Raised by a single mother.

I was honestly raised by my mother and my mother alone. She raised my sister and I without assistance from either of our fathers. She also took care of some neighborhood kids that grew up with us. My mom handled things without showing any weakness or letting us know that we were technically a poor family. She worked really hard to teach us a positive work ethic. As well as teaching us the value of a dollar the value of our time spent working and basically that to have the things that you want you have to work hard. This world is not designed to give you things. It was initially made for survival of the fittest and my mom gave us the basic skills to survive, to thrive, to be able to understand what the world was really about. Watching her on her hustle always made me feel like it was weakness to ask for help. Because my mom did all of these things by herself without anybody helping her. She lost her mother at a pretty young age she was already an adult but she was barely in her 20s around this time she also met her father for the first time and started building a relationship with him. A lot of times I feel like if I ask people for help that they’ll start thinking that I can’t handle my situations. If I try to achieve things on my own I feel like I have accomplished something. I feel like life can’t push me down because I won’t let it. This reasoning sometimes gets me into a situation worse than if I would have just ask for help. Sometimes I am
my own worse enemy.

Personal Goals

So as you know Facebook likes to remind you of things that have happened to you in your past. Show you things that you probably are trying to forget but there they go popping up in your head again so here’s the thing apparently 3 years ago today I was working at Love’s and a customer gave me two rules to live by number one don’t sweat the small stuff and number two everything is the small stuff.

Also on this day 5 years ago my husband and I signed our rent to own agreement and had it notarized. This day was in retrospect a amazing day it was the day that we finally were going to own something and it was going to belong to us. Both my girls had their own rooms my husband and I had a place to call home. Then only a few months after my husband broke his back and we started spiraling downward trying to keep this house that we already lived in for 3 years. We tried everything in the world to hang on to that but no matter how hard we tried it seemed like we were never going to dig our way out of the hole that we where in. I lost my job at Walmart because my husband was having issues mental health issues and physical issues. And before I knew it we lost our house, we had to throw in the towel and move back to Texas.

Also on this date 11 years ago I was still living in Texas and working at the Walmart in Grapevine. That was the day I was called into the office and told that I got caught on camera buying clothes on clearance. I kind of laughed but when our policy forbids associates from buying products before the customers can buy them. I thought it was going to get wrote up but I only got a verbal warning and the next day I brought back the two items that I bought and told them that there are five Walmarts from where I lived at to that store and I can buy things on clearance at other stores as well as use my discount card at another store. I shopped at this store because it was my home store and my bonus checks and pretty much paychecks move all around that stores ability to make sales but if my money is not as good as a customer’s money then that can be a customer somewhere else.

So that being said I think that 3 years ago a customer gave me some good advice to not sweat the small stuff and everything is small stuff no matter what way you look at it everything is able to be managed whether 11 years ago you thought you were getting wrote up or 5 years ago you thought that you were buying the house that you would be able to raise your kids and retiring or turning around and realizing you’re back at square one and starting from the beginning only this time you have two kids and a husband who is mentally challenging. The small stuff is what makes it worth going through. So ya’ll hang in there everything is going to be all right in the end.

No matter what’s going on in your life think of one thing that you’re proud that you accomplished this year because in reality that’s all it really is you have to get by day by day, week by week and then before you know it years have gone by. And this is your normal life

What are your five greatest strengths???

This is somewhat of a loaded question. Some days I feel very empowered and other days I feel like I have nothing to offer. To say I have strengths is kind of unusual to me because I feel like they’re just things that are a part of me make me who I am.

Honesty
Sense of Humor even if it’s dry
Willingness to learn new things
Believe in being a team player
Believe in hard work and ethical values

1. Honesty- I am by nature an honest person I think it’s because I hate being left out of the loop or left in the dark. I don’t dig surprises and I certainly cannot respect an individual who feels the need to be deceitful. I can understand reinventing oneself for growth but own what you did in your past and use it to be a better person in the future.

I have a hard time lying to not only myself but to other people around me I laugh giving myself away make it out into a joke but the truth of the matter is if I say it out loud most likely I mean it. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a narc or anything like that but if asked point blankly a question I have a very hard time not answering truthfully this is not only one of my greatest strengths but it is also one of my greatest weaknesses because let’s be honest, people don’t want to hear the truth they want you to validate their feelings rather then get your opinion. So if that is what you came here for you will be disappointed because what I’m dishing out is brutal honesty. No matter what, but with that you can rest assure I will never talk about you behind your back I will always tell it to your face first. That being said I expect the same in return. Honesty is very important to me.

2. Humorous even if it is a bit on the dry side.- in the tradition of my father’s side of the family, I have an uncanny way of making anything into a joke. I will go as far as saying I laugh at things that are not actually funny they are in fact sad or horrific. Sometimes I feel like it’s my job to keep the mood light. To make people feel a little more at ease so they don’t start to look at the negative things happening around them. By making jokes and laughing and smiling about it I think it might help them realize that life could be so much worse all it takes is a blink of an eye to turn your world upside-down. What’s depressing to me is that a lot of times when I’m trying to make a joke about something that is important to me or something that I grew up observing people don’t always understand my humor.

3. Willingness to learn new things.- I have had the honor of living on this planet for four decades in this time I have learned that you can always learn something more.

I have done a number of different jobs some of them not so Glam like I was a housekeeper at a hospital I can honestly say I have cleaned vomit out of a sink before. Like the toilet is seriously like five inches away from the sink and they chose to vomit in the sink. This gets you ready for Parenthood for sure. After that nothing my kids could do could be worse than that except for spit I don’t like spit. But in this adventure I like to call my employment history the one thing I have learned is there is always something more to learn if you do something a certain way a million times and it works for you someone else might have a different way to do what you’re doing yet in less time. My philosophy is smarter not harder if there is an easier way to do what you’re trying to do and you’re going to get from point A to B just like everyone else do it that way.

4. I am a team player- I am an organizer, I thrive with structure, I am more productive if there is a strategic plan in motion. Yes folks I have OCD. Which does not mean what people think it does, people believe that my house is spotless, that my kids are not allowed to get dirty, that I hate messiness when in fact my bedroom right now is cluttered with clothing sometimes I climb in bed with my clean laundry that I should be folding up and putting away yet it’s laying in my bed and becoming part of my pillowdrie. What it means is certain things in my life have to be done a certain way. If I have a laid out game plan or a routine to My Day, that day tends to go more smoothly. I also work so much better when people are not talking to me over my shoulder or micromanaging me. When I run into this it frustrates me causes me to start getting upset and when I start crying it is not a sign of me being weak or cry baby it’s a sign that people need to get away from me because I’m getting so frustrated that I can’t hold it in and that’s when I get irritated and tend to lash out.

That being said, I almost always make decisions that will actually benefit not only the people I work with but the people who come in after I do. I try not to make more work for other people. I feel like this is a sign of respect to your coworkers that you don’t always get a chance to see or get a chance to correspond with. My coworkers think it’s funny because I try to communicate with other people that come in after me or people that might come while I’m going to the restroom or out to lunch I carry post its in my pocket and write a napkin note (is what I call them) keeping everyone informed. I feel like it’s a clear correspondence with a person who may come up on something that you’re working on and you had to stop in the middle of it, It helps to let them in on what is going on. So they may understand what that specific project that you’re doing is and that you are responsible for it and that you will finish it. I do believe that we are only as strong as our weakest link. That having an attitude that someone else will finish something is not an attitude that will help your company as a whole. Playing the blame game or the I’m not going to do it because nobody else is doing it is just childish and should be addressed and people should be held accountable for it. I am part of a team and if I am trying to help my team accomplish a goal I kind of hope that my fellow team players would do the same.

5. I believe in hard work and ethical values.- growing up I was raised by a single mother who never let her children know how difficult it was to be the only breadwinner,the only income, the only parental example we had. We grew up watching my mom hustle and make sure that her responsibilities were taken care of. In turn we were taught a very positive work ethic. We learned that in life anything worth having is worth working for. Nothing in this life is free everything is paid for whether it’s paid for with monetary value or with our time. We learned this very early in life that money doesn’t grow on trees and in order to buy things you have to have money. However we also learned that money is not the key to happiness. Money itself is only temporary and the value of our work is what people look at. Nothing comes easy nothing comes free our quality of life is based on hard work and a solid foundation of ethics if it seems like everyone else is getting by with the bare minimum that will reflect in their true quality of their life. If we learn that we can receive handouts financial aid from the government those programs are not set up to help people who need help they’re set up for people who don’t want to help themselves. When I walk into my home I know that I don’t owe anybody for the things that my family has my family has worked hard for everything that they have ever had. I am completely against this entitlement generation.