I’m a Martha Blogger!!!

Thursday (aka yesterday) my crazy weekend of blogher commenced.

I worked. I made a costume change. I trekked into the city on a bar car and got the festivities started solo.

Metronorth 4:30p express train ftw. Even though it was late.

Then I got to the city. Treked down in the heat (omg it was so hot). To the Hood Simply Smart party. Even though I missed most of it. Wamp wamp. But I got to meet these fabulous ladies!

The fabulous Susan and Kinsey

Kinsey and I headed over to the #MarthaBlogger party over at the omni media studio between 11th and 12th on W 26th.

We waited in long lines.

Then we threw elbows to get through the crowd.

Then we got into the room. And the view. OH EM GEE. THE VIEW!!!!

Sorry about the bad picture. (others will be up on flickr)

There was more. Seriously.

And there were crafty. Crafty bling if you will.

I hit up the people’s party after, wasted a drink ticket when I discovered (disappointedly enough) that the bar was wayyy overpriced – meaning it was $8 for a miller light. A smaller size miller light than the one above that I had paid $2.75 for on the train (MAJOR win Metro North).

I had a small dinner, and then headed home because I was toting this around. And bish was heavy!

And this was a condensed version since I ditched a box of oreo’s and a box of easy mac at the conference hall when I got to the Hilton. But that MW, the magazines and the crafty thing…heavy. Really heavy.

Stay tuned for more pictures of today!

By the way, they announced Blogher11 – San Diego (I’ve never been!!!) –  I might even bring hubs, pending our situation is better. August 2011 – who’s there with me?? 🙂

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I can haz confidence?

Once upon a time, I was a self-proclaimed perfectionist.

I had good self-confidence, despite my incredible amount of paranoia of what others thought of me, and was a go-getter. I set goals for myself and went after them – achieving awesome goals such as interning on Capitol Hill at the age of 21, interning in the MA State House at the age of 19, graduating from college, running a marathon (make that three almost four), among many, many others.

Somewhere along the line, that self-confidence took a beating. Maybe it was my first real boss out of college telling me I couldn’t handle high stress situations. Or losing my job on my honeymoon via email, or getting laid off and later finding out a co-worker essentially staged it because “it needed to happen.”

I felt, for a while after that, lost. Really, really lost. Like, what-the-eff-am-I-doing-with-my-life kind of lost.

Then I realized my passion lies in social media, blogging/writing, being healthy and fit and running and yoga.

Recently, I was given an opportunity to start a monthly podcast as an expert in [insert topic here] from Stiletto Woman. A great magazine if I do say so myself.

But now that I have this amazing opportunity, I feel like I’m standing at the edge of the deep end of the pool and afraid to jump in. Afraid to just, in the words of Taylor Swift “jump then fall.” My biggest worry is that I’ll have nothing to say, what the eff am I an expert in? Surviving some of life’s biggest hurdles? I mean, I know there’s much worse out there but not going bankrupt when the two of us were unemployed for so long, was HUGE! I’m still amazed we kept our heads above water for so long and now we’re both employed happily, with our health, and a good roof over our heads.

I’ve never felt so blessed.

But still, that’s not a topic for a podcast right? I could talk about fitness but for as much as I love it, I’m still struggling – it’s an ongoing struggle really – to make it a regular part of my life. My motivation is such a yo-yo that I struggle to keep up with my self-set training schedules and not just get into a rut. I mean there are people that take years of schooling to do podcasts about being fit and healthy and eating well! I can do it but I certainly can’t tell you why avacado is good for you, but I can tell you that it’s incredibly yummy on sandwiches! (a fact that I really only learned recently)

My self-confidence is so low that I just feel like people are going to see me as a joke. A fraud if you will. I’m almost 27 years old, what the hell could I possibly be an expert in?

I feel lost, scared to jump in but at the same time, wanting to oh so badly, like I’m missing out on some sort of fun party that everyone else is in but I’m not. It’s intimidating. Very intimidating.

What say you readers, what do you do when you need a little boost in the confidence department???

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Serene

I’ve been crying a lot the past couple days, for no reason in particular, other than I just can’t seem to chuck this huge weight on my shoulders about everything and the breaking feeling in my heart that just seems constant. This feeling that for some reason I feel like I’m just destined to fail in everything I do. Pathetic, I know, but just…it’s feeling helpless and overwhelmed by life.

So Hubs sent me this this morning:

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I’m going to go repeat that to myself, go to yoga tomorrow to get into it again and start reading this book followed by this one. Hopefully this will all help perk up my mood in the long term and give me a little bit of much needed hope.

Sorry to be a bit of a debbie downer lately, sometimes you just need to vent, and writing makes everything better. In happier news, I’ve applied to a few hopeful freelance gigs, a couple of tutoring positions and a job. Grad school said I should hear back “soon.” As in the GPA waiver committee made their decision, sent it off to the director, and once he/she approves it, I’ll hear back. I’m not just keeping my fingers crossed, I’m praying because if this doesn’t work out I may have to rethink everything.

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Making things happen

Things got monumentally worse yesterday.

In Hubs’s and I’s quest for the #movenorth, we’ve, in so many terms…lost a lot of money. Gone into some debt for him to take his job. I quit a job, albeit a minimum wage paying one, but a fun one. I loved the gym. He was “consulting” and was brought on full-time to his job just this month thus giving up other consulting clients for his job, and taking a pay-cut to do so. A pay cut. After taxes, etc…which his company will now be paying for, he will be bringing home significantly less than the past few months of “consulting” while also losing a significant amount of outside income. I am…kind of freaking out.

It was, in addition, non-negotiable.

My biggest fears: Are we going to be able to survive? Are we going to be able to not go bankrupt? Will we be able to eat? Will we be able to keep puppeh in kibble? Oh. Em. Gee. The list goes on and on, because while Hubs is incredibly supportive about me pursuing my dreams, the reality is – and I’m realizing this faster than he is – I need A job. It won’t likely be THE dream job, but I need…A job. And I’ve been applying, to part-time, freelance and full-time jobs. But guess what kids…the economy is still crap and well…I’ve had ONE interview since we moved up here. ONE.

I’ve applied to at least ten private schools, ten public schools for pretty much any position that will allow an uncertified teacher – substitute, teaching assistants, etc.. I found out the other day that Stamford Public Schools have SIX HUNDRED substitutes. They TURN teachers away. Same with Wilton. I need to follow up with a few other schools but can I just say…holy. Crap. Me teaching is likely not going to happen any time soon – I’ve still got my fingers crossed for grad school but in the mean time…

Crap crap crap crap.

I’ve begun, slowly, applying for more freelance jobs. Mostly because this teaching thing? Is going to be slow going and me? I love to write. A lot. I think you can tell by my blog right? Right. I might as well wait, wait for grad school or a private school gig, and do something I enjoy in the mean time that may just allow me to make some money. Keep your fingers crossed.

In addition to my quest for freelance gigs, my longing to teach, my marathon training, my soon to be tutoring, I recently started a project that has long been in the works – there’s about eight other bloggers – with a few others that are currently getting started on the site that haven’t been introduced yet. It’s a wedding blog. A blog that came to fruition at BlogHer and took this long (for me: 1 wedding, 1 move and a job and a half later) to get off the ground.

Currently, we’re in the middle of a redesign to make it a pretty wedding blog. Soon? I want to be bff with the big time wedding bloggers. Sharing pretty pictures and dreaming of the wedding that could have been. I loved my wedding, every minute of it – from my sister waking me up super early to give me my wedding gift, to having breakfast with my mom and sister in the morning, to stopping at our frequented liquor store in full wedding attire after the ceremony to get some champagne for the limo to the after party in our suite. I loved it. But I also love the thought of planning weddings – seeing everything come together – the details, the colors, the dresses, the coordinating – everything about weddings I love.

So this blog, is a source for REAL bloggers to write about their weddings. Not that all wedding bloggers aren’t real bloggers but I just found that some of the wedding blogging out there is…less than stellar. And for some reason, I have a small condescending attitude towards bloggers who created their “blogs” to blog for a wedding blog. Or bloggers who write for a wedding blog who had never blogged before. I dunno, it just kind of turns me off. Judgemental I know, and I don’t claim to be the next Anne Frank but sometimes, you just want to read bloggers who can use a semi-colon properly. Am I right?

So, my project, unpaying but oh so fulfilling with some of the best bloggers out there (IMHO) is up and running: The Bridal Bloggette. And in the meantime, while I wait for my teaching dreams to come to reality, I’ll keep writing because it makes me happy and if there’s one thing I need to stay in our dour situation is happy.

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