Have you ever just wanted to be alone?
I will admit. I'm enjoying having my nights and my weekends to spend with my family. I love not having to work until 11pm and then have to get right back up at 6am just to get to work by 9am. I do enjoy being able to cook home cooked meals and watch TV shows with my husband and movies with my kids. I love bedtime stories and being able to do my own laundry and all of those things.
But can a mom just have a few moments alone?
And I don't mean in my house. I mean somewhere else. Outside--anywhere. I feel like my entire body is inside of a box and I just want to get out!
Where would I go I wonder? I mean of course my first thought is, I want a massage!!! A nice, comforting massage always makes me feel better. My last massage (well that was in May sadly) was a Thai massage--my first and it will definitely not be my last! I discovered I had muscles in places I thought were bones! It was a thrilling experience for sure. But as tight as funds are, probably not a good idea.
I don't really go to the movies alone. I can't even remember the last movie I saw...Doctor Strange maybe? Plus it too is an expense I can't really afford.
I do live near D.C. now so going to a museum seems like a great option--there's quite a few of them to choose from! But the mom in me of course says, that's not fair; you said you were going to take your kids to the museum! I wish the mom in me would shut up.
There's no real "beaches" and it's not beach weather but there's quite a bit of water to hang out near--Old Towne Alexandria has a wonderful waterside area with shops and an old torpedo factory with an art gallery inside (or should I say many art galleries!). I enjoyed that with my family but maybe it's worth a trip alone...?
My best friend Jay says my alone therapy is walking through stores aimlessly and just looking at stuff. I don't really buy anything--but I just look. I never actually realized that was something I did but I do seem to remember the times I have done this, I've felt a lot better. Michael's is one of my favorite places to do this because usually after I leave there, I feel very creative--I go home and someone's room gets a do-over!
But of course, my absolute favorite alone time event is couponing! I love going into a store and with my list and my phone and my binder and save, save, save! I love going at 6am and singing the crappy store music that's playing over the speakers and marking things off my list. It is my true happy place.
Tonight I'm going to do something I've never done before--I'm going to see a show--ALONE. Can't wait to tell you all about it!
Saturday, September 16, 2017
So, what's next?
Writer's note: This post is from 2015 and I'm not sure why I didn't publish it earlier but here it is!
Now here's the downside of what I'm going through...
I'm totally torn between two different factions. On the one hand I am madly in love with my company and all the wonderful things that we're doing. I can't even think of something that could replace it. But then there's this part of me that is sadly still torn between this and the opera. How do I embrace the inevitable change that could be the end of my 11 year run with the opera? It's a battle that I feel that I am facing on multiple fronts, both personal and professional. My biggest fear is that I will lose the personal relationships in either instance. I'm sure that's not the case but I can't help but think of it that way.
I guess the easiest way to to solve this is to make a list of the two things and compare right?
My happiest times at the opera have always involved the people that I'm working with. From learning how to be a stagehand, to times at the console, to becoming a part of the creative process--they've all been enveloped by a variety of people. When I came into the opera I didn't know anyone, not a single person. Not only did I have to face learning about the people I was working with but also had to re-assure myself that I knew what I was doing. When Dave hired me in 2004, my initial reaction was denial; I had been out of the game for at least a year and maybe the last time I picked up my wrench was to tighten a bolt on my dining room table. But the wonderful thing is that he saw something in me and quickly attached me to the then lighting supervisor, my former boss Ken. Ken was an interesting person; at first I was totally scared as hell of him. But he did teach me quite a few things about being a lighting supervisor but the most important thing I think he taught me was how to just plain survive the drama that was Virginia Opera. Of course working with Jay was one of the highest points of my tenure...and then he left...That definitely left a giant whole in my opera heart--who was going to be my partner in crime? Dave returned in 2012 and made that whole close a little but then he was promoted from TD to Director of Production. In an instant I felt alone again. I'm not opposed to working alone but it's a different kind of feeling when you feel alone in your environment. Trying to hold on to that friendship/work relationship started to become fairly complicated last year and I feel like something was lost. Guess that's one strike.
My job was a rocketed progression of promotions. From stagehand, to programmer, to touring electrician, to master electrician, to lighting supervisor I had the opportunity to learn a variety of things over several years. I embraced programming...after all, that's where I started. But what I realized about my promotion is that with all of that I was losing pieces of me that I didn't want to lose. And to try and justify that by saying, well just get your fix on your off time. There is no off time. I was starting to sacrifice my off-time which should have been family time to take on a ridiculous amount of outside work. It was a bad decision. Not only was I losing my family time but I became distracted from all the other things that I was supposed to be doing for the opera. My creativity was being fed, but my job was suffering. Strike two.
I think that's two pretty significant strikes.
So if it's that easy to drop those two reasons out of my brain, why is it not so easy to walk away?
Simple answers would be loyalty, respect, dedication. Those are usually the things that leave me attached to things that I no longer want to belong to. I like to describe this relationship as Ike and Tina.
So where are my strikes against my company? Well I think the obvious ones would be long days and long, long, hours. I mean, but what arts job doesn't have those? The opera does, the shop did, even my stupid pizza delivery job did. But I don't even feel like that is that big of a deal. I could say that we're a bit disorganized, which makes my little obsessive compulsive brain go insane but again, what new company isn't? Every step is a step towards organization and progression.
So with all that being said, what's next? What is my next move? How do I continue from here now putting on paper what I have been avoiding saying out loud.
Reason number 32 why I have this blog I guess.
Now here's the downside of what I'm going through...
I'm totally torn between two different factions. On the one hand I am madly in love with my company and all the wonderful things that we're doing. I can't even think of something that could replace it. But then there's this part of me that is sadly still torn between this and the opera. How do I embrace the inevitable change that could be the end of my 11 year run with the opera? It's a battle that I feel that I am facing on multiple fronts, both personal and professional. My biggest fear is that I will lose the personal relationships in either instance. I'm sure that's not the case but I can't help but think of it that way.
I guess the easiest way to to solve this is to make a list of the two things and compare right?
My happiest times at the opera have always involved the people that I'm working with. From learning how to be a stagehand, to times at the console, to becoming a part of the creative process--they've all been enveloped by a variety of people. When I came into the opera I didn't know anyone, not a single person. Not only did I have to face learning about the people I was working with but also had to re-assure myself that I knew what I was doing. When Dave hired me in 2004, my initial reaction was denial; I had been out of the game for at least a year and maybe the last time I picked up my wrench was to tighten a bolt on my dining room table. But the wonderful thing is that he saw something in me and quickly attached me to the then lighting supervisor, my former boss Ken. Ken was an interesting person; at first I was totally scared as hell of him. But he did teach me quite a few things about being a lighting supervisor but the most important thing I think he taught me was how to just plain survive the drama that was Virginia Opera. Of course working with Jay was one of the highest points of my tenure...and then he left...That definitely left a giant whole in my opera heart--who was going to be my partner in crime? Dave returned in 2012 and made that whole close a little but then he was promoted from TD to Director of Production. In an instant I felt alone again. I'm not opposed to working alone but it's a different kind of feeling when you feel alone in your environment. Trying to hold on to that friendship/work relationship started to become fairly complicated last year and I feel like something was lost. Guess that's one strike.
My job was a rocketed progression of promotions. From stagehand, to programmer, to touring electrician, to master electrician, to lighting supervisor I had the opportunity to learn a variety of things over several years. I embraced programming...after all, that's where I started. But what I realized about my promotion is that with all of that I was losing pieces of me that I didn't want to lose. And to try and justify that by saying, well just get your fix on your off time. There is no off time. I was starting to sacrifice my off-time which should have been family time to take on a ridiculous amount of outside work. It was a bad decision. Not only was I losing my family time but I became distracted from all the other things that I was supposed to be doing for the opera. My creativity was being fed, but my job was suffering. Strike two.
I think that's two pretty significant strikes.
So if it's that easy to drop those two reasons out of my brain, why is it not so easy to walk away?
Simple answers would be loyalty, respect, dedication. Those are usually the things that leave me attached to things that I no longer want to belong to. I like to describe this relationship as Ike and Tina.
So where are my strikes against my company? Well I think the obvious ones would be long days and long, long, hours. I mean, but what arts job doesn't have those? The opera does, the shop did, even my stupid pizza delivery job did. But I don't even feel like that is that big of a deal. I could say that we're a bit disorganized, which makes my little obsessive compulsive brain go insane but again, what new company isn't? Every step is a step towards organization and progression.
So with all that being said, what's next? What is my next move? How do I continue from here now putting on paper what I have been avoiding saying out loud.
Reason number 32 why I have this blog I guess.
Friday, September 8, 2017
Finances...the story of my life.
I've never been good with money. I mean, I like to think at one point I was. I remember maintaining a credit card and saving money enough to buy a car on my own with no co-signer so I must have been good at some point. But here lately I feel like every dollar I save, five more go out the window. I just don't know where I've gone wrong. Maybe if I look at the last 8 months of my life I can find some insight.
December 2016--I quit my job with Virginia Opera after 12 years of long, hard service. It was a job I loved and was getting paid pretty well...well enough to pay my rent with ONE week's worth of pay. But here in lies the rub: I started having delayed paychecks. Over and over again. And it's so hard to plan your life when you keep having your money delayed. So among other things, I left. I found a job in the great District of Columbia. But I needed to move ASAP. I pulled together as many funds as I could and moved my family in less than a week to Alexandria VA.
January 2017--So I'm working. My husband isn't. And the bills are piling up. He eventually gets a job working for Jackson-Hewitt, only temporary of course. And mostly part-time. Now we've gone from me making rent in one week of work to making 3/4 of the rent on a paycheck. Our rent, doubled. Our insurance doubled. Our bills doubled. And our income reduced by half.
March 2017--I picked up a short term gig in Atlanta to make money. However, because I didn't pay my tolls before I moved, I now have a whopping 1800 bucks in tolls to pay. I settled with the company for 1200. My pay from Atlanta--take a guess how much that was? So the trip, while it was amazing and fun, left me right back where I started.
April 2017--My husband now has a full-time job. Hallelujah.
June 2017--I quit my new job at Studio Theatre after months of unrest and just way more drama than I wanted to deal with. I went back to Norfolk for a week to make some extra money doing lighting design gigs. Did pretty well with that. Then headed back up home to start my new job at Barbizon.
Later June 2017--Summer camp--you know that thing you need for your kids when there's no school and you have to work and you don't have any family to help take care of your kids. Up here, 200 bucks a week. So total up about 3 grand in summer camp money and well...now you're back in debt again.
Now September, I'm stuck with a feeling of helplessness. I'm doing everything I can to save a dollar. Couponing, selling, surveys, quick jobs. And why oh why do I keep coming up short? What is there left for me to do? What else can I minimize?
I just want to get to a better place financially--is that too much to ask?
I've never been good with money. I mean, I like to think at one point I was. I remember maintaining a credit card and saving money enough to buy a car on my own with no co-signer so I must have been good at some point. But here lately I feel like every dollar I save, five more go out the window. I just don't know where I've gone wrong. Maybe if I look at the last 8 months of my life I can find some insight.
December 2016--I quit my job with Virginia Opera after 12 years of long, hard service. It was a job I loved and was getting paid pretty well...well enough to pay my rent with ONE week's worth of pay. But here in lies the rub: I started having delayed paychecks. Over and over again. And it's so hard to plan your life when you keep having your money delayed. So among other things, I left. I found a job in the great District of Columbia. But I needed to move ASAP. I pulled together as many funds as I could and moved my family in less than a week to Alexandria VA.
January 2017--So I'm working. My husband isn't. And the bills are piling up. He eventually gets a job working for Jackson-Hewitt, only temporary of course. And mostly part-time. Now we've gone from me making rent in one week of work to making 3/4 of the rent on a paycheck. Our rent, doubled. Our insurance doubled. Our bills doubled. And our income reduced by half.
March 2017--I picked up a short term gig in Atlanta to make money. However, because I didn't pay my tolls before I moved, I now have a whopping 1800 bucks in tolls to pay. I settled with the company for 1200. My pay from Atlanta--take a guess how much that was? So the trip, while it was amazing and fun, left me right back where I started.
April 2017--My husband now has a full-time job. Hallelujah.
June 2017--I quit my new job at Studio Theatre after months of unrest and just way more drama than I wanted to deal with. I went back to Norfolk for a week to make some extra money doing lighting design gigs. Did pretty well with that. Then headed back up home to start my new job at Barbizon.
Later June 2017--Summer camp--you know that thing you need for your kids when there's no school and you have to work and you don't have any family to help take care of your kids. Up here, 200 bucks a week. So total up about 3 grand in summer camp money and well...now you're back in debt again.
Now September, I'm stuck with a feeling of helplessness. I'm doing everything I can to save a dollar. Couponing, selling, surveys, quick jobs. And why oh why do I keep coming up short? What is there left for me to do? What else can I minimize?
I just want to get to a better place financially--is that too much to ask?
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