Still his little girl

My first real job in high school, aside from babysitting and running a neighborhood paper route, was a part time position at the Paradise Bakery at the Vancouver Mall. I worked there for seven months before moving on, which is strange to think about now, because those seven months feel like they were far longer than that. Like in any job, the first few weeks were hard, getting acclimated to the structure of the job, the expectations of management, the ever-so-fun world of customer service.

Since it was my first job, my father wanted to make sure that I was doing all right, that I was happy, to see where I worked so when he pictured me, he could see me there. Somewhere in that first week or two of working, Dad slipped over to the mall and entirely undetected by me, saw me at work. I never saw him that day, only heard about it from him later on, but I knew then that a pattern would emerge. And every local job I have ever had since, within the first few weeks of starting, my father has cruised by to see.

Yesterday, while shampooing a client, for some unknown reason, I looked up to the front windows of the salon to see my father walking past, waving. Closer to thirty than twenty years old, it still made me smile. I know I am a lucky girl to have a father who loves me that much.

I Couldn't Get Much Higher

Three days into my new job career, I can honestly tell you that I LOVE it. I love how quickly time goes by, how varied the tasks can be and how fun the atmosphere is. I work with a great group of girls who are all very easy to talk to and I am so eager to get to know. The age group I am working with seems to be around my own, but that couldn't be more perfect.

I am kicking myself for not doing this sooner, but I suppose that everything happens for a reason and I am thankful to have figured this out now. It's funny, but I already feel like my life is on a better track because I am finally doing something that is worth my time and energry and focus. Yet, instead of draining me and my creativity, I feel that it is recharged and ever pulsating with new ideas.

It is so cool to be able to sit someone down in my chair and know that I am going to be able to do what they want me to do. I have my schedule for the next six weeks and am ready to start building up my clientele.

Cue the theme song from The Hills

Perhaps it is coincidence or fate or my damn good luck that I will be starting my first job in my new career one year to the week as I lost my last one. This same very week last year, I had the rug pulled out from under me and my eyes opened to the fact that there has to be something better for me out there then answering phones, filing stacks of papers and processing job applications for other people.  I had always been under the impression that I would just find a job and do it until we got to the place where we could have me stop working and have babies. But come on. In this day and age, the likelihood of being able to support a family on one income is near to impossible and those who do it, I have the utmost respect for, simply because I do not know how they do it.

Now, I have found and earned a career that I love. That is fun and exciting and not stressful in those mundane ways that my old jobs were. I get to be creative and charismatic. Eventually, I will get to be my own boss and set my own hours and just reap the benefits of this fantastic future ahead of me. Of course I still want kids, but waiting a few more years does not seem as daunting or punishing as it did a year ago.

So off I go tomorrow to cut and color and make the world beautiful. I've been cleaning out my closet of my old office clothes and been doing a little shameless shopping for new salon wear. New year, new job, new me.

I'm already loving it.

Addicted

Sorry I haven't been blogging much. Been too busy working on the book. Yeah, I know, it's only exciting to me. But it is exciting. More than exciting, it's exhilarating. Kind of like a drug. Most nights, I am up until 2:30 or 3 am, putting things down in my notebook before typing it up in the laptop.

I know it seems kind of archaic, but I actually hand write a good chunk of each chapter before I type it up and edit the shit out of it. I am not sure what spurs me to do that, whether it be that I like not always being tethered to the laptop or that I feel a bit more involved, closer to the story by writing it out in long hand. But since I started laying out ideas for this book in the last weeks of October, I have been using the same notebook. I filled the very last page of it last night.





Most pages look like this. Most often, I have ink smudges on my ring finger (where my pen rests) and a dent above the first knuckle, as holding a pen for two to three to four hours seems to do that.

I've done rewrites. I've taken the story in different directions. I have had new ideas come to me, things to enrich the story or to string along and tie up in the second book. Yes, I have already decided that there will be a second book. This, what I am writing now, is actually the precursor to the dream that actually started it all.

And once I reach a point that I am done "writing" then I start transcribing, typing the sucker into Microsoft word and begin the never ending task of editing it. I can read and reread and reread again and still find something to take out or something to add in. It's a never ending project. Even what I am posting for friends to read can only be considered a first draft.

Still, printing it out into book format definitely makes it look and feel that much more real.



There are about fifty pages there, folks. With two pages on every sheet. And that is probably only about 1/3 of the book. The rest is still in my head . . . waiting to get out.

I hope you are reading it and if you are, enjoying it. And don't be afraid to leave feedback - I need it all. Good, bad and WTF?s too.

I'm having a blast writing it.