A Letter to Myself: One Year Later

Dear 24 year old-August of 2013-Liz,

It has been precisely one year since wrote that blog post. That blog post was the beginning. The beginning of you understanding that you needed to change your life. And you have. Your life has changed 100% since then.

Get ready.

"I Don't Want To Die a Dreamer"

To break you in easily, I will start with work.  

You finally left that job. It was inevitable, and I think you always knew that. You resigned when you obtained a position in uptown Charlotte for a real estate company. You put a deposit on a brand new apartment that was only a block away from your new job. You are going to be able to walk to work, and not have to worry about gas or parking, plus get to experience uptown life. You were really, really excited.

Except it did not happen that way.

You were starting this new job on a Tuesday, and the weekend before, you stayed at papa and grandma's. You and grandma were going to spend the day together shopping on Sunday to find you the perfect wardrobe for your new position. Ten minutes after you and grandma left to go shopping, your cell phone rings. It's the president of the company. Your job offer was rescinded due to budget cuts and immediate staffing changes the company had to implement. 

With a 3 minute telephone call, you became unemployed, lost that brand new apartment, and had to start from scratch without any certainty regarding the direction you were going in. 

But that's okay. You are a survivor and you can get through anything. You always have and you will always will. That was just a warm-up for what was to come, anyway.

You cried and sulked that afternoon, then hit the ground running. You sent your resume to over 300 places; even if they weren't hiring. It quickly paid off. The next Monday you had an interview with a man named John at successful company in the Ballantyne Corporate Park (your favorite place!). You clicked with him instantly and he even made the comment that he liked your spunk. He offered you the job Wednesday and you started Friday. The best part? It pays quite a bit more than the job you initially received and provides full benefits and 401k. 

You love your job and feel like you were meant to be there. Looking back, receiving that telephone call that the other job fell through was the best thing to happen to you. Your boss believes in you, gives you immense creative freedom, and provides just enough direction for you to grow, but still be independent. You work long, hard hours, you are constantly interrupted all day everyday while doing your work, always get thrown into meetings, you plan events and office functions constantly, and multitasking has never been so chaotic. You love every minute of it though. 

You find another apartment. You move back to the apartment complex that you lived in when you rented your very first apartment. It's 2 miles away from your job and the 5 minute commute every morning is wonderful. Because of your financial situation you are able to get a spacious one-bedroom apartment that is almost 900 square feet! Since you are back at that apartment complex, you join LA Fitness again and your apartment building happens to be right beside of it. You and Kel are back to your old routine of training together everyday after work. 

You're home, Liz. You are home. Remember when you had to abruptly change your life at the end of 2012 and everything was just a freaking mess? Well, 2013 is a mess too. You know that by now. It calms down, though. You are back in the Ballantyne area; your favorite place to be. The only place that has ever felt like home. 

Where does all of this leave your relationship though?

You are not with him anymore. And I wish I could tell you that you let go and never look back, but you don't. You never will. You love him far too much for it to ever be that easy; whether he deserves it or not. You knew you needed to leave though. You did not want too, but you had too. You are brave for that. That will happen November 1st. It's going to be hard. You are going to cry yourself to sleep so many nights. You are going to lie awake in bed and ache for his presence. You are going to doubt your decisions. You are going to have panic attacks. You're going to go through a dark period of depression. Nothing and no one can take that pain away. You are just going to have to be strong and pull through. Allow yourself to hurt and accept the pain so you can move on. 

You don't stop loving him and you never will. You know how you are. Tomorrow you are going to love him just as much as you do today. He was such a paramount part of your life; but for once you are going to love yourself more. You will have a lot of twists, turns, ups, and downs over this, but you keep going. You pray, you work hard, and you keep faith and hope alive in your heart. That is all you can do when it comes to that.

Surprisingly, the breakup is not the hardest part though. Your weight is. 

You have had a rough year... and your body and health have been through a lot. This caused you to gain a lot of weight. Your job situation and relationship just added to the cause. You let yourself go, Liz. You always knew what you were doing to yourself, but you were so mentally exhausted that you did not care. You still have a few more months of gaining weight until you realize this though.

Are you ready? You are going to weigh 262 pounds before you change your life.

November 25th, 2013 is a Monday; Dad's birthday (he is still hanging on, by the way). You will go to work at your fabulous new job and have a doctors appointment at 6PM for your annual physical. To kill time before your appointment, you go to Target to purchase some new clothes for work. However, nothing fits. Even a size 18 does not fit. Can you believe that? A size 18 does not fit you anymore. That is how bad it gets. You are going to break down in the dressing room, a Target employee is going to check on you, and then out of embarrassment you are going to run out of the store. Going to your doctors appointment and seeing the number on the scale right after this incident is just the icing on the cake. Thank God it was enough to push you over the edge and make you change your life.

Girl, you do it too! You have done it before and you can do it again. Except this time, you work even harder! You dig even deeper within yourself and face your inner demons head on. What is even better is that you write about it. You open yourself up and share your struggles and problems, even though they are embarrassing. That is because you are confident but humble, and it is important for you to do this to help other people. You have stuck with your blog, and made so many amazing friends. That makes it even more important to be a positive guide for someone who is roaming through the darkness that engulfed you for so long.

You love to write and you dream of that being your career. You did not want to die a dreamer, and you still don't. The difference is now you work harder than you ever have. You are down 63 pounds and have only 25 more to go. You blog at least 5 times a week. You are also well into your first book. It is not the mafia series you want to do, though. You need to dedicate much more time to research for that series. The book you are working on now is much more appropriate for you to be writing. You are healing through writing this book. Your hope is for this book is to inspire and give hope to people all across the world. There is also someone interested in being your agent and publishing companies that you have been talking too. You are being cautious though. You want this done right because it could set the foundation for the future. Keep taking your time and educating yourself. Knowledge is power. And when it comes to something like this, you need as much power as you can obtain.

Thus far 2014 has been the biggest year of your entire life. You have grown so much as a woman and as an adult. It is going to be loneliest year for you too, but you need it. You need to give up some of your social life for once and stop being so caught up in the "now". If you don't want to die a dreamer, you have to put in the work. Extraordinary dreams and goals require extraordinary effort and dedication. You are going to have to remind yourself of that almost everyday, because you do get exhausted. But keep trying. Push yourself to do the best you can every single day. That way, if you do die a dreamer, at least you tried. 

I always hear the quote "You do not know how strong you are until it is the only choice you have". I disagree with that. I believe that "You don't know how strong you are until you have every reason to give up and be defeated, but you don't." You keep fighting and you keep trying. That is strength, and right now, a year later, you are fighting and trying every single day of your life.

Lastly, I want to let you know that at the end of May you are going to cut 5 inches from your hair. It is going to suck. 

Oh and Robin Williams died last week. It was heartbreaking.

Love,

25 year old-August of 2014-Liz

A Season of Change...

What a week. What a life.

I feel like I have so much I want to say right now. I want to write my situation down on my blog, get out on paper, and get it out of my head. But I can't do that right now. There is a lot of uncertainty in my life and I feel a lot of hard changes coming. If there is one quote that has always stuck with me in life, it is this one:

and sometimes, a lot of times in life, I do not feel I follow this. I used too. But over the years I have transformed. I do not always like the person I have become. This probably does not make sense. Sometimes when your heart is speaking, your brain does not always translate the words and the feelings like it should. 

More soon on that. Now, back to this week.

It has been a pretty quiet and calm week. I have been battling mood highs and lows because of all the change coming forth in my job. I had a job interview yesterday. It is for the Executive Assistant/Administration Director to the CEO of a Real Estate company. The CEO is an amazing woman. She was voted one of Charlotte's 50 most influential women and CEO's, and has won many, many awards in the real estate world. She started her company from the ground a mere 7 years ago and has grown it extraordinarily. 

Yesterday was finally the interview. After completing an essay on why they should hire me followed by a personality test, I was called in for the interview.

When I went into it, I was pretty calm. I am used to interviews at this point. I have been trying on and off for a year for a new position. But in walks the CEO. She is very stern and intimidating. She knows what she wants and how she wants it done. Those are key components for a CEO so I do not know why I was surprised. 

She had a thick stack of papers in her hands. She sat down in the conference room across the table from me and dove right into asking the standard questions. They were very difficult to answer. You guys probably know how that is. Describe a time where the outcome of a specific project did not align to the clients requests and how you elected to rectify the situation. Ugh, I hate that. I'm not good at that. She asks all of those type of questions for each job I have ever held. It was not going that great. I stuttered some, did not know exactly what to say, and I was just ready to walk out of the interview. Literally in the middle of her asking those questions, just get up and walk out. But I didn't.

Next we get to the paper filled with words. Upon her reading each word, I had to rate myself a 1-6. One meaning I'm not good at all and 6 meaning that I am superstar. I was doing OK I thought and then she says the word "pragmatic". I had no idea what that meant. She did not either, really. She thought about it for a second and kind of explained it. And I believe the definition is "your ability to think logically and realistically". I could Google to verify, but who cares.

Just as I thought the interview was a complete bomb and a complete waste of an uncomfortable outfit, she says the word "ambition". 1-6? I don't think think so. I say 7. She laughs and it breaks the ice a little. She tells me I did a good job on the test. Then we get down to the basics. I get to tell her all about me, my life, and what I want. I told her how I admired her accomplishments so much and I want to strive to be like that. I also talked a little about her company since I did my research and how I would fit and be able to help her grow her business even more.

Gosh, being an interview is the biggest sales pitch of ones life, ha.

After an hour and a half, we close our conversation. She has had the job I interviewed for posted for a month and a half. She did this because she wants to ensure she finds the right person. She also added that she deleted thousand's of Resume's sent to her because they did not follow the directions on the job posting. You could not just send them your Resume, you had to write the essay on why you would be a good fit then attach your Resume. She told me to set up reference appointments with each of my references so she could call them. She then added that as long as the references went well, she would do a criminal and credit background check, and be in touch.

My current supervisor told me he just got off the phone with her and she told him that he provided one of the best references she has ever heard. Now we wait. We will see what happens next.

Other than the interview, this week has been usual. Working and the gym. Marquis and I are leaving for Myrtle Beach on Saturday because we have a meeting with a franchise he is considering buying. It will be a short trip though, we are coming back Sunday. 

How have you guys been this week? 

I Don't Want to Die a Dreamer.

As I sit here, a million thoughts are racing through my mind. I just hope I am able to translate the words from my brain onto my keyboard and not sound like a complete idiot. I have been fighting an inner battle. I have been fighting it overall for about a year, but it is has been more taxing than it ever has over the past couple of weeks.

It is about having a career.

I am the type of person who thrives on accomplishment. I am a natural born extrovert and my zodiac sign is a Leo. I know a lot of people do not necessarily agree with "sign's" but those two words describe me to a fault. I have always been hyper, happy, peppy, and nonstop. I have had big, big dreams since I was a child, too. My first love was singing. Then I fell in love with writing stories and plays, and acting them out. When I was 14 I discovered "My Space". I made an account and saw all of these beautiful women and models who had public pages. I wanted to be just like them. That is when I fell in love with makeup and being in front of a camera. I knew without a doubt that there were four careers that I wanted to do in life: sing, act, write, and/or model. I would not be happy doing nothing else. I knew without a doubt what I wanted to do in life. But I was young! I had plenty of time.

Now here I am 24 years old and I do none of those things. I am just an "ordinary girl" from a tiny town in North Carolina. I was not a part of the rich elite, did not have any connections to the "business", nor support behind me to do something out of the ordinary like that. Why would something like that happen to a girl like me? What the hell would make me so special? People like me from places where I am from, do not "make it big". You graduate high school, hopefully get a college degree, work a 8-5 job, get married, have babies, raise them, and the end. There is nothing wrong with that, at all. But who is to say that is for everyone?

As I am looking back now, I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to work harder. I wish I could tell myself that if you want something in life, no matter how out of reach it may seem, work your ass off to get it. It doesn't matter what ANYONE thinks. If you fail, at least you tried.

When I was 17, life changed drastically. My mom divorced my extremely abusive step-dad, we moved out, and she had been diagnosed with MS. If you do not know what MS is, then you should really look it up. It is a God awful disease with no cure. My mom can't get out bed a lot of days. Walking to the bathroom is a task. Can't walk without a cane. Can't be in the sunlight because it hurts her skin. Can't work. Can't travel. It's a heartbreaking disease to watch someone you love go through.

So I put any crazy dreams I had aside so I could live with my mom, help her, work, and go to college. It was extremely draining. I was driving 45 minutes each way to work a minimum wage job, a full time college schedule, and helping take care of my mom and our home.

In 2010, when I was 20, she and her boyfriend that she has been dating since March of 2007 decided they were going to get married. She told me to go. Move to a big city, get a good job, and enjoy life. (I hated living in my hometown). So that I did. I was burned out with college, my minimum wage job, and I wanted a new start.

So March 15th, 2010, I got an apartment, and started a full time job as a Risk Manager. It was good pay considering I did not finish my degree and paid for my own place, but I was as miserable as they come. I worked in a basement of a huge internet company. It was a 5 story building and I literally worked in a basement with no windows. That alone is depressing. Not to mention, that the leadership was awful, everyone there hated what they were doing, and my supervisor just did not like me. One time she "wrote me up" for emailing her in a font that was hurt her eyes to read. She replied back for me to change the font and email her the same email again.

After a YEAR of applying for jobs until I bled, interviewing, and a lot of heartache. I obtained a new job. And this new job was my savior. When my VP called me to offer me the job, I cried and cried and cried. It is where I currently work now. It was significantly higher pay, half a mile from my apartment, and in a beautiful corporate park.

Taking the job was a little risky because it was a start up holding company, but the CEO/founder of my company is brilliant. He was CEO for one of the biggest businesses in the US, retired, and started the company I now work at... for fun. Things seem great, right?

Nope. Not in the least.

Working for a "start up" company is exhausting. It was rewarding, for the first year, but now it's just down right taxing. Explaining my job would take 10 years, so I will not get into that, but the summary is, I create business plans. It's just me, Excel, Word, and Powerpoint most days. We have no solid leadership. My CEO is retired, and just started this company for my VP to run so he is not involved in a lot of things. My VP has never been a leader before and is also our main "sale's guy". My Office Manager took on another full time job at her old company because her job here is so unsteady. Our Customer Service Rep quit, our Marketing Manager now handles half of customer service (she has never worked in a customer service setting before and my gosh does it show) AND works in our warehouse. Our IT guy now managers one our lawn care business. Really, an IT guy managing LAWN CARE? I have now taken over the other half Customer Service, a lot of the HR and Administration duties, and still creating business plans for potential businesses when my VP and/or CEO have a potential business venture.

We are all over the place. There is no structure. There is no leadership. It is pure chaos. Every day is constant battle trying to figure out problems and deal with angry clients. Not to mention, there is no automation here, all orders, Invoicing, everything is MANUAL. I never would have envisioned that this company would have turned out to be this way. We have had ample "come to Jesus" meeting's and nothing has changed. We had to leave our office in the corporate park this past December, and moved to an office space that is 75% smaller. It is so small, that I hear everyone when they go to the bathroom to pee. My desk is right beside of the bathroom. Lucky me, right? Most days though, it is just me in our office. Everyone else works from home on crazy schedules, but they needed one person "to hold the fort down" and that person is me. The youngest, the least experienced. I don't have to dress up, I literally come in my workout clothes because I workout everyday after work. You would think one would LOVE that, but I am telling you, after 8 months of it - it gets old. Some of the things I deal with on a daily basis are not getting paid. Yep, illegal right?! It happens. My Office Manager has "forgotten" to run payroll three times over the past 10 pay periods. It literally just happened to me Friday. Also, my internet and phone are constantly going in and out. I cannot tell you how many dropped calls, hang up's, unfinished projects, plans, and orders I have to encounter on a daily basis. And I complain, I beg for help, and resolutions until I am blue in the face, but nothing ever happens. What more can you do?

I could apply for a new job. I have been at my current employer for 2 1/2 years. I have given it a fair run. But would I really be happy? In the bottom pit of my heart and soul, I do not think I was created for the 8-5 desk job. There is truly nothing about the corporate world that interests me. BUT the corporate world, the 8-5 job is what pays the bills. I would rather work in a department store to be honest. I love being around people, running around all day, and working crazy hours. I would just make a fraction of what I do now. So what the hell am I meant to do? What is my purpose in this life? What is my calling?

I broke down last Thursday night. I am talking a private meltdown, crying on my knees, praying and begging to God, trying to figure out how I can make a change in my life. Last week was awful. I was in tears all day, everyday. A lot of my Blogger friends now that Marquis is an entrepreneur, I am fortunate enough to have a man that loves me, and wants to buy a business for me to run. That is great and something I am very open too, but it takes time. I also want something for ME. Something that I worked hard on, that my blood and sweat created.

I love working out. The gym is my savior. I blast my music, get lost in it, and forget about the world. It truly is my therapy. When I am in the gym and I get lost in my music, it's like I go into a fantasy land. I dream about the writing I have always wanted to do - becoming a best selling author, singing - winning a Grammy, acting, and modeling. I think all of the things that I have ever truly wanted in life. The music helps me picture myself living my dreams. And those dreams, being able to be lost in them at the gym for so many years now, have kept me going. My dreams of what I could one day be, helped me get through every single battle I have ever had in my life. Those dreams I have give me hope. But now it's starting to break my heart, because I feel like I am going to die a dreamer. I am going to look back at my life when I am 50 years old and realize that I never went for anything that I truly wanted. Time goes by so quickly, and here I am at 24 years old, and not having gone for any of it. I live for 5 o'clock. I live for Friday evening. And my God, I don't want that as my life.

So I have decided I am going to try to put my energy, my creativity, and my heart into writing a novel. It's a little embarrassing telling people you have a dream to do something out of the ordinary, but oh well. ​I love to write. It has been something that I have thoroughly enjoyed my entire life. My imagination is crazy, colorful, and all over the place, and I constantly have ideas. My grandmother and sister have told me over the past year that I need to write. Hearing them say that is pretty incredible. I started a weight loss blog in 2010 chronicling my journey and helping others, and because of that idea I had I have been on the radio, Fitness Magazine, Bodybuilding.com, and The Huffington post. But now I want more. I decided to just go for it. I have made it my mission to at least finish a book. I may not the best at writing, I may not ever succeed, but I want to be able to look back and say: at least I tried.

I have always had the biggest fascination with the Mafia/Mob. Documentaries, movies, anything, you name it and I wanted to watch it and act it out. "Scarface" and "The Departed" are movies I watch over and over and over again. So, I want to write my own series. With a twist. It isn't going to be your standard badass tale that you have read and watched over and over. But I have a lot I need to learn. Thus, I have ordered a couple of books and DVD's with documentaries. I already have 4 pages of ideas, scenarios, characters, plots, everything pouring through my head. I am going to work on researching and learning as much as I can about the history, culture, the past - everything, and then work on putting my story to life. All the while, I am still going to work at my job so I can have money for bills, savings, and life. I am just going to tell myself "this isn't forever. This is to get you by". And that is OK with me. If I know I am working towards a greater good in myself, it makes getting through the days easier and better.

Are you living out your dreams?