Energy

Starting over takes energy. Lots of it. Sometimes I wonder where I get it from. Starting over is sometimes like ripping off a scab and other times like being let out of a cage. Either way, the energy that it takes to get to that point where you are ready to start over can seem impossible to muster. Starting over isn't easy but nothing in life worth having is. 

Today I am worrying about my kids. They don't need to start over. They already have. They need to continue building and moving forward. Hopefully nothing will drag them down but if something does, I will put on my supermom cape and save the day-or at least try.

I feel like my role in their lives is to be like base in a game of tag. As long as you are touching me, nothing can touch you. I think that's the reason why tag is for little kids. You have to be young and stupid to believe that touching an inanimate object protects you with an invisible force field. Although I can sort of protect them now, I know that there are things that can hurt them that I can't do anything about. 

So I think that I have given them a gift that may protect them way more than base if they are tagged and have to be "it". I have taught them that no matter what happens, you need to keep moving forward. That doesn't mean pretending that you don't feel things or burying things that need to be dealt with. It just means that every experience in this life can be used to create positive movement. 

My grandmother used to have an expression, "Put a little rouge on, and go out with a smile on your face".

I'm smiling grandma, with Purr lipgloss on....

Another Start Over

In true start over brilliance, I have lost the piece of scrap paper that has my book chapter ideas on it. How I lost it, how I didn't think I should put it somewhere like, I don't know, a safety deposit box, is mind boggling to me. 

Can you tell how frantic I am?

If this were the first time that I did something like this then I would expect some sympathy and maybe some help looking for it. Alas, I do this all the time. Papers for my taxes, for the kids school, bills that I have to pay, notes for important meetings are never where I need them to be. 

I have systems. They don't work. Files for everything, places to put things, cabinets, drawers. I've got them. None of them have the paper with my chapter ideas.

I am going to have to start over. But since I am the start over woman, I am going to be cool with this. 

Chapter one....

Jobless in America

NBC news did a piece tonight on the dismal job market for new College grads. They reported that there are no jobs, that people are desperate and that most are willing to take much lower salaries than grads who job hunted in good economies. They also reported that these poor souls will never make up the loss in salary. 

While everything that they said is true, and sounds alarmingly hopeless, it is actually good news because now people are going to get creative. Creativity usually results from a shift in the order of things. In this case, there has been a big hit to the linear path of graduating and finding employment. For all these energetic young people, they will have no choice but to come up with innovative ideas to pay the bills. After all, there is nothing worse than moving back in with your parents after you have tasted freedom for four years. 

Enter the entrepreneur. 

Until the job market recovers, and this could take years, making a living is not going to be so easy in the conventional sense of the word, and we are going to see a huge increase in the number of business that are started. I have no idea what these businesses will be but I am sure we are going to look back on this time and say that it was incredible. We are going to hear stories of countless people who couldn't get work in predictable ways so they started businesses and never looked back. 

Until access to credit loosens up, they are even going to have to be creative about getting financing for these new ventures. I've seen it before, they will. They will borrow in innovative ways from innovative sources and they will get their businesses off the ground. The economy is breeding a new crop of risk takers, idea people, who will learn how to play by these new rules and beat everyone at their own game. 

Happy Graduation Class of '09!

Rescue Mission

Saturday morning, still in pyjamas drinking the last bit of hot coffee in my cup. The phone rings. It's #2. "Mommy, can you come and pick me and "N" up? We are on Sherbrooke street. Oh, and can you bring me some money because our breakfast cost us $39.91 and we only have $40.00."

"Sure".

Once, she called me and I didn't answer my phone- because I was trying to work. I was in the middle of a really important meeting with someone who could have potentially made a huge impact in the success of my business. Turns out that she was standing on a street corner in the most dangerous part of town being hit on by a crack dealer. She had taken the subway by herself, got off at the right stop but had left from the wrong door. Apparently she saw this guy across the street jumping up and down on the roof of someone's car and she was praying that he wouldn't notice her. He noticed her. Everyone does. 

So when she calls me to ask me to rescue her I do and I always will. 

Two years ago she almost died. She had really bad stomach pains. I took her to the hospital. They took out her appendix. They gave her an abscess. They didn't give her the right antibiotics. 5"4, and 88 pounds. Seven weeks later she was okay. Seven weeks. Dog years when your kid is close to dying. I haven't gotten over it. Neither has she. 

She lives her life like a person who is doing it for the second time-because she is. She is my start over girl.

Why I can never have a real job

I have four kids and although I am remarried, they are mostly my sole responsibility. I have my kids full time and their dad isn't really in their lives. They are getting older. I thought that parenting them would get easier. It's not. 

I forgot my shoes, I forgot my lunch, I have a sub for last period, I don't want to go for gym. Can you make me an eyebrow appointment, I need to go to the pharmacy, I'm going to a movie, I'm going to the mall.  CAN YOU PICK ME UP?

Here is the technicality, the kids need to be supported financially, but constantly need me, so  a conventional job is impossible. There is no boss in the world who would understand why I would have to leave so often. That is why I started my own business. 

I am a family business consultant- which I love, and I am a coach, which I love more. I get to make my own hours, and choose my clients (I have only said no to one really annoying guy who kept asking me if I could give him more information for free so that he could figure out if my fees were really worth it- when I say kept doing it, I mean like fifteen times in over an hour of conversation... but have cut loose a whole bunch of people that I couldn't help because they didn't need a coach they needed medication) but best of all, I get to be around for the kids, who really really need a mother.

My only real downfall as a parent is that I don't have great boundaries. The kids know that, and use that to get what they want. I don't blame them, I would too. It takes a lot for me to say no- and when I do, I feel guilty but I don't think that I am much different from most single parents. For the most part though, they really respect me and listen to me because we have a relationship that is based on respect. Since they were little, I have felt that they were people who had the right to be themselves- and now they are the coolest people that I know. 

So I have my own business and I work from home- or more often, I am trying to work from home but am having a hard time because one kid or another is home sick. I wonder if I'll miss it when it's gone...