Monthly Archives: March 2015

So, If I am so smart, why can’t I find a good job?????

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Okay, we have discussed this before, or maybe not. But I have 2 Master’s degrees. Nonsensical? Yeah, sort of. I should have gotten a PhD, but then I would have been very very educated with not a lot of professional work experience. Now I am just very educated with a lot of professional work experience. True story is that I just want to make enough money to take a nice vacation yearly and fly home once a year to see family (because my mom comes here 4 or 5 times a year), and to pay my bills and just live a normal life.

Have I settled for mediocre? No, I just really want to be here to raise my daughter. In less than 10 years she will be voting age. I figure that I can publish my big masterpiece then, so in the meantime I just want to provide for us, but watch her chase and reach her dreams and goals. I don’t think I am a super mom or anything, but I am pretty darn good.:) I could have a high-power D.C. job like so many families that we know, but I am not a big government or corporate kind of gal. I am just too creative or non-conformist, or maybe just too weird. I’m not sure.

I so wish that I could have gotten a good job at 21 right out of college and knew exactly what I wanted to do and stuck with it. I really do, but I have always had the brains, but lack of focus. I did alarmingly well for myself in my mid-20’s when I had a small business. I made more money then than I do now, and I called the shots. It was a cleaning service, I know it wasn’t flashy and I wore sweats a lot. But I made a good bit of moolah for a single girl with little debt and low rent.

Fast forward to now. I have too many credit accounts open. They are mostly due to car and vet repairs. Literally 3 of them are for those things. But, I am good at paying my bills, my credit score is decent, but if I made more money I could knock out my debt in less than a year. My car is paid for, but it has been to the shop 5 times this year. As all things do when they get old, they tend to not work as well. But hey, no car payment, so I can’t complain.

But I am ready for that break. You know, when you apply for a job and you actually hear back, and get it~! Granted, I am trying to find a professional position from home and it is tough if you do not have an IT or graphic design background. My expertise is social media and technical writing, like proposals or grants. But, I do not have a lot of experience with grants, outside of school work, so it means not grant-writing job for me. I am waiting for God to put it on someone’s heart to give me a chance and hire me.

I am smart, well-educated, hard-working and extremely organized. I am the kind of person that is given a task at 3:01 and I jump on it at 3:02. I work on an extremely part-time basis, remotely, for a psychiatry office in NYC. I am very efficient in that position and I have done stellar work. But it is literally like 20 hours a month right now. So, if that could triple or quadruple, we would be cooking with Crisco. If you have never heard that last statement, or do not know what Crisco is then you are probably not from the south.:)

Please send positive vibes and prayers my way that I get a job that will truly support us. I just lost my morning part-time job yesterday due to relocation, and though that is not many hours, it was 600 dollars a month extra. I have basically been piece-mealing my income with 3 different part-time jobs. That is why I get mad when people claim that they can’t find a job. In some areas, that could be true. But in an area like where I live, it is because people want a “position” and not a job. I want a position too, but I want to eat and have a place to sleep, so I do what I ‘gotta’ do.

If I went to work in the city and paid for before and after care for my kid, It would be a 10 hour commute and I would have to pay for someone to take care of my kid 2 hours before and after school, I would have less money coming in than I do now. The summers would literally break me! Nannies here start at 15-20 an hour and camps are 350 a week, and are not even all day long. So, I would have to pay someone to take my kid to camp because they do not start until 9 and pay someone to pick her up because they only last until 3 or 4. It is an endless battle. So besides truly wanting to be here with her, it makes sense economically.

I hope that you all have a beautiful week! It is 60 degrees in D.C. today which is lovely. Write soon!

Simply~

Dee

So, I’m behind on writing, on everything…

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I am so overwhelmed with my schedule right now. Being out of the house y workouts, at 6:30 and coming back and doing home school and chores and my part-time at home job and then pick up the kid I take care of a few evenings a week and taking my daughter to 5 rehearsals a week is crazy!!!!

I have let my workouts, devotional and writing fall by the way side. It’s not like I just dropped my resolutions, it is just that I barely have time to do laundry! So I am going to have to make out a schedule just so I can get things done that are important to me, but almost impossible to maintain.

I love being a mom and doing all of the things I do for my child. But it would be a heck of a lot easier if I did not have to work and was wealthy. But until then, I will have to get a Trapper Keeper 🙂 or something similar to keep me together and allow time to do what means the most and to get all I can out of my beautiful daily life. Because no matter how harried my life is, it is beautiful and I am so pleased to be alive to live it!!

So, I feel super antsy and need to be quiet and pray but can’t…

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So, a lot of things are going on. My daughter has two exciting offers coming up or opportunities would be the right wording. I am excited about it, but I am trying to figure out if these life-changing events come to fruition, how will I balance everything. It is so silly. I am concerned about how I will babysit the kids I keep and still have her in her play, and then do this even bigger project.

If I could just sit and be still with God, I think that I would be more at ease. I wouldn’t have to figure out how it is all going to flow. I could just give it to God through silent speaking, or whisper it on my knees before getting into bed. I don’t know why those easy actions are so difficult for me sometimes.

I don’t know if I feel that I don’t deserve to be heard. Or, if I just think it will not do any good. Another big thing is that I am so used to trying to fix everything myself. I want to get closer to get God, but there is a fear factor going on, and honestly I do not know how to do it.

I have read the Bible this year more than I did last year, I have also done more in a devotional than I have in the past. But I still do not know how to connect the 2 with prayer to spiritually connect with God in the way that I want to.

I am going to try to do less social media, and less Hulu and less Bravo and figure out how to TRULY put God first. Because I feel like when I do, clarity will be available to me, and I will be less anxious, and I will also have a different and better life.

When I go to sleep tonight, I am going to try this and see how it goes. The next time I write on here, I will let you know how it goes. If you have a strong relationship with God, or if you know how to speak with God and turn your problems over to Him, I would love to hear from you…

Good night, sweet dreams and God Bless.

~Simply Dee

So, my daughter went to bed feeling bad about her weight, which made me not go to bed…

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So, I have a couple of health issues that make me “chubby”. That good ole endocrine system! In my case, it is rifled with issues. I am not the “fat girl”, but I am someone who has worried, struggled, watched their weight for 20 years. If I lose 25 pounds in one year as I did last year, the doctors will say: “Oh, that is so great! People with your issues (thyroid for one), barely lose more than a pound per month sometimes.” When keeping myself away from most carbs from a year, except for some fruits and vegetables, that is not what I want to hear. But, I have learned to accept it. I mean I could kick up my workouts. I have not done much of those since September. But every waking moment, I feel is taken up right now. So I do squats when i am at the stove. I take the stairs. I do leg lifts while unloading the dishwasher.

Anyway, my daughter has found herself about 20 pounds overweight. And, it all kind of snuck up on us. She is very tall, so it doesn’t show very well. But, when wearing certain things or trying them on, it is obvious that she has gained weight. What happened is that she went from 4 hours a week of physical activity minimum, to literally none. Being at different rehearsals 4 nights a week and having school work during the day has really hampered the physical activity. She does dancing on Wii when she can, but sometimes we sit and do 5 hours straight of school work and then I have to go do my afternoon job and then it is rehearsals. So, the weight has piled on in the last year and a half. And since she has gained 4-5 inches of height, it was not as noticeable.

And what stinks is, she eats healthier than most of her peers. We don’t do cereal, she eats oatmeal instead and she does not add sugar. We eat varieties of veggie burgers, she eats brown rice, and whole grains, and very little fast food. Like maybe a few times a month, and it is never McDonald’s and does not include fries. So bottom line is, she may have inherited my weight woes. I don’t know many kids that order sushi when they could get a junkier version of Japanese. Or, a child that is even willing to try like a chickpea burger, is pretty phenomenal in my book. Most of her friends eat Oreos and Cheetos and apple juice. I can’t believe people buy any of it, but Apple juice has more sugar in it than cookies! And, I don’t allow soda. So, starting today we are going to add at least 30 minutes of cardio everyday like we used to. During the summer and spring, it is usually a given. But from September until March, I think that is where a bulk of our issues with not exercising started. Play commitments, I was really sick for 2 months, and it was too cold to go for a hike or bike ride like we would normally do.

So, today, Pilates is on the menu. It was supposed to be ice skating in the city, but only God can control the weather. I am going to try daily to switch it up so that there is variety, we don’t get bored, and we have fun. I mean she is the kid who will do “Just Dance” 20 songs straight, but we have let life get in the way of physical fitness. We had to give up tennis and swim and all of that to commit to her love of acting. But if there is no physical fitness, then life will eventually become tough. So today, we will swim the sea of despair together. We will climb the mountain of time constraints, and take fitness on with our dukes up. I know my wording is a bit dramatic, but I found it kind of funny.:)

Though I have decent habits and eat organic and make very good choices, I can do better. I don’t have to have a chocolate meltdown and “that time” of the month. I don’t have to have that extra piece of organic turkey bacon. And, more importantly, I can make time to get us both into shape because my daughter models what she sees. I hope that whatever struggle or endeavor you are working towards, that you get off of the couch and start it today. Whether it is to write more, workout, eat better, call your mom more, scoop the cat litter more (me), just do it and do it with gusto! Many of us get in our own way when it comes to achieving our goals.

So, I saw this hilarious book today and it referred to certain people as humble-braggers-Know one?

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I know this lady. She is kind in a syrupy way. She is genuine-I think. Well, she is a decent person, but I think when it comes down to it, she is out for she and her kid over anyone, but pretends to be a bend over backwards kind of person when she clearly is not. She embellishes a lot and boasts about how many opportunities her daughter has, but it is always important to stay humble.

She smiles in a contagious way and makes everyone she meets feel warm and fuzzy. She is the best person I have ever seen at making someone feel like whatever she is saying, is 100 percent from the heart, when her motives always seem to be to get them on her side in order to have a leg up on other people. She acts like she has super close relationships with anyone in charge.

She wants to be a person that knows more. She likes to act like she always knows what is going on when she clearly does not. She is a humble-bragger. When I saw this term in a book I instantly thought of this person. I can’t say that I hate her, or completely dislike her. But my daughter and I want to say things to her to compete with her in some way just to see how she will try to “one-up” us next.

I don’t understand why people like that are not called out more for their b.s. People have to know that she is not exactly down to earth, not when she is so sugary sweet with every word. People are not like that in real life. If they are, they have to be medicated.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a good person. I can even be super sweet. But I am real, to the core. I can’t fake my feelings about a situation. I can’t pretend to be interested in people in order to get something out of a situation. Nor do I speak about every opportunity that I or my child are offered or have come across.

For one thing, I have learned that not everyone is happy for you. I have also learned that sometimes speaking about things will come to bite you in the behind. I let this person know about some opportunities for my child and lo and behold, she schmoozed her way into them too. Hence, I have to see and hear about her crap on a regular basis.

This weekend, we are going to an important gig that will give my kid great experience and also put her in front of some important people in the acting world. Guess who is going to the same place the first chance she gets? You guessed it-the humble-bragger. She will then tell everyone that her kid was personally invited and that Steven Spielberg was there and complimented her child and thought about doing a movie specifically for her child.

How do I deal with someone like this? The constant covert competition, embellishing and talking about how fabulous her kid is grating on my nerves, especially when her kid doesn’t take the craft seriously and cannot even carry a tune. I know it is not Christian of me, but I would love to read her and tell her the truth about everything. I would love to tell her to stop being delusional and to stop pretending that they are someone who they really are not. I want to tell her to stop discussing how important humility is when she doesn’t even begin to know what it means.

Sorry, I am venting tonight. This whole humble-bragger term was super funny when I saw it. But the more I think about this person and how transparent she is with her crap, the more I got annoyed.

Good night!

~Simply Dee