Hi Mona, your kids sure keep you busy. It seems from your posts that your managing this chapter of your life well. Just thought you should know. My kids are shifted older so they manage themselves and my money without me.
I have been there Gmum! The first time H left, I had a D4, D3 and son not even 1 year old. I was a stay at home mom, with no job. He up and left and gave me no financial support. I promise, if you want to change the fact that you need him financially, you can. Some people stay dependent, because it is a way to keep them around, but he wont be around in the way you need. I am not in your shoes, so you do not need to change based on anything I say. Im just saying, if you are fearful about change, you CAN do it.
I would do whatever it takes NOT to initiate contact anymore. If he wants contact, he will find a way. If he does not want contact, it will not help your 3YO to force it. Just make her easy to be reached and let him do the reaching.
Me: 42 H: 45 M: 18 yrs T: 20 yrs D: 17 D: 15 S: 12 I kicked him out 8/21/15 I will DB until March 21st 2017, that is it!
Feeling a bit proud of myself today . First, I have not contacted him in a while. No text, no email, no calls. It was hard at first, but every day it gets a little easier. I am not wrapped in thoughts of him all day, every day anymore. But I am pleased because I think I have got rid of the anger. It was put to the test last night. 10:45 PM I was STILL driving around picking up the kids from friend's and from work. We all walked out of the house yesterday at 8:30am, and i was busy with them until very late.
So, at 10:45 my D, who just got off work, notices there is a strange number on her phone. Someone called her and she did not know who it was. I thought I raised my children to be smart, but no, before I knew what she was doing, she called the strange number to see who it was.
It turned out to be a call from H. I heard his voice through her phone. I was shocked at first, because it came from left field. But I was not annoyed at the sound of his voice.
I was hurt a tiny bit that he was calling her and not me. But that was a fleeting hurt. I felt it, acknowledged the hurt was there, then told myself that he has no reason to contact me anymore, and I moved on.
Then I just tried to ignore their conversation and hum along with the song on the radio quietly to distract myself.
The end of the phone call angered me completely. He spoke to D16 for about 5 minutes, and my D15 was sitting right in the back seat of the car, and he did not ask to speak to her. She was not angry, so I let it go. I cant control that. Yes, I could force a conversation, yes I could yell at H, yes I could comfort D, assuming she was hurt. But all of those things would make matters worse, and NOT better. I casually mentioned to D16 that next time she should pass the phone to the back and I moved on with my life. The anger dissolved as soon as I moved on instead of focusing on it and fuming.
I have huge plans working that I just cannot post yet. If I can just make it work I will earn 4 times what I earn now, and work half as many hours.
I am moving on as if the plans have already been successful. The kids and I have found a house on the market that we will move into once the money starts coming in. We are packing up things in the house we currently rent and are throwing away anything that will not fit into our new life. We have not bought the house, we are just moving on like it is a possibility.
I tried to make this work once before, but at that time I felt I needed H to help me make it through. And he never helped at all. He never lifted a finger, and the idea was so dear to me. It was one of the reasons I became so dissatisfied. He made promises to me, and never even tried to keep them. It hurt so bad that I lost track of my goals and became focused on what HE did not do to help.
It will require me to build some sales skills, and that is GLARINGLY outside the scope of my abilities, but I am moving full speed ahead anyway. If I fail I will not be worse off then where I am now, but if I succeed an awful lot of dreams I never really thought of will be within reach.
Now, the only enemy that can destroy my success right now is me. I need to make sure I work every day to make it a little further. Even if it is only a small thing, I have to do something EVERY day. I need to pretend I CAN sell because I have seen sales people, and if they can do it, I can do it.
I am only looking for 20 to 40 customers. That is all I need. I am not being greedy. ANYONE can get 20 to 40 customers, right? My service is desperately needed by businesses so this will be easy.
Customers will be beating down my door for an opportunity for me to help them. (I just have to keep saying that over and over).
Me: 42 H: 45 M: 18 yrs T: 20 yrs D: 17 D: 15 S: 12 I kicked him out 8/21/15 I will DB until March 21st 2017, that is it!
Great start to the week! I walked in to work today ready for nothing but issues. I completed the upgrade I struggled with last Saturday and Tuesday on Friday. It should have taken me 2 hours and I was done in 14 minutes . The upgrade went so well this time that I decided to also upgrade some optional web components. Normally I would never dream of completing 2 upgrades at one time. That way if there is an issue, I know exactly which upgrade caused it and i can just roll back and get the users back up and running.
So I did 2 upgrades on Friday and I came in and just waited for the users to call me because they could not log in. I got a call almost as soon as I sat down. It was from a user who has never worked with me before, and I never upgraded her server before. I asked her what the issue was, and she told me she did not even log in yet. I asked her why she called me, and she said, "You did an upgrade over the weekend, so I am calling so you can help me with the issues logging in." I asked her if she has seen any issues and she replied "No, I always call in after an upgrade, because there are always issues." I told her she can log in as normal, there should be no problems, but if their are, she can call me back. She was wary of hanging up. I think she felt if she hung up she would never get any help when she had issues. I reassured her and hung up. I sounded confident on the phone, but secretly I was sweating. I should have stayed with her on the phone 'just to be sure'. But I need to show them they need to have confidence in their IT team.
Well, that was 3 hours ago. I got zero phone calls. Everything is running perfectly.
I turned in a major project for a co-worker on Friday, and this morning that is now completed and we both can move on, and I also got word from the state that the data I sent them on Friday is error free, and my submission for this semester is done. WoW!
That would have made a good day, but last night me and the kids really got rid of a ton of stuff again. We all worked hard and the house is really starting to look stunning. It is still bare and we still have a long way to go. I just never could allow myself to spend money on a lot of decorations, and we held on to so much stuff we never, ever use. So getting rid of years of accumulated junk feels fantastic. Like, with every bag that walks out the door, an invisible stone hanging around my neck, dragging me down, gets a little lighter.
But the best part was a finished my first full color brochure today. I even went so far as to add my picture to the inside. I can only afford to print out 30, so now I need to carefully pick which are the 30 lucky businesses that will get one. I stayed up all night last night researching exactly what I wanted to say on the brochure.
The kids were all in my room playing a karaoke game on the xbox and I was sitting at my PC in my room with ear plugs in trying to design exactly what I want. I have been praying night and day for 2 weeks now that this work. My goal is to find 10 itsy, bitsy, little customers in the next three months.
I have to stop my brain when it screams at me that I am not a sales person, and I will never, ever, ever be able to sell this to even one business, let alone 10. I have to stop my brain when it screams that no one will hire me because they do not understand what I am trying to sell them. I Have to stop my brain when it screams I can't even keep a loser of a H, and he is a pathetic wimp, so why would a business want anything to do with me.
When I think about this, my brain latches on to everything in my life that is bad. My brain points out in all of those ways that I am not good enough to succeed at ANYTHING. I know, beyond a doubt that if a business owner would just allow me to sit in front of their computer for 5 minutes, I can show them over 100 ways they are vulnerable. I have never once sat at a computer and found it secure. My brain kinda understands that, but it seriously screams that no business owner will ever, ever let me show them to begin with.
Then I get stuck on the fact that if I had someone helping me, like a real sales person, they could get me appointments and only then will I succeed, but as long as I try this alone, I will always be a failure.
I have not found a way to get around these thoughts. I cannot stop them or argue with them. I cant pretend I think they are wrong. But, regardless, I created the perfect design last night, and ordered 30 brochures. The businesses have no idea I feel like a failure, so I will just use MWD and act 'as-if' until it is true.
Cr@p, I was so excited when I started this post, now I just want to go cry.
Me: 42 H: 45 M: 18 yrs T: 20 yrs D: 17 D: 15 S: 12 I kicked him out 8/21/15 I will DB until March 21st 2017, that is it!
Thanks OG, but you can do sales because you have a very put together character. You do not allow silliness or lies, so people probably trust you and your opinion. I know I would. Thankfully, I really only need to do sales for a few customers at the beginning. I fully expect word of mouth to be my advertising, because I am really very good at what I do, I just cant talk to business owners about it
Gmum, I know you are right, and since you brought that small victory into focus, I will try and keep that in mind when I am speaking to business owners. If I can use that for confidence maybe they will listen long enough let me touch their computer. Once I can actually show them what I can on their computer, then there is no more sales involved. The issues are black and white in front of them and they either want me to fix it or they leave it wide open for hackers.
V, I have a very difficult time believing you are not good at sales, because you can move people with your words. I bet you are selling yourself a little bit short
Me: 42 H: 45 M: 18 yrs T: 20 yrs D: 17 D: 15 S: 12 I kicked him out 8/21/15 I will DB until March 21st 2017, that is it!
