We are all made of stars and I’ve heard it said in different ways and in different tales that young children, given their newness to the Earth, are closer to the stars and the divine than we are. Five years old seems to be a passageway of sorts. Continue reading
Fourteen years is almost my entire post-university life. Fourteen years ago, the same year of the financial meltdown that started the Great Recession, I moved to Atlanta sight unseen to try something new. I had no job and no expectations. 23 year-old me would be really proud of where I’ve ended up (although maybe a little surprised, too). I spent the first several years getting to know the city and its people, having fun, and getting my career going. After we bought our house in 2015, I felt an inner current start to shift me to family and spirituality. It’s been an incredible experience, my life in this place over these past fourteen years. Continue reading
The company I work at and the team I’m on is spread out across the world. In my immediate team alone, we are in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Charlotte and London. I’ve met my boss in-person twice. I have one direct report on my team who is in Atlanta with me, Cesley, and another woman who is in our larger Corporate Communications group, Heather.
Kim, our group SVP (senior vice president) is the one who lives in Charlotte and she usually tries to come down to Atlanta a couple of times a year for department meetings, etc. I really like Kim and my interviews with her during my recruiting process were a huge part of why I decided to join the company. She wasn’t able to come earlier in the summer and I had mentioned to Cesley I hoped to see her before I went out on maternity leave. Apparently, this was the comment that started a heck of a lot of planning… Continue reading
This is my favorite photo of me with my Uncle Jeff.
The day before I started my new job at FIS, my Uncle Jeff passed away in hospice up in Ohio. My dad was with him. Jeff had been in hospice for several weeks and in a nursing home for several years before so it wasn’t unexpected. But it’s still sad and I’m still going to miss him – honestly, as I have even since he went into the nursing home and got sicker and sicker to the point where he couldn’t come home for holidays and then later, when he didn’t remember me anymore.
Last weekend, I flew up to Ohio for the calling hours and services. My Uncle Jeff was a special human being and it was important for me to be there. It was also great to have the family together again. I wrote a few words and read them during his service. They are below, along with his obituary – and some photos of our family all together. Continue reading
It’s been a very busy start to 2017 for me but it has all been SO positive. And I’ve got some big and exciting things happening that I wanted to share.
INDIA!
That’s right – me and my mom are going on a 2-week trip to India and we leave tonight! It’s going to be quite an adventure and I’m so grateful to be able to have the time to travel right now and to go on this trip with my mom. We’re going to spend a few days in the “Golden Triangle” of New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. We’ll tour the Taj Mahal at sunrise, see historic sites and spend a day with elephants where we’ll get to bathe, feed and ride them. Next we spend a couple of nights in a treehouse in Ranthambore National Park where we’ll go on canter safari to look for Bengal tigers and other wildlife. The last leg of the trip has us flying south of Mumbai to the Kerala region where we’ll take a cooking class with a family in Cochin and do on a houseboat cruise in Alleppy. I’ll have more report once we get back. 🙂
NEW CAR!
The Golden Nuggett (my 2007 yellow Chevy Cobalt coupe) has been with me a long time. 10 years. But it was time for something new and after many months of talking, trying out cars and saving money, I am SO grateful to have been able to pay cash for our new 2014 Ford Escape. I took a lot of risks last year that had financial implications and I’m very proud of how everything worked out.
(Oh and we still have the Cobalt so if someone’s interested in buying it, let me know!)
NEW JOB OPPORTUNITY!
I can’t give details yet because it’s not 100% complete, but something great and big is in the works. I interviewed like crazy after my contract role with Havas + Coke ended on January 31st and I ended up having to TURN DOWN several roles. So very grateful to be in that position and be able to choose what I really want and what’s best for our family.
MORE TRAVEL!
Can’t stop, won’t stop. And have to pack it all in before I start a new job. Headed to Florida two days after I get back from India to see Sean’s friends Sean and Caitlin tie the knot. I’m then off the Outer Banks of North Carolina the day after I get back from Florida to see my brother and sister-in-law’s new place on Manteo since they both got jobs at the Outer Banks Hospital and are moving from Ohio on March 19th. This has been their dream for YEARS and I’m in awe of how they made it happen.
Seriously, you guys. All the good things. It’s been busy, hectic, stressful and overwhelming at times but I’m managing it by reminding myself daily that it’s all so positive. And I’m grateful.
I got my Fitbit Charge HR in April 2015. I didn’t wear it every day – I’d say it was used 9 months of the past 18 months and I am not into any kind of extreme sports. It had never been submerged in water, stepped on or even dropped on the ground. When I went to use it most recently, I was taking the charger off and the black piece of plastic that goes around the back and the sides, and has the button on it broke off. It looked like the glue wore off or something and it would no longer hold the charger in place nor would it track steps anymore when I put it on. It was broken.
In talking with customer service, several (not good) things were revealed, which I will include verbatim here. Continue reading
I’m not very open on social media. I pretty much only share the good stuff – which most people do. And though this is ultimately a “good” story, I decided to share what I’ve been up to these past few months and some of the tough things I’ve taken on.
When I’m completely honest with myself, I knew 3 weeks after my start date at UPS on August 26, 2013 that I’d made a mistake leaving my old job. Layers of bureaucracy and a very conservative culture made for a pretty miserable work environment for my open-minded and liberal self. I could go into more detail but I won’t. It’s not really necessary for this story for me to go on about all the ways UPS and the jobs I had there weren’t right for me.
While I probably stayed too long, I had major life events happening outside of work that took most of my focus – our engagement and wedding, honeymoon, selling a house, buying a house and moving. Once the dust settled from our move last summer, though, the unhappiness that had always been there about work came rushing to the surface. By the beginning of this year, it was obvious that it was negatively impacting me physically, emotionally and mentally – and affecting my relationship with my husband. Being unhappy and unfulfilled at a place where I was spending most of my waking hours was not working for me. I’d been interviewing for other jobs and while I was well-connected and qualified for those jobs, I wasn’t getting them. I wasn’t confident or happy and I believe it came across in my interviews no matter how positive I tried to be. I knew I needed to make a big change.
I began running numbers, going through our finances and tracking our spending more closely. I came up with a plan and I talked to Sean. This was at the beginning of February. We agreed that if I didn’t have a new job by the middle of April, after our big trip to Europe, I would put in my two weeks notice. I didn’t find another job and so at the end of April, I quit my job at UPS.
Continue reading
I’ll start by saying that I’m a registered Democrat and have been all of my voting life. I still lean Democrat in local and state elections in a very conservative Southern state, so I will remain that way because local politics is more important than many people realize.
However, at the Federal level, I have not been a Democrat since about 2009. Reading the news from places outside the mainstream media shed a light on the massive corruption in both parties with lobbying and campaign contributions. Citizens United lifted the floodgate on this already problematic issue.
I voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in 2012, even though I voted for Obama in 2008. I felt the Democratic party had lost its way from the people of this great country. Gary Johnson is far from perfect and I am unsure if I will vote for him again, but it was the right choice for me 4 years ago.
Fast forward to 2015 and the media circus around Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was already in full swing. The presentation of Clinton as the de-facto next President was so ridiculous and un-democratic, I was turned off and vowed to not get sucked in this election cycle. Continue reading