Brad Pitt with your eyes in the first scene of the same movie.

Pretty sweet, if you ask me.

Or not.

So dragging you down in the dirt and rubbing your face in a big pile of insecurity is not my intention. Instead, I want to give you reminder to take care of yourself at the lowest point of the week. You are incredible, and you are working hard. In the hopes that you’ll remember what makes it all worth it, here is a gift from me to you in the form of a gentle nudge to remember the reasons why we do what we do, courtesy of one of my favorite songs by Brandon & Leah.

Happy Wednesday!

P.S. I think you look beautiful.