It Ain’t All Sunshine & Rainbows. Sometimes, It’s Neon Plastic Dinosaurs.

Right now, If you look around my apartment, you’d see blankets strewn around waiting to be laundered, a pile of disgusting tissues and a fridge full of items that couldn’t make a coherent meal my recovering tummy would want to comply with.  I had the flu for the last few days, and it knocked me on my tush, really, really hard.

Last week, I was feeling sluggish, tired and just generally gross…but then the flu formally and officially introduced itself. I was down for the count.  It was just me and Netflix for a few days.

Ya, times like this aren’t fun when you’re unemployed and trying to reassemble your workflow into a coherent endeavor.  It means blog posts don’t get edited and posted, travel doesn’t get planned and financial mistakes happen.

Case in point- in my flu induced haze, I thought I’d get ahead of my upcoming rent and credit card payment and pull $2k from my emergency fund to my main account in a different bank. The transfer usually takes 3-4 days.  I hit submit, and passed out with the flu-iest flu that ever had been flu-ed.  Little did I know, that I had selected the wrong columns, and the transfer was in the WRONG DIRECTION.  Yup, that’s right. I just requested that $2,000 be WITHDRAWN from my accounts instead of added to them. I would facepalm, but no- this is more of a head-on-desk moment.

So, guess who was overdrawn and had to pay $30 for a stop-payment by my main bank?  Yes. I hate myself sometimes.  One click and not double checking cost me $30 and meant that a good intentioned, “pay my bills early” turned into a big hot mess.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

As I get older though, it’s actually become easier for me to admit when I’m dumb.  I think that stems from folks in my life who I’ve seen who constantly play victim, and never recognize their role, or how they played their hand, which lead to where they ended up.  It’s funny- we tend to say “YES, it was ALL ME!” when things go well, but when things get screwed up, we don’t want to admit we were dumb, and burned ourselves with the iron.  We ignored the warning label.  We forgot a check hadn’t cleared.  We didn’t write down that the meeting changed times and thought we’d remember.

Nah y’all. I’m dumb, and I do dumb things- and I think in admitting that, it makes me wiser. Well, maybe not wiser, but I feel pretty good in my own skin.

This is my life, and I made it that way, choice by choice.  Sometimes things happen to me, and I happen back.  Life isn’t the system against us, or us against the system- it’s an interplay and honestly, our lives are comprised of the chemistry of a million little choices.  Sometimes, those choices suck, and sometimes, those choices lead to glorious serendipity.

I have a long way to go until my life is sorted out.  Last fall, I called off an engagement.  I moved out.  Later, I got laid off from my job.  My blog started doing really well.  I wanted to travel while I figured things out, so I am.  Later today, I leave on an amazing press trip to Milwaukee for Summerfest that I got by putting in an application on a whim and a prayer, and was selected.  I’m going to be going to Jamaica in August.

My life is a hodge podge of blessings and stressins.  I have an emergency fund (yay!) but I’m using it (oh sh*t!).  I’m getting to travel, really travel- for the first time in my life (huzzah!) because I have unrestricted vacation time so I can book during the week and save money (woo!), but being unemployed means that I’m not getting paid (oh, right.)

Nothing will ever be totally good or totally bad.  I’m really excited to be traveling and focusing on building my social media consulting business back up, at CakeMix Media, but until the designer (who required a $1800 deposit, yes, I wanted to vom) can redo the site, I’m feeling stuck.  I’m also missing that $1800 pretty bad.  I won’t have a big-girl logo or site until August.  So, for right now, I’m focusing on travel, blogging, looking for work where it comes, and building a brand for myself.

Along the way, I get inspiration from women who are making it work for themselves.  For instance, look at these dinosaur planters.  This woman I met in Chicago started making these and now, creates neon dinosaur succulent planters FULL TIME.  Yes, her full time job is making dinosaurs.  Color me inspired.  Money is to be made, and just because it isn’t here at the moment for me, or for you- that doesn’t mean it can’t materialize with a good idea (even an unconventional one like plastic dinosaur planters) and some work.

I bought three.

So, whenever I get fixated on being stuck, being in limbo,  I think of neon plastic dinosaur planters and I remember- women can make awesome things happen in business.

Neon. Plastic. Dinosaurs.

You can keep your sunshine and rainbows.

…and if you’d like to give a little love to CakeMix Media on Facebook pre-launch, my social media consulting business before I can get it redesigned, that’d be uber appreciated.  There will be gobs of good articles on social media, female entrepreneurship and news on there.