Finding My Path – Part 9: I’m a Quitter

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When I started my Path Finder journey in April of this year, I wasn’t sure where it was leading me. I knew I was unhappy, and I needed help. I wanted someone to guide me forward, toward a life better lived. I really thought it would be a magic bullet. I figured after the 30 day course I would know what I wanted and how to get there. Of course, as any sane person would know, that wasn’t the case.

The Path Finder course invigorated me, encouraged me and woke me up…but it did not give me an answer. And I don’t think that was its purpose. Its purpose was to show me what I loved about the life I already had. You guys, I had a great life. I still do.

I love being with my children. I love taking photos that show how wonderful the world can be. I love writing. I love blogging. I love being creative with my hands. I love making things. I love sleeping more than four hours per night. I love living on my own schedule. I love making other people smile. I love spending time with my husband. I love being proud of my work.

I don’t love long meetings. I don’t love writing dry, government proposals. I don’t love sitting at a desk for 10 hours a day. I don’t love my kids being overwhelmed because they are exhausted from 10+ hours of school/daycare per day. I don’t love feeling like my brain is made of scrambled eggs because it’s too overloaded. I don’t love saying no to things I want to do, because there is a long list of things I have to do.

I worked hard all spring, summer and fall, building up my freelance client base and finally (FINALLY) making this blog a priority. I had been writing here for seven years before I ever really attempted to promote it using social media, friends and family. I was afraid of my work…embarrassed really, and stepping out of that little cocoon I’d made for myself was not easy. All of a sudden there were “real” people reading here. People liking my work on Facebook. People re-tweeting my posts. It was terrifying. What if I’d made a mistake? What if I wasn’t good enough and everyone could see it? What if, what if, what if?!

Right when I was at my breaking point, I stumbled upon Andrea Scher’s Cultivating Courage class and I knew it was the right move for me. For 30 days I made a habit of being brave and sharing with a supportive group of people who were my virtual cheerleaders. These people, and Andrea, have made my world a brighter place. I did things I never thought I’d do. I stood up to an unsupportive family member. I asked people to help me. I admitted my failures. And my most recent brave move?

I quit my full time job.

Yep, I did it. And, oh my goodness, it’s f’ing scary. We are losing my income, our stability and my routine. I am going from a full time working mom, to a part time working mom / part time stay home mom…and that’s something we’ve never envisioned for our family. I will be working for Trent’s company 20 hours a week, staying home with Tate and Lu, and continuing the work I’ve started here, on this blog. For my husband, it’s a step toward making his company a bigger force in it’s field. For me, it’s a chance to be free, a chance to build my creative endeavors so that when he sells his company I will be able to make a leap forward into a real creative career. Like I said, scary. And wonderful.

I want to say thank you. Yes you. Thank you for being here and reading along as I write my life story. The next chapter begins soon…

(See my entire journey, here.)

Abre Los Ojos, Open Your Eyes

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Life is a funny thing. One day you’re here and you’re laughing with your kids and the next day you’re not. (Bear with me, ya’ll, this post is basically just a long, rambling, run on sentence.)

Yesterday was Trent’s grandfather’s funeral, a celebration of a man I’ve known for over ten years, but really didn’t know at all. By the time I met Grandpa Ron, he was already in the early stages of what would become severe Alzheimer’s, and he usually thought I was his old secretary (also named Megan). He was a bit silly, but always fairly happy and ready to give me hugs. He danced with me at my wedding, smiling broadly the whole time. I found out yesterday that my wedding was one of the last times he’d danced. After that his body and mind slowly slipped away. Lucy was looking at old photos yesterday and saw one of Ron with his grandkids, laughing and smiling. “Is that when Grandpa Ron could hear and talk?” she asked. She never really knew him either. All her memories of him will be in a bed or a wheelchair, a faraway look in his eyes, if they were opened at all.

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Ron and Edna with their grandkids…Trent is the surly looking one on the far right.

But yesterday I learned so much about the man he was before. How he snuck off to join the Navy at 16 so he could fight in WWII. How he created a beautiful blended family with ten kids that he loved so much. How he loved Las Vegas (and showgirls in particular). How he and his wife traveled all over and particularly loved going by boat. It was a beautiful, wonderful, sad day.

I looked around as the procession led into the church. The whole family was to walk in together. And wow, was it a procession. The family alone took up half of the church. Ron had built a big, beautiful family. Not always perfect and certainly not without disagreements, but full of love.

This year has been a strange one for me. Sometimes happy and full of hope, and sometimes really dark and depressing. I have drug myself from pretty sad places, and changed my life in ways I didn’t imagine I would last January. I never thought this would be a year of great change…but regardless, it has been. I look back at journal entries from a year ago and don’t recognize that person, she who was so angry, so full of self-doubt. The changes have been so great and purposeful, I feel renewed. I look around at Grandpa Ron’s big beautiful family and I think, “I will have that.” I will have a life full of love and joy and family.

I already have that.

The difference is, I see it now. I have removed the glasses of shame and guilt, and for now, in this moment, I see what I have. I am thankful for it, I know I am lucky.

Ironically, yesterday was also the last day of my Cultivating Courage class. This class couldn’t have come during a more perfect time. I needed a push to be brave, to stand up for myself and to remove the people and things in my life that had been causing me to see things through a veil of shame and sadness. I was probably already halfway there, but this class gave me some gentle nudges to complete my journey. One brave move, every day, for 30 days? Done. I highly recommend it.

I want to keep being brave. I want to walk into this next year, and the years to follow, with courage. The courage to be a person that makes the world a better place, through family, service and love. I want to be a person who encourages joy in the world, and helps it to spread.

I want to create a life, so that one day, when my family is celebrating who I was, they will know the world was better because I was in it. I want them to tell stories and laugh loudly. I want them to feel like I did yesterday. Peaceful, happy, grateful and loved.

The color guard, waiting before the burial. They honored Grandpa so beautifully. Just wonderful.

Finding My Path – Part 8: Sunflowers & Superpowers

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Have I mentioned my Cultivating Courage class? I can’t remember, which isn’t anything new (let’s be real, I can’t remember yesterday!). Anyway, Cultivating Courage is an online course that is all about bravery. I know, it sounds bananas. If I was on the listening end of this post, I’d think I was crazy too. But hear me out. Because this is good stuff.

I think as women/mothers/wives/daughters we tend to work so very hard to make sure everyone around us is doing okay. We want our children, our parents, our husbands/wives/partners, our families, and our friends to all be happy and healthy. We will drop plans on a moments notice if someone needs help or comfort. But do we give this to ourselves? Do we treat ourselves with the same kindness we reserve for others? I know I don’t. I am my worst critic, by far. The little voice inside my head that says, “You can’t do that. You’re not good enough. You aren’t creative enough. You’re a fake! A phony!”? Yeah, that voice is me.

I few months ago I set out on a journey to “Find My Path.” It started with another online course (that ironically, I was embarrassed to tell people about), the Path Finder, which changed the game for me. But after a few months, I started to feel stuck again. Not that I wasn’t moving forward, I was! But I could feel the gremlins creeping in to my psyche, whispering in my ear. They tell me I can’t do it. And I was starting to believe them. I brushed off everything that’s happened in the last six months (being published at BlogHer, getting my first check for freelance writing, creating and selling out my Mini Shoots, getting a blogging gig with Sweet Lemon Magazine) as luck, and not that big of a deal.

And then, via the cosmos or God or whatever you believe in, I found this Cultivating Courage class. And, oh friends, it’s another game changer. Every day, for 30 days, each participant vows to do something brave. Sometimes it’s something really simple (sending that email to a negative co-worker) and sometimes it’s something very complex (making an appointment with a therapist), but every day we do something. And then we share with each other. And these people, these 50 people that are on this journey with me, have changed my life.

There is so much support in this class, so much love, so much compassion…it can be quite overwhelming. There are days when I have no idea what to write here, in my silly, frivolous space where we talk about Doctor Who and Britney Spears, because I’ve spent most of the last 14 days lost in the deep thoughts this class has sparked.

Yesterday, our task was to send an email to five to ten people that love us. The email told them about the course, and then asked them to answer three questions:

1. What are my strengths? Gifts?
2. If there was one word you’d use to describe me, what would it be?
3. What is my superpower?

This seems like a fairly simple task, but it was so HARD for me! I didn’t want to do it. I figured people would think I was nuts or self-indulgent. Sending that email was one of the most difficult things I’ve done in a long time.

But then the responses started rolling in…from friends, from family, from people who love me. And they said the opposite of what my gremlins had been whispering in my ear. Creative, loyal, driven, not afraid of being unique, funny, logical, a writer, able to connect with people, compassionate, a good listener…and those are just a few of them.

I really can’t recommend this practice enough. Yes, it was scary and yes, I felt like a doofus, but the end result was worth it. Hearing what your loved ones love about YOU? Out loud? It’s a pretty fantastic thing? I think I’m getting my mojo back…

So….what is your superpower?

(Photo via my Cinemagram)

Finding My Path – Part 7: The Financial Blues

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There isn’t really anything on Earth that makes me more uncomfortable than talking about money. I mean, I suppose I also hate watching people kiss in movies, but talking about money would be at least third on my list of things I’d like to avoid forever and ever, amen. I grew up in a family where we had money, but I didn’t know it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Trump or anything, but my dad was the head of a prestigious department at the local university and later became dean, so we did pretty okay. Both of my parents came from urban, working class (under the poverty line) backgrounds, and for them, money was something that was never discussed. I was raised thinking we had just enough to get by, but at the same time, I always had great computers, access to wonderful extra curriculars (space camp ain’t cheap, y’all) and logically I knew that we had more than what I assumed. The result was I never asked questions about money and was pretty much always freaked out about not having enough. In college I spent nights crying in my bed because my car broke down or a class required an extra-expensive book, even though I knew my parents would bail me out if I needed it. I paid for much of my own education via scholarships and part time jobs, and although I was really proud of this fact, I never really understood what it meant.

On top of all of this, I realized early on that I was super uninterested in math, so I refused almost all business or economics courses in school. My first few years out of college I spent living paycheck to paycheck, while paying off student loans. I was lucky enough to get out of debt about a year after Trent and I got married, but after that, I completely checked out when it came to the financial discussion. We had a baby, I worked full time, Trent was starting a business, and the whole thing overwhelmed me. So I told Trent he was in charge of financial stuff, everything from paying bills to saving for the kids’ college. I removed myself from the conversation, because when I was in it, I was a freak of nature. I would panic over having no money, or bitch about wanting to spend more since I was working so hard every day. I was the worst.

In the past six years, we have gone from a two income household, to one income/one stay at home parent, to two working parents with one income / one new business / one kid in expensive daycare, to two kids and two incomes that almost double what we made six years ago. That’s a pretty intense financial ride, and I have ignored every bit of it. But I can’t do it anymore.

I want to move forward with my life professionally, and that means possibly taking a big financial hit. Trent basically (and rightfully) told me if I want to do something new with my life, I need to look at our financial situation and assess where I can save and what we can cut. So a few weeks back, for the first time in years, I sat down with a glass of wine and our Mint.com account to see where we are. At first I was terrified, overwhelmed and on the verge of a panic attack. But after a few days, I found myself feeling more confident. I made pie charts and graphs and started working on both a personal and business financial plan. I couldn’t have surprised myself more!

I’m still not there yet. I still have so much money noise, and it’s been built up for thirty years, so I know it’s going to take a lot of work. But for the first time, I’m willing to do that work. I want to be a part of the conversation. And for me, that’s a really big deal.

Onward!

(Photo above by Trent, who likes to take pictures of me when I’m not paying attention. They’re my favorites.)

It’s Really All About Choice

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I’m in the midst of reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown (I couldn’t recommend this book enough, people. Pick it up, now!) and in one of her chapters she quotes the famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who said, “I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” Those words have been haunting me since I read them, in a good way. Like if Casper showed up at your house and offered you a chocolate cake. I am sick of other people’s actions and choices determining who I am and what I think of myself. I’m so tired of feeling out of control of my own life. So here it is. “I am who I choose to become.” The rest of the world can suck it.

To remind myself of this fact, I made the above my desktop image. Every time I fire up my computer, ready to get to work, the above image is what I see. It gets me ready to go, ready to take on the world, and ready to mow down anyone who tells me I can’t do it!

In case you’re needing some similar motivation, I’ve made the image above downloadable for you all to use on your desktop of choice! To download, click here and then right click and save the image to your computer. I hope you enjoy and find yourself inspired. Happy Monday!

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