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Butter.

Yesterday was one of those rainy, icky days during which my motivation level seems to directly correlate with the amount of the sun’s rays that reach the surface of the earth in my locale — which, incidentally, was approximately zero.

Zero percent. Read the rest of this gem…

The Only Bullshitter I Can Bullshit is Apparently MySelf.

Well, it’s another Last of the Mondays for me.

I can’t believe it’s been over 2 years since I last quit my job to venture out into the world of self-employment.

It’s embarrassing to admit now, but I had high hopes. I had high, high hopes that all I needed to do was book a 2-month trip to Costa Rica, be my lovely, endearing self, and somehow — hopefully through this blog — the opportunity to become a travel writer would present itself.

Yeah, notsomuch.

What I learned the hard way is that self-employment — chasing the dream — takes actual work.

Who knew?

In fact, it’s so easy to sensationalize the idea of working for one’s self because of a single, obvious factor: YOU HAVE NO BOSS.

Turns out, though, that’s not true.

Not even a little.

Of course, YOU are your own boss.

And that’s fantastic, right?

Well, unfortunately, disciplining yourself is a hell of a lot harder than getting an earful from The Man, because all you really want to do is take pity on yourself and be patient and understanding and all of those things you got mad at your boss for not being when you were having a rough day. But then, your Self learns. It learns that you’re a crappy boss and a crappier disciplinarian and soon every day turns into a rough day, and before you know it, you’re unshowered Self is crashing your sofa at 2:00 in the afternoon eating Häagen-Dazs from the carton and singing along to My Fair Lady and, aside from feeling sorry for herself because she’s a big fat failure of a Self-starter, she’s really having a grand old time.

So this time, I’m prepared.

I’m prepared to be a badass boss because I’ve learned that the Self-deprecation that comes with mediocrity is so not worth an afternoon of ice cream and Audrey Hepburn.

Also.

There are the other bosses. The other bosses are the people who, as an independent contractor, will be hiring me to work for them. With the other bosses will come a whole new slew of demands and expectations, and the only choice for me will be to meet them, head-on, because if I don’t, the only person who can take the blame is ME.

And I’m tired of letting people down.

Most of all, me.

So.

This time, I’m doing myself a favor, packing a duffel bag full of all of the bullshit I fed myself 2 years ago, and sending it into space with the power of a hundred thousand helium balloons.

(You’ve heard there’s a helium shortage, right? Yeah. That was me.)

This is my last Monday. And hopefully, my last of my last Mondays. This is my last week of earning a paycheck just because I show up.

The last time I pack my lunch in tupperware.

The last time I roll my eyes at a request from my boss because my new boss, I hear, is unriddled by bullshit and in no mood to play.

This is life, after all, and we can coast on through making excuses for getting caught in the momentum of mediocrity, or we can really try.

The only thing ever really holding us back is the paralyzing fear of failure. That thing that makes us start and quit and start and quit again.

But. I’ve finally realized.

I would rather fail — I would rather fail so inconsolably and publicly hard — than continue to be the girl who just quits all the time. The girl who’s addicted to the bottom of the ladder. The girl who says soon — mañana — I will do what I know I was born to do.

Because. With 2 years of tomorrows behind me, I’m no closer to reaching my goals. Failure, at this point, would be a relief next to not even trying. The limbo I’ve been living. The bullshit that’s made me metaphorically fat and lazy and full of excuses.

I don’t want to be that person.

So.

I stop today.

It is, after all, the Last of the Last of the Mondays.

Oops, I Did It Again.

When it comes to jobs of my past, I don’t exactly have a stellar track record.

I started off on the straight-and-narrow, at age 11, babysitting for my mom’s friends and neighbors. Ever the professional, I received my babysitting certification from the Red Cross. I knew how to perform CPR. I knew how to bandage abrasions. I knew how to stick my fingers into a kid’s throat to remove a blockage. Basically, I could tell parents, Hey. Nothing bad should happen to your kids under my care, but by golly if they choke or bleed or their hearts stop beating for any reason — any reason at all — I should, theoretically, be able to save them.

Comforting, no?

I’d pack along my little babysitting kit, complete with crafts and games and things kids liked to do 20 years ago that didn’t involve batteries or electricity or controllers or computer-mimicked hand motions, and I quickly became the IT babysitter for the ‘hood. Kids adored me, believe it or not, and thanks to the under-the-table payment nature of the gig, I was quickly able to save a pretty impressive amount of money by the time I was 15.

Then, through some unfortunate standard of life progression set by our peers, I decided it was time to get a “real” job.  I don’t know why, since in retrospect, babysitting was pretty much the best gig ever. The kids would go to bed at 8 and I had the whole night to watch Cocktail and gobble snacks provided by generous parents. Plus, it kept me out of trouble.

Regardless, I moved on to burger flipping at A&W Rootbeer, then Product Replacement Plan selling at Best Buy, then table waiting at a sports bar, then tour guiding on my college campus and dish washing at the nearby coffee shop and waking up at 5:00 a.m. to sign people into the gym and wipe down mirrors and ellipticals.

Glamorous.

After quitting college and moving back to Nebraska, waited tables again. Then I took a road trip. Then I fixed and sold watches. Then I moved with Justin to Georgia and waited more tables and worked in a jewelry store and finally — finally — landed an environmental internship on the Air Force base.

In one year, I actually managed to file taxes for 7 different jobs in 3 separate states.

Turns out that’s not the best way to build your resume.

Once we moved to North Carolina, it was on to white-collar America. My first job here was for an environmental consulting company (which involved a very interesting interview), but my hour-and-a-half commute was turning me into a drooling zombie, so that only lasted 6 months.

Then, the job on Fort Bragg.

The job where I cracked.

The job that launched my Costa Rica hot sauce makin’ career and effectively redirected my entire professional course from that of an eventual suit-wearing government schmoozer to a beatnik hippie travel writer, if I could only have my way. (Minus the beatnik hippie part because I enjoy all kinds of travel. All kinds.)

After a year of absolutely nothing happening, I started hourly work at a bar just to earn some cash to feel like less of a lump, and then as a part-time real estate assistant, and this, my friends, is where you would probably still find me in another year, had I not finally realized my problem.

I wasn’t working.

I was gliding.

I wasn’t planning.

I was drifting.

They say that dreams don’t work unless you do.

Oh.

So I quit my job in order to work.

Which only partially makes me feel like a loser.

But also, now I know.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt I know that working my ass off for someone else’s success is NOT what I want for myself in this world.

I have to stop trying to find myself.

I have to create myself.

It only took me approximately 47 jobs to get here.

Back at the bottom of the ladder again, but this time, it’s my own.

And when you build your own ladder, it seems, it becomes a hell of a lot more satisfying to climb.

How to Grow a Muscle and Other Motivational Tools

So I just finished my workout with Jillian for today, and I’m writing this post while still sitting in a puddle of my own sweat because I’m suddenly, inexplicably motivated.  And these days motivation seems hard to come by, so I grab it when I can.

You know how it is when life just doesn’t seem to be going the direction you want, so you find yourself in a bit of a slump, and it gets harder and harder to pull yourself out of the slump over time?  To use an over-used analogy, it’s like quicksand.  The harder you struggle, the deeper you get, and eventually you just want to give up.  Lethargy becomes second nature.  Even the idea of picking a recipe for dinner and going to the grocery store for the ingredients seems like too much work, because didn’t I just do that two days ago?  And what’s the point if it’s just going to be the same thing, day after day?

If you’ve never known that feeling, then I envy you.  Truly.  But if you have, I’m here to tell you that you can’t let it hold you down.  In fact, all you can do is keep struggling against the quicksand, and eventually you’ll see progress.*

*Actually that’s not true – if you’re literally stuck in quicksand, I’ve heard you shouldn’t struggle because you will get pulled under.  So wow… what a f*cked up analogy.

For the time-being, I’m doing little things that have started improving my opinion of my own self-worth.

1.  This blog.  Sure, it’s mostly just a bunch of introspective rambling and random recipes and an overall log of some (but definitely not all) of my most notable life experiences, but it’s my blog.  It’s my thing that I do when I need an outlet.  Some people journal, some people play guitar, some people paint.  I blog.

Photo source:  Me

2.  Found a job.  Okay, so waiting tables at a bar isn’t exactly the dream job I hoped I might find when I quit the cubicle all those months ago.  But in a way, at least for right now, it fits my personality so much better.  No one looks at me funny when I randomly start singing, because I’m just singing with the night’s performer and everyone else is doing the same thing.  And I’m no longer getting strange looks for taking running leaps down the hallway or pretending I’m on an escalator behind someone’s cubicle glass, because I don’t have excess energy to expend at this job and therefore don’t act quite so entirely nutty.  I’m always moving.

So while I still do aspire to do something more meaningful to me, this definitely works for now.

Photo source

3.  Working out.  This isn’t a New Year’s resolution for me.  In fact, you know my resolution is to be worthy of a holiday letter, so working out really has nothing to do with it.  (Unless I end up saving someone’s life by lifting an SUV off of someone who’s crushed underneath it because I’ve been working out and am now obviously strong enough to walk around town lifting SUVs off of people.  Now that would be letter-worthy.)

I’ve never been one of those people who gets a high from working out.  In fact, it usually leaves me feeling sweaty and exhausted and there’s only one type of scenario I can think of that leaves me in the same condition and I feel really good afterwards instead of tired and disgusting.  And working out with Jillian Michaels ain’t it.

But I do it because I know it’s good for me.  Like flossing and not consuming a diet exclusively comprised of cheese.  And today, after I was finished, I noticed an actual muscle!

And yes, I took a picture.

And yes, I’m about to show it to you.

So don’t laugh.

For me, this is BIG.

Woohoo!  Maybe this is the workout high people are talking about – that point where you finally notice some progress.

So right now I’m feeling pretty good.  I wrote a blog post, I grew a muscle, and I might make a little money tonight.  Motivation is creeping back into my life.  And I wanted you to know, even though my posts have been a bit emo as of late, that I’m not just sitting here, all pitiful and lethargic day after day.  (Well I’m literally sitting here now, in a puddle of my own sweat, no less, but my point is that I’m not just a couch-drooling zombie.)

What I want to know is, what do you do to pull yourself out of it when you’re feeling a little slumpy?