9/11

I just can't stop thinking about it. It doesn't help when I work on a site about 9 hours a day dealing with the rebuild of New York city, but it just literally stares me in the face and makes me think about it. If 9/11 hadn't happened, I wouldn't be where I am today pasting code. But if it hadn't happen, would I still be with "Q"? I know on that day, I can remember going home and listening on the radio about the effects this will have and I knew right there and then, my number would be up when my contract was over. My manager kept saying "oh no, your with us till Christmas and beyond", but the next month I was out the door. For 9 months I have worked for a cheap-ass boss who pays me little but has received nothing less then 150% of my work from me.

I know I should be grateful that I'm working. I am. Really. There are those who are still out of work. I know there are others who took the hit hard in other ways too. I always thought my sister was doing well and her version of "broke" is much different then mine. When the market dived, for once we saw about eye to eye on the meaning of "broke". I count my blessings daily that even though we have suffered lay-offs, bankruptcy, losing vehicles, we haven't lost each other. I may not have my husband in bed at night with me because he works a midnight shift, but I do have a husband that yells back at me when I yell at him. There are a ton of people who yell at a spouse for not being there because they really are not there anymore.

Maybe I'm on the emotional side tonight.. but I just keep looking back to last year. Maybe that's my problem, I'm not looking ahead and only looking back. My husband laughed at me last week. I like to play a game "guess what we were doing a year ago, 2, 3" game. I got him big time with the 25 years of Elvis, but he got me when it came to August 11th. He says that was the day our troubles started. I said Sept. 11th was, but we know that Oct. 9th was the start of the dive of our finances. But four weeks before August 11th we had paid up some bills, was both doing nice in our jobs and had some extra money. We decided to take the kids on our first family vacation. Took them to Disneyland in Calif. with a pit stop in Vegas. August 10th we got word that my husband's business went under and he had no job. Sept. 11th happened, and then I was laid off on Oct. 9th. Happens in 3's doesn't it?

Maybe working contract, and part time.. that the next job is the "it" job because it will be #3. I don't know. I just know that I'm grateful that I have this contract job that is going to reverse some of our bills and get them back on track. And at the same time, I'm so sorry what happened a year ago and know fully in my heart, I would not be at this job if things had not happened that sad sad day a year ago.

1. What is your current occupation? Is this what you chose to be doing at this point in your life? Why or why not? Oh man.. my journal gives me away. I'm a Graphic Artist by day, dealing with web and print content and a Mary Kay consultant in my other free time. If you had asked me 10 years ago, would I be doing this today, I would have said no way, I had been trained in the military to be a secretary. But both were presented to me in a casual way, graphics in 1994 and Mary Kay in 2000, and I fell in love with both. I know the day I get tired of doing graphics and learning new programs is the day I want to go full time Mary Kay. I'm not there yet. I'm still taking the punches with the lay offs and low pay. When I get tired of playing with make-up and wanting to meet women and make them beautiful, I'm ready to retire.

2. If time/talent/money were no object, what would your dream occupation be? A rich lotto player? Honestly? Graphic Artist. Still. With a little more knowledge and power behind me so that I don't get my ideas rejected as much.

3. What did/do your parents do for a living? Has this had any influence on your career choices? My father was the VP of circulation for a newspaper for 18 years, then went into his own business owning an advertising company. My mother did the same, she distributed the newspapers to the stores and the paper-routes. Then went to work for my dad at the ad agency by doing sales. Dad owning the business was able to make me into a graphic artist. He taught me everything I know in print media. (He died before the Net went wild). My sister also went into the advertising business by being my dad's bookkeeper. She now has a BA in Accounting. A little FYI - When my dad died in 1996, 2 days after the funeral, my mother, sister and I were out visiting clients, letting them know that we were still in business and promised to carry out the projects that had been set up by my father before his passing. We spent 3 months working on projects while in the process of trying to sell the company. We ended up realizing we could run it ourselves. Finally this year our business closed it's doors. We all had moved onto other things.

4. Have you ever had to choose between having a career and having a family? Yes and no. When the kids were young I was able to stay home with them till they went to Kindergarten, which is what I wanted. But right now, working a full time job, I'm missing out on seeing them and that sucks, but I know the money I'm making will turn some things around for us, if it's only for a short time.

5. In your opinion, what is the easiest job in the world? What is the hardest? Why? Easiest? ummm, errrr, the person who holds the slow and stop sign on the constructions sites. Hardest? Being Parents. Hands down.

two seconds

Really... 2 seconds. The kids want to watch The Princess Diaries with me, so I have just a few seconds to post. MY JOB IS SO AWESOME! I was just finishing up work left and right and going back to Lisa, my Project Manager and say "what next?" and she would say "uhhhh.. hold on". By 1:00pm she challenged the content developers to gang up on me and I can say I walked out at 5:45pm tonight with a crap load of work on my desk for tomorrow. Man that feels good!!!

Lisa told me she does contract work on the side and showed me another site in development.. once again, it kills me I can't say anything, but lets put this way.. it's one of the new ABC shows on TV this fall. It launches when the show launches in Sept. I want to work on projects like that!!!

Best feeling of the day? Singing REAL loud in the car, at the top of my lungs, and not carrying how I sounded. I felt good. I'm on a high, a really good natural high.

Off topic: In honor of the release of the Fall Edition of Small Spiral Notebook, welcome to the Small Spiral Notebook Edition of the Thursday Threesome...

Onesome. Small. Is it a small world? In how many miles of space do you live your life? I guess it rather small. Going into town which is 35 minutes away was a big thing for me yesterday. The most on any given day is about a 5 mile commute to work. But when it comes to my MK customers, distance, travel is not a problem, so then my space does go bigger.

Twosome. Spiral. Ever felt as if you were on a downward spiral? How did you pull out of it? Did? I'm still in it. It just slows down from time to time, or I seem to grab onto a wire or something. What pulls me through is the positive affirmations I give myself of what it will be like on the other side. Things in my life WILL get better. Hmpf. Nuff said.

Threesome. Notebook. Notebooks and pens and crayons and glue...when you think about school supplies, what do you most remember? Funny.. I can't stop thinking of college. Art classes and the 2D class I took with all the fun paint. The newspaper class I took and the smell of the rubber cement (so much fun to play with) Exacto knives, training CD's. Art History and the pictures I took of the art slides he had us memorize for the quarterly quizzes and coming up with funny ways to remember the artist, title of painting and the year it was painted.

How about you? Post your answers in your own space and leave a comment here so we can find you!

Theme - Dog Days of Summer - Shutter

company 39

What to say, what to say. ROCK MY WORLD. :) LOL. Being on vacation and posting very little makes it hard to get back into the swing of things. Then to come back, go directly to a new job, work full hours (YIKES), and get lost going and coming home from work (YES).. makes it hard to journal in. But here I am.

Pretty rockin day. Headed off to the city this morning, a first in a long time. For the past 3 years, I have worked in all the burbs of Denver and only 1 month in the city. Now I find myself again, down in the hub-bub of everything. Cool.

I find the building, head to the 24th floor and once off the elevator, I knew I wasn't in Kansas, or any other state for that matter. All those "techno" offices with the weird design, fancy schmancy receptionist desk, meeting room with the young Gen "X'ers" in the room you see in the movies.. you were here. Lisa, my manager came and whisked me off to a meeting, and there I was placed with 3 other women, and with a quick glance at their wardrobe, I once again realized, that I'm not as "new wave / graphic artist" as I think. They had these wild hair-do's, funky glasses, wild clothes and slurpen on their morning latte. I'm in black heels, black pants, nice shirt; hair fixed to a "t" and I think "I'm such a geek". Don't get me wrong, I love their styles, I wish I could get away with it. But I think pink nail polish is wild to me so that gives you a small insite to my tastes. I'm a nerd in neutrals. :)

I can't go into too much detail, but needless to say, this is a high profile website I'm working on. It's to do with the World Trade Centers, New York, big wigs, head hancho's; it's the dream job in corporate world I have ever dreamed of. Working for a big name, a big company, and a big product.

Of course, my role is very small. Copy, paste, clean up code. Copy, paste, clean up code. $20. an hour.. I figured it out at lunch today.. I made more today, then I do, in 2 days at my other job. Oh yeah. I'm going to love this. It will look great on my resume.

The office environment is to die for. Most developers like to work in the dark, so I'm set back in a cube, state of the art cube office, dark and away from the windows. I have this cool looking "locker" thing in my office to store supplies, coats, my purse, and personal items. I know, I'm a simple person, I'm amused easily. I'm on the 24th floor, so sometimes I can feel the building rumble and sway. A few times when talking to the other developers, I took a quick glance and looked out the window towards my other job and just giggled.. if they only knew. Shmucks.

I'm dead tired though. I don't think 10:30 is going to get here fast enough, and I'm wondering how many more yawns before I finish this post must I do. I love that I'm hitting the sack early. Something I did while at mom's house. Getting kids to go to bed and mom conking out early just because of her age made it easy for all of us to hit the sack early too.

I feel good.

contract

3 words. OH MY GOD. This contract job for a few weeks is going to ROCK MY WORLD! More details later.

reading

Ms. MK is reading training stuff, but I'll be honest, while visiting home, it was the best time when all 3 kids were outside playing and the TV was off, mom taking a nap, bro-in-law off doing something, sister reading some magazine and I sat down to read in mom's favorite chair and read for 3 hours straight. That is something I don't do often and it felt good.

It also felt good to crawl into my own bed, in my old bedroom and while everyone was asleep, read till 1am and not disturb anyone. I'm just about finished with "Hollywood Wives II".

home

Tons of stuff to catch up with - details much later. I'm beat. But here's a list of stuff I want to cover later:

- Family
- My bedroom
- Red Nail Polish (YES.. I'm on the wild side)
- Mom & MK
- Trains @ 2 am
- Going home
- Reading
- work

Soon... very soon

I'm not with my husband. (details later)