Category: parenting

Rocking Votes, Shaking Souls

Rocking Votes, Shaking Souls

As I make my way to the polling place to cast my vote in what has got to be the most fucked up election… possibly ever.

I feel like I am a bona fide grown-up. In all the ways that I don’t want to be.

Like many utopian millennial’s, I rooted for Bernie. And my little idealistic heart was broken when Hillary took the ticket. I thought there was no way we would end up with Trump as a real, viable, presidential candidate. But here we are. And for the last several months I have been struggling with coming to terms with “voting for the best OPTION” instead of “voting for who I want to be president” (full use of air quotes intended).

BUT I HAVE HAD AN EPIPHANY.

Like many of the utopian millennial’s I like to think that the world could be amazing and fair and balanced, that many of our society’s pitfalls could be changed and our country could be rad, I’m not the only one, a lot of my friends feel the same way. But what I have been missing up until this point- here. today. is the fact that it’s unrealistic.

I know that sounds harsh and I know that some of my homie’s are going to dispute that claim and that’s fair. But the truth is that as much as a utopian world would be better and would solve all the problems and in my mind would be the ideal situation, that is not the country nor the world that I live in. I do not have the luxury of voting for who I really “want” to be president. I have to vote for who I truly feel is the best option, out of the two options I have. 

As I go to the polls to cast my vote for a woman that I have believed in since I was a little girl. But whom in the meantime has become a political power-house. Hillary has changed in the last 20 years as much as I have changed in the last 20 years. And mind you 20 years ago I was just beginning puberty. Yeah. 

I respect Hillary. I know she will do a good job, and I like to think that she will be a great President. I love that my son is going with me to cast my vote in this ridiculous and historic election, and that he could see our first female President. But I still wish it was Bernie I was voting for.

You say “Failure” as if it’s a bad thing.

You say “Failure” as if it’s a bad thing.

Every time I tell someone I am renaming my blog to “Financial Failure to Money Maven” they make a sour face and say… (and they scrunch up the word)

“Failure?”

“Were you really a financial failure?”

Uh, well… yeah, I have had a house foreclosed on, I have had a car repossessed, if I didn’t hit the lottery with the most patient landlady ever I would have been homeless too.

But failure isn’t exclusively bad, in my opinion it’s somewhat essential. You need to fail, to lose, if you never fail you’ve never tried… expect failure, don’t accept failure, overcome it. I feel like I’m just naming off quotes…. from posters…

with a kitten…

hanging from a telephone line.

give up kitten
Also, sometimes true. If your ship is sinking, you need to jump ship.

I’m not telling you to be reckless or a defeatist,  small failures are good, large failures can be catastrophic, and avoiding the failures that happen due to poor planning is prefered. Failures are feedback. Failures show you how not to do …it.. whatever “it” is. BUT… even if you have bombed in life, in whatever way you bombed- it’s not the end of the world, either.

About two years years ago… if I was to speak on failure, it would have been a completely different narrative. I had reached a point where everything in my life was soggy, I was soggy, my marriage was soggy, my relationship with my kids was soggy, and I just felt stagnant and lame.

Sedentary.

I was afraid of failing (like most of us) until I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to explore crossfit. I was given a free membership (sponsored “athlete”), and with that gift I felt an obligation not to squander it.

So I went to the gym. a lot.

When I first started, I thought I was going to die, and I couldn’t do any of the things. In the workouts, they would say to do pull ups, and I couldn’t do a pull up. Do a handstand, I couldn’t do that, couldn’t do the box jumps, or the olympic lifts. So I had to change my mentality on failure, I had to adjust my paradigm. I had to embrace my failures as attempts at success.

I realized that in order to succeed at something, you HAVE TO TRY, like, that is the only real absolute requirement. And the first time you try, you’re going to fail, and if you don’t fail, you’re not pushing yourself enough or your goal is too low.

“In order to succeed at something, you HAVE TO TRY,

like, that is the only real absolute requirement”

This completely changed the way I perceive EVERYTHING. All the things.

This one little gym, this one crazy fitness trend, changed my life completely because I learned that failure is good.

That is where growth happens.

Growth happens within failure, you try something and it fails, so you re-assess the situation and you try it again…. and if it still fails you make any lingering, necessary changes and you see what worked and what didn’t work, and you learn and you grow, and you try really fucking hard. And this is the definition of self improvement! How do you improve without failing?

You don’t.

I mean, not really.

You won’t change and improve, if you only do things you know you can win. Well, actually, you will change- we are ever changing, whether we like it or not, but I doubt it will be the changes you are looking for. So, if you are afraid of failure… Afraid of trying, essentially, your progress will be limited. I’m not going to say you will or won’t make some progress, it could go either way. And if that’s good enough for you, right on.

But it is not enough for me.

I want progress, I want to learn and grow. I want to be the best version of me I can become, and I’m gonna fucking fail. probably a lot. I already have on an epic scale a couple times, (if you include marriages)… but fuck man, I’m learning. I am growing. I am improving.

 

Love Life

Love Life

“One minute you’re up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don’t go to college and they’ve repossessed your Bentley.” –Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) Trading Places

I find it easy to feel down when I don’t know when I’m going to be able to pay my rent. My car payment is 3 months behind and I just did my grocery shopping at the fucking food bank (that was a first ). But there is something that I have come to realize. Everyone has some shit that is bringing them down, some of it is legitimately heavy, some is not… if you’re looking for shit to feel down about- you WILL find it. Same goes, if you’re looking for the good shit.

Mental health bro. Fuck.

I’m looking down as I write this, watching the L-O-V-E-L-I-F-E bounce up and down on my fingers as I type. Getting tattoo’s on one’s fingers is a bold statement. A “fuck you” to the man. A promise to myself to be myself.

LOVE LIFE is a reminder to keep perspective, when life hurts, when even breathing hurts, when all the noise in my head is so loud that my vision blurs, when I suddenly feel adrenaline surging through my body as if I had a gun being held against my head… but I’m just driving to work, no traffic…

LOVE LIFE reminds me that even though there are hurdles in my life that I have been fighting to overcome for over a decade, hurdles that have yet to go away, there is also a ton of good, and sometimes what looks like a hurdle form one angle, looks like an opportunity from another. I choose to focus on more of the good shit than bad shit. Don’t get me wrong, I see the bad shit, and I SHOULD see the bad shit. You can’t change it, or improve it if you don’t acknowledge that it’s there. Can’t be a fucking ostridge about it.

I started this blog, not as an advice column, I’m not the best person to provide advice (clearly). And not to teach people how to be poor either. Being poor blows, and I don’t plan on being poor any longer than necessary. I write this blog because everyone has some shit they are dealing with, whether it’s an addiction, a disability, being poor, being unable to budget, an inability to maintain a healthy relationship, whatever it is your secret, your shame-  everyone has some shit they are dealing with that they AREN’T talking about! Nobody likes to talks about this stuff. The shit. The dirt. The ugly underbelly of our facades that we all wear. This is about learning to accept the current situation, and then adjust accordingly to create a better situation.

This is my happy place, where I can be open and transparent about my struggles. Where I hope to inspire someone else who is in the thick of it, to not only see the good, the light at the end of the tunnel and all that smiley fluff- but to also appreciate the struggle. Feel it, and learn from it. And please know that even though you may feel like you’re the only one, the lone wolf- you’re not that special.We all feel it. We just don’t talk about it.

I want to change that. 

You breath, eat, love, smoke weed, laugh with neighbors…

Walk on the ground, breath in the air, soak up the sun, and love.

Love so much. As much as you can possibly send into the universe.

this. is the beginning.

this. is the beginning.

“This is your very first post.” … indeed it is. Hi, I’m Angelique. I am taking a break from job hunting to write this, my very first public, real, blog. I am sitting at my table… looking at my son sitting across from me on his laptop where he is staring at me with a sense of frustration, because he is trying to get on the internet, and I don’t have wifi. I have a cell phone that can be a “hot spot”, it’s not all that hot, more like an hours-old-bath kind of hot. you know.. not actually hot. at all. Jordan fucking hates it. He hates that we don’t have internet. But internet is expensive, and he’s ten. He doesn’t need it for work, but if he has school work, or if he wants to play on the internet , we use my phone, or go to a coffee shop.

See, I am a millennial, but I’m borderline too old to be a millennial, nut my latter childhood we were poor so even though the cool tech stuff came out while I was still young enough to get really into it, it was too expensive to access until I was reaching near-adulthood. So when I got my first PC and internet as a 17 year old gal (fuck yeah AOL!!) I used my computer for 3 things, writing bad poetry in beautiful colors and fonts, downloading music from the then FREE and LEGAL Napster and talking to my friends/making new friends on AIM (America-Online Instant Messenger). It was a magical time really… I digress…

I obviously want to have internet back before Jordan turns 17, but right now, I am working thirty something hours at a gym, as well as working in a salon a couple days a week, as well as random makeup artist gigs, I work a lot. But I live in Denver. And it is so very goddamn expensive here that in order to survive as a single mother I have to have multiple jobs and live in a dive that still costs 50% more than the most expensive place I’ve ever lived, and it means cutting down to the BARE essentials and finding a housemate for the dive.

At this moment I am re-grouping, my boy and I are getting by on the bare essentials. And I have decided to trade in a career of highs and lows, feast & famine as a freelance makeup artist for a new start. I’m quitting all the jobs, and getting one job that pays enough to survive on while I grow and learn in a new career. This is terrifying, but as someone who has spent a substantial amount of my life at or near the poverty line, I know how to appreciate the things that really fucking matter. And I know how to go without the thing that don’t. Don’t get me wrong it fucking sucks sometimes. But most of the time it’s kind of nice to not have all the “noise”, life is simple, relationships with the people you love, share experiences, making stories, these are the things that really matter. Is that such a bad lesson to teach your kid?

So I am here to share my journey. Being poor as fuck and making it work by the skin of my teeth… and learning how to budget.

You breath, eat, love, smoke weed, laugh with neighbors…

walk on the ground, breath in the air, soak up the sun and love.

Love so much. As much as you can possibly send into the universe.