Lazy Lady Confesses

The Goals

magnoliakate — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:30:14 +0000

I’d like to take a moment and make something clear. I do not intend for this blog to be yet another depressing rant of a young person on the verge of a quarter-life crisis. My intention is to maintain optimistic while slowly working to establish a new type of person for myself. I intend to not only think about things but to DO them. I thought that this bit of information would be helpful to anyone who may have read the first two posts that I’ve written as they are very much on the Debbie Downer side.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way lets get to the good stuff, Goals. I figure if I’m going to learn how to finish things I better have some goals to work towards. The goals are as follows:

1. Write something every day. No, I don’t have any aspirations to become a “writer” I just think that this is a good idea. It’s something that I will HAVE to do each day. Just having to do something each day will force me to continuously work on something, it will be something to not quit, and I hope that the process of writing/maintaining this blog will help me stay on course. I know that I won’t always have access to the internet so I will allow myself the flexibility to choose not to post on weekends.

2. Finish College. I’ll be breaking this down into smaller goals along the way but this is very much an important overall goal for me. I’ve always known that I’m capable of obtaining a degree (at this point I don’t even care what it is) but I’ve always found reasons to quit. The funny part is that I actually do really enjoy learning, but I’m just lazy and that has to be the lamest excuse ever.

3. Take care of my health. This can be a very vague goal so I will be breaking this down into much smaller goals as well. It is extremely important to me that I actually start taking care of my health because I enjoy life and I want to live the best possible life. I am constantly worried about my parents who are technically obese and riddled with health conditions that are all result of their lack of exercise and healthy diet. I want to have children one day and I want to make sure that they (and my wonderful husband) don’t have to worry about me because I’m not responsible for my own health. This is also a major lifestyle change. Each day is a decision to positively or negatively impact my life. There is no end and I want to learn to consistently do what I need to do.

There you have it, my three goals. Let’s see where this goes!

Why now?

magnoliakate — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:30:02 +0000

I suppose it may be obvious that anytime is a good time to decide to grow-up, become an adult, take care of yourself, and put yourself on the path that you wish to be on. Unfortunately it seems that most often we humans need something BIG to push us from the status quo and onto a new path in life. For me this BIG thing was getting laid off two weeks ago.

The job itself didn’t pay much, but for what I did it was absolutely perfect. I worked as a customer service representative/account manager for an online company. Yes, I worked FROM HOME and I set MY OWN SCHEDULE. As if that wasn’t good enough, I was on salary, had generous vacation pay, paid holidays, sick days, and good health insurance. I was NEVER once stressed out about work. Everything was manageable AND I worked with my friends. I spent my days answering emails, chatting with my boss, shopping at etsy.com, and generally LOVING life. Yes, I knew the job was too good to be true. Especially when things slowed way down and I was getting paid for a 40 hour work week when in reality I was doing about ten hours of work each week. Understandably, they had to lay people off and their method was to let the three newest hires go. I was number two and they let me go.

It took a few days to sink in, but oh man did it suck when I came to realize that I had just lost the best job of my life. I figured I would work for this company for at least the next four years. I could go to school (whenever and wherever I pleased) and work when I wasn’t in class or studying. My husband and I also became a one car family. He drove the car to and from work and I walked from the bedroom to the living room. I think the reason it took a while to hit me is that I had never ever been unemployed and I had never, ever had trouble finding a job. It didn’t take long to realize that the reason I’d never been unemployed is that I had always worked schlepp work. Food service, retail, administrative, etc. Those jobs suck- they don’t pay well, you have no freedom, and they make you miserable. The worst part is that ever since our economy took a nose dive, any work, even schlepp work is hard to come by. All I could think about was how much I didn’t want to go back to that type of work.

This is where the light-bulb-in-the-head moment happened. I realized that I am 23, haven’t finished college, haven’t had any long term employment, and very few marketable skills. Like any emotional gal, I came to this conclusionnand cried. I felt worthless. Getting laid off felt like getting dumped and being told, “it’s not you, it’s me.” Whatever pal, we all know that means that you don’t like me enough to WANT to keep me around. Of course being “dumped” does a number on your self-esteem and you see with a greater clarity than ever before, EVERY SINGLE FLAW. There was something consistent about these flaws though, no education, no long term employment, they were all things I could have achieved if I didn’t quit. And since we’re making lists of things I haven’t finished lets not forget to add to that list the fact that I really never have been able to start an exercise plan, or stay on top of things like cleaning my house, or washing the dishes and laundry before they pile up so high they rival Everest. I procrastinate and I don’t complete.

Now lets see, what has every-single-person said to me about getting laid off? That this is going to be an opportunity that opens new doors, greater things will happen, and later in life I’ll look back thankful for this challenge. It’s hard to listen to this kind of optimism when your self-esteem and confidence is free-falling off the world’s high mountain but at some point you have to stop yourself. I don’t want to enter depression and I don’t want to look back on life thinking of what could have been.

Today, I am choosing a BETTER life. I am going to be confident and GROW-UP. I know it’s cliched but today is the first day of the rest of my life and it’s going to be a good one.

What’s the problem?

magnoliakate — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:20:40 +0000

My instinct tells me that now is the time to say something witty like “the hardest part is starting” but to be honest that’s completely contrary to the intended purpose of this attempt at a blog. My problem isn’t starting things, it’s finishing what I start. For every college class that I’ve completed, I’m withdrawn from one. Countless are the activities clubs, organizations, projects, sports, and languages that I’ve started but never finished. My life is one of “in-completes.” Each semester of high school I would enroll in honors this or Advanced Placement that but it always turned out the same, either an average grade or I would switch to a normal easier version of the class to meet the state graduation requirement.

It may be helpful to know how I came to be the 23 year old who never completed anything she set out to do. I’ll spare you (although I don’t imagine a “you” reading this post will ever exist) the long details of story. Instead I’ll say this, I never had to try or finish ANYTHING. My mother was always well-intentioned but she never saw life as having anything worth working at. She was thrilled with average and content with getting by. For example, if you finished high school and could obtain a minimum wage position so that you could be out of the house by the age of 18, she was happy. Her job was done. To her sports teams, school activities, honors classes, and any sort of involvement meant three things: 1) Money- she didn’t have much and didn’t want to spend any. 2) Driving- She HATED driving. If it required any additional driving then it wasn’t necessary. 3) Stress- If taking an honors class meant staying up until 12AM to study/freak out then it was NOT a good idea.

As luck would have it, I would also be the only child she had that didn’t need any guidance to meet the minimum. I was smart, capable, full of potential and I happened to live in a neighborhood of poor immigrants so I really stood out as a “real star.” When I reached high school I was smart enough to pass with ease. My attempts at AP this and honors that didn’t mean a thing because I could also manage. I was also incredibly lucky. The semester I almost failed English, my teacher left to have a baby and her replacement substitute wanted to make a difference so he let me turn in all my late assignments a few weeks before class ended. Managing to get by and/or luck always happened.

My inability to complete things became a real problem when I reached college. For the first time in my life I was faced with classes that I HAD to take yet challenged me. Classes that required I TRY hard, study, focus, and not procrastinate. Oddly enough, every class I’ve finished I have gotten an excellent grade in. Communications, social sciences, and English are my friends. Math and science are not. Those that require effort, I quit or withdraw before the deadline. This theme of incompletion has translated beyond school to my ability to exercise and maintain a job for longer than a year.

The purpose of this blog is not to rant, rave, and complain as I continue a lifestyle of not being able to finish anything. I am hoping choosing to use this public forum as a way of tracking my progress that I hope to start. Although I highly doubt that I’ll have any readers I’m going to choose to believe that you do exist and that you do want to see me finish something. I am going to choose to not be trapped by the me that I’ve known and been my entire life. I’m going to start little by little.