3 Things I have learned about Myself

Three things I have learned about myself during this Stay-at-home order due to the coronavirus:

  1. Majority of my daily stress in life before this time was due to actually going to work. Waking up early (ugh), dressing up for other people (dress code), anxiety about wardrobe and looks, driving on the freeway with crazy people, interacting with people, pressure to get work done, worry about not living up to expectations, offending someone accidentally, not saying the “right” things. Now that I am working from “home” (see previous post) there isn’t any of that….if I take a shower every three days no one cares….I haven’t worn makeup in weeks…the world isn’t ending…the only interaction I have with work is by email, chat, or phone call. I feel like I can work more intentionally and clearly now without all that extra junk. Much less stress on a daily basis. Don’t have to worry so much. And I can focus on ME.
  2. I need more time to rest. I didn’t realize it until now. Part of my daily stress was due to being tired and not being able to recover from the previous day. I knew I didn’t get enough sleep on a daily basis back then. When that occurred to me, I gasped! it just piles on day after day. Maybe the reasons I have a hard time handling life is because I’m stressed out and I’m stressed out because I haven’t fully recovered from the day before. I’m so rested now, my mood swings aren’t so drastic, I’m less feisty. Before this, I’d get home from work and be trying to decompress the whole evening. Every day, it wasn’t enough time until I had to wake up and do it all again.
  3. I don’t want to go back to feeling all that stress and not being able to recover when work opens back up. So – I’m making a plan. I’m going to do my best to do these five things every single day: Sleep, rest, play, exercise, food. Sleep – clearly I wasn’t ever getting enough so I am going to get better at going to bed on time. Rest! In addition to getting more sleep, give myself time to hang out every day on the couch or sit on the deck watching the ducks play in the pond. Play could be learning guitar, playing solitaire on my phone, frisbee in the back yard, reading, learning to bake a cake. Exercise could be zumba class or a yoga video, walk, or bike. Food – plan out meals and snacks and learn to cook more.

What have you learned about yourself?

Hell of a time

Well it’s a hell of a time to pick up blogging again! Day 5 of the “Stay-at-home” order from the Governor. It’s the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the world. We have been ordered to stay home unless we have been designated as “essential” workers, or to get groceries or go to the pharmacy.

Alright, what’s happened since the last time I wrote? Last time I wrote, it was July, oh the sun was warm and I was super stressed out about my upcoming wedding. We got married in September, it was a great day everything was how I wanted it with everyone there we cared about. It down poured rain and stormed while we were at the salon. But by the time we got to the venue it was sunny and sticky hot for pictures. During our ceremony it was cloudy and thundering and it was perfect! Everything was so green and we got to say our vows outdoors. I always wanted an outdoor ceremony. We went on our honeymoon to Las Vegas which was super fun! Not a typical honeymoon destination but we followed the recommendation of my sister’s coworker to stay at Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa outside of town near Red Rock National Park. It was awesome. I would hands down go there again. So many good restaurants, clean, nice pool, great rooms, nice casino, close to Red Rocks, and Uber & Lyft both service there. We spent a lot of time at the pool, ate good food, hiked at Red Rocks, went into Las Vegas for a Golden Nights hockey game, ate a fancy dinner at Skyfall lounge for my birthday and visited The Mob Museum! Such a great trip.

About a month before we got married, we decided to build a new house in a new sub! It was so fun picking out all the colors and flooring. Our sales rep made a comment to us that we were so calm! Yeah this is way more fun than planning a wedding! ha! Fast forward to January, we put our house up for sale and had 20 showings and 4 offers within 3 days. We sold our house and got to live there for another month before handing over the keys to the buyer. Our new house would be finished end of March.

The coronavirus started hitting our lives beginning of March. We made it to the Letterkenny live show for Joe’s birthday just before it got bad. March 13th my work closed at noon and we haven’t been back since. Joe’s birthday lunch on March 15th was just us in Lumen downtown Detroit. After that restaurants were ordered to close dine-in and could only carry-out or deliver. On March 18th the movers came and moved our stuff into storage. We got the news from the builder that we may not be able to move in to our new house. Fearful that the township would close and not do any inspections. On March 20th we left the keys at the house for the buyers because “social distancing”. We planned to stay with my sister for a week until we closed on our new house and got the keys to move in. On March 23rd the Governor ordered “stay-at-home” and all “non-essential to life” businesses have to close. Including builders and construction. All of the cities and townships closed. We were days away from our new house being finished and inspected. Today, we are living out of suitcases at my sister’s house and working from “home” at her kitchen table. With nowhere else to live. I cannot express into words how much it means that my sister is letting us live at her house. We don’t know what we would do if we didn’t.

10 Years

10 Years ago this month, I was laid off from my first job out of college. I had been working there for almost a year. The economy tanked and people were getting let go from their jobs every day. Dad took a buy-out deal from his job that May. It was a Friday morning and I had spent the previous night in the hospital until 1:30am with Dad visiting Grandpa in intensive care. Went home, slept a few hours and went to work. I was laid off around 10am and had until 3pm to pack up my stuff and leave. 4 days later Grandpa died. Those two events changed my life and the course of my career forever. Dad and I spent the rest of the summer cleaning out Grandpa’s house and getting ready to sell it. I made my mandatory phone calls to unemployment in that house while cleaning, throwing stuff away and staying out of the way of the painters, electricians, and plumbers Dad hired to help us.

Sometimes I get mad about it. Getting laid off completely derailed my life. My whole career. Boom. Done. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I had a very hard time getting a job after that. The interviewers all asked me, “Why you? Why did they pick YOU?” to be laid off. I felt like I was being blamed for something I didn’t do. Grandpa dying changed the way I dealt with grief. I had to hold it together because Dad couldn’t. Mom was at work and my sister was living in Utah at the time. Just me to hold everything together. I carried a lot on my shoulders that year. It wasn’t until the next summer that I cried. I was at an event and met a veteran of the Korean War and I started talking to him and told him about my Grandpa. He then gave me an Army pin off his jacket and I burst into tears. I sobbed uncontrollably outside the event center for 45 minutes while my friends tried to calm me down.

I worked part-time jobs for 5 years. I remember being so happy to get my $110 retail job paycheck and take it to the bank to cash it. I remember getting the receipt for my deposit and seeing that my account balance before cashing that check was $2.82. I will never forget that ever. I put myself through a certificate program at EMU to change my career and try to get a full-time job. I eventually landed a full-time job.

Sometimes when I know someone is judging me because they see I have something “nice” I really want to say to them, “Yeah well you didn’t know me when I had $2.82 in my bank account! It wasn’t always this way. I didn’t get this handed to me.” Maybe I’ll start saying that! haha

I’m not going to sit here and tell you I think it was all meant to be and I have some great life now that all those bad things happened to me. Nope. But what I do know, is that I am strong and I did this myself. The life I have now is because I worked hard and made decisions FOR ME. I feel lucky almost that I was so young and I just powered through it like a freight train. I did what I thought I had to do. I have learned more in the last 10 years than at any other point in my life.

Proud

Have you ever been proud of yourself? I haven’t always been proud of myself. I don’t actually remember ever being or feeling proud of myself until the last few years. I have recently discovered just how much of a people pleaser I am and how it affects like EVERYTHING I do and every decision I make. I saw a re-run of a Big Bang Theory episode where Leonard discovers that he’s a people pleaser. Penny encourages him to start making decisions and choosing what HE wants without regard to anyone else. He has a hard time with it and I could totally relate. It got me thinking. I’m proud of myself because I left my job. I am proud of myself because I’m making changes in my career. I chose that MYSELF. I decided what was important to ME and didn’t give up. I interviewed for 5 jobs! and the 5th one I got an offer! I took it even though in other peoples’ eyes it wouldn’t be as “good” as the job I had. I’m proud of myself for sticking to it.

First Blog Post

My first blog post ever! I am choosing to tell you about last Sunday. We ventured into the City for breakfast and then headed to the Great Lakes Invitational college hockey games at the arena. We stopped for breakfast at the Detroit Bagel Institute in Corktown. AMAZING bagel sandwiches. The coffee was good as well. Their menu is a list of sandwiches with toppings such as salmon, sausage, turkey, bacon,egg, lemon zest cream cheese, greens and much more! The sandwiches are made on bagels so you get to choose which type of bagel for your sandwich.

The atmosphere is cafe like with large tall windows looking out the front to the street, light wood floors and metal chairs. We sat at the high top counter along the windows on metal stools.

It was so good we went back the next day!

Photo of bagel sandwich and coffee