Sorry for the delay in writing. I know Jenna has been busy with her sweet baby boy, getting new floors in her home and various other things. Oh, and her computer crashed too!

I have been busy being overwhelmed with house work, kids, and internet marketing, but I’m done with that. Um, the overwhelment part, I mean.

Anyway, I know it’s important to find your “why” and I thought I had it with “wanting to be at home with my kids.” But I realized that wasn’t a big enough “why”. I know it seems like it should be, but it wasn’t specific enough.

What’s really been sticking in my craw is our huge credit card debt. Now, this is embarrassing to admit, so bear with me. But I hope by putting it out there, it will finally allow me to do something about it.

My husband and I have collected a huge amount of debt – over $30k. (We’re still calculating the exact amount.) Now, I thought there wasn’t anything I could really do about this for now, and I just learned to deal with it and try not to worry about it too much. But, honestly, it really does weigh me down. It’s always in the back of my mind.

So, when I saw this blog called MyDebtFreeGoal.com, it completely inspired me. Amy Bass is the author of this blog, and she had $72,900 in debt and a goal of paying it off in 2 years. Oh, and by the way, she had 3 kids when she started and was pregnant with her 4th. (She has 5 now, I believe.) She paid it all off in LESS than 2 years.

It was like something switched in my head and I realized I could do this too! We have less debt than that, and less kids! LOL.

So I just recently started OperationZeroDebt.com so that people can follow my progress and hold me accountable. My goal is to completely eliminate our debt by March 12, 2011.

I hope you’ll follow me and see how I do!

That’s all for now. Kids are hungry for lunch.

So my son, I write this entry as a memoir to your first Christmas.

You and I are a wonderful team that is well versed in adventure. Maybe not the adventure you will grow to know someday, climbing rock walls, conquering business, or following your heart into uncharted waters, but an adventure that everyday is new to you and I. I am busy raising both you and your mom. Growing into this role has taken the breath and the tears from me on many occasions. It all has been a greater challenge than I ever thought possible, just to keep up with our everyday needs. And so, in between that, when we are able to get out and discover the world together, it is an adventure like no other.

Yesterday we got up, both got baths, got dressed, ate and took care of the cats. We got in the car, went to Nana’s house and went Christmas shopping. You’ve never been Christmas shopping before and I’ve never been, with you. As we drive on the road, we both notice there are 100 more new things to look at out the window… the many more cars on the road, the holiday decorations, the sense of urgency in the travelers. As Nana sits in the back seat with you singing Christmas Carols, I keep one eye on your reaction from the rear view mirror, and one eye on the road – which happens to be about 2 eyes too little this time of year. I see you smile at her, and then I hear that laugh. And like a Christmas carol by candlelight on Christmas Eve, that laugh brings me to a new elation I never knew possible.

Last night, we went to Starbucks together and you knocked my mostly finished Egg Nog Latte out of my hands and onto the floor. I thought this was hysterical and so did you. These are our adventures.

Today, we are at your other grandparents house. On this blustery day, you go for a walk in your stroller with them. You are bundled up like a bear cub and on the verge of being upset because you are too hot – something I’ll never understand. Right before you go, you look over at me to see if it’s ok, and I smile, so happy to see you enjoying yourself with them, about to discover a new tree, or leaf, or reflection of the slow setting sun. And you smile back at me, that side smile that is the equivalent of how our hearts wink at one another. I melt, beaming inside of the joy that is simply you, and I go off to do my work and you go for your walk. These are our adventures.

Tonight we will go home and see Daddy. Daddy has been once again working hard, and will receive the paycheck of your enthusiasm when we arrive home. We will sit with him as we tell him of our adventures, describing every detail to him so he can experience it with us as we have imagined he did at the time. Your little body against mine will somehow warm all of me, and we will fall asleep together on the couch after dinner.

After one more late night feeding, I will embark on the delicate trek to the nursery that all new parents with a sleeping baby in their arms have attempted to master, and most likely I will think I would have been successful until you start to roll around in your crib, five minutes later, realizing you are no longer in my arms. With a slight amount of desperation, I will watch you do so for a few minutes, thinking that you will just realize you are happy anyway, and will send me to my room to go to sleep as well. When the three minutes go by that it takes me to realize that this is once again not a realistic possibility, I will pick you up and hug you close in your usual spot on my left shoulder.

The tears on your cheeks dry on my three layers of pajama tops, and after a burp or two, your head begins to get heavy on my arm and the little fist at the bottom of yours, finally releases. I sway back and forth and kiss the side of your head for the last time tonight, reveling in that new fuzzy hair that tickles my lips. My back aches as I put you slowly back down in your crib, maybe ten minutes later. Every ache has become the new stripe on my mom uniform, and I endure them proudly. You sigh, and despite the ridicules risk of waking you again, I pick up and place the palm of your hand over my eyelid, feeling your warmth, and your life, and of course I kiss you once more.

Tomorrow I will wake up and take a breath and begin the panic that still sets in at the revelation that I am a mom, a woman, a wife, a writer, a worker, a sister, a friend, a homemaker, a guardian. I will run around the house with the baby monitor at my side, constantly checking on you and trying to do the dishes, check my e-mail, feed the cats, and pump my breasts all at the same time. I run and I run for the 24 minutes that I have until you likely wake up and my mind races at what I have to do to prepare us both for the day.

I know you are really awake when you are not just shifting but your eyes open. I can see them on the monitor and I know my morning treadmill has come to a stop. I walk down the hall to your room, open it slowly as if I’m going to trick you that it’s not really me, and I lean over to see you. Just now, I remember that my lungs work and I can breathe again.

You SMILE at me.

And our adventure begins again.

Merry Christmas my son.

Even though I’ve been to Cedar Point many times, and have been on the biggest and fastest roller coasters in the world, this journey is THE biggest and baddest roller coaster ride of all time.

I was feeling so free, so high for so long. It was just like going up that first big hill on the coaster. With each click-clack, click-clack the excitement got more and more intense. The excitement had time to build and build and build until… WHOOSH!

What a thrill!

But then…that’s it? I mean, that hill was fun, but now what??

Even though I’m an avid believer of Law of Attraction, I’m still amazed when it shows itself so vividly in my life. As I was taking my most recent downward coaster ride into fear, loneliness and depression, my affiliate sales took a huge nosedive. All I saw in my reports were $0, $0, $0 and $0. Which caused me to feel even more fear and more depression. What a freakin’ failure! I have been laid off for 10 months and I’m still not making it?!

Life around me started to look bleak and almost agonizing at times. My son and I were battling it out on an almost minute-by-minute basis. It was a relief (for both of us, I think) on the days he went to pre-school. I started taking my husband’s anti-anxiety medications more often than I care to admit.

And then I started to remember again why I’m here. To enjoy that roller coaster ride. The ups and the downs. And to have FUN with all of this. The world is our playground. We can do anything we desire here. And we could not be more worthy of it.

And you know what? Once I started feeling better, the sales started coming through again. In fact, I had my best week ever last week! My son and I started to get along, our family felt whole again. (It was never NOT whole, it just seemed like that from my screwy perspective.)

I can’t say I’ll never take that ride down into darkness again. I’m sure I will. After all, I’m here to experience all kinds of things in life. Every up, every down is a chance to appreciate where I am and where I’m going. And when I get off this crazy ride, I know I’ll say “I can’t wait to do it again!”

Take a look in your mail. In the past two months, I’ve taken advantage of offers to do things like switch banks, or pharmacies, open a new account, or even skip a loan payment. These offers have saved me almost $400 in the past two months since I started paying attention. Now normally, I would have gotten those offers and trashed them, thinking that they were too much trouble, or not worth it. But coming from a different place now, I consider the amount of time they would take me to set up, or participate in, and when you break it down like that, I’m making more than $50 per hour. Wow. I stayed home, did nothing except for get my mail, and when I looked closely, I changed offers in the mail to an hourly “pay rate” which is higher than anything I’ve ever made. Ok, skipping a loan payment isn’t exactly a “deal” because I will still pay it on the backend, and of course, I’m still accruing interest. But what it did, was buy me another month of time. It freed up that money for me for another month. If time is money, I’m using it in the opposite way to my advantage as well as I continue to work the many avenues I’m finding. I’m “buying time” with things like this, allowing the universe the time it needs to even it all out for me as well.

In just this past week, of paying attention to the ebb and flow of different amounts of money, I was amazed at how things lined up. We had an expense of $47. Ten minutes later, (literally), we were able to use a coupon we didn’t expect to be able to use, and it saved us $42 on a car repair that we couldn’t avoid. Then I went to the store and had to spend $35 to buy baby things. My mom got in line behind me and bought $25 worth of things for the baby that I would have needed in the near future. I withdrew $20 from the ATM for other unexpected expenses. But later that night, I received a $20 gift for no reason.

Money is the one thing in constant ebb and flow in most of our lives. Part of my past fears about money have to do with trying to stop the ebb and flow and strictly control the stream to flow in the direction I want it to go in. From one of my favorite Abraham Hicks analogies, this is like holding your oar in the water. If you start letting go of the oar, things appear. They start to even out, and usually more often, end up in the positive. Start thinking about money differently, and don’t be afraid to move things around to buy yourself more time. Everything else in our life is in this constant motion as well. The only thing unproductive, it seems like,… is fighting it.

There’s two ways to earn money with Avon, for those of you interested in potentially exploring this as an avenue. The easiest way is to simply sell the products. You buy (for a small amount) the catalogs, distribute them, and then collect and deliver the orders to the customers yourself. Avon sells you the products at a “rep only” discount, and you charge the customer the amount listed in the brochure, hence hopefully turning a profit. The more you sell, the more your rep discount comes out to, which also increases your profit margin. Of course, keep in mind that you do pay shipping for the mandatory twice a month orders, and you should also order things like samples, bags, and other business tools from time to time. You can also become an “eRepresentative” which allows you to sell to customers online, and have it shipped directly from Avon so that you are not delivering the orders yourself. (I have actually tried this in the past, but didn’t have a lot of success with it at the time.)

The second way is to bring in other recruits to sell Avon. I haven’t completely explored this option yet, but basically you sign up other representatives to sell Avon, and once you have established a “downline”, you begin to earn a small commission on their sales as well. This course however usually requires a lot more involvement in promoting and supporting your recruits though, including holding meetings or hosting other incentives from time to time. Not a bad option though if you are looking to expand beyond just the catalog sales.

Either way, I’m a fan. Decent opportunity, and you can never go wrong with their face creams.

Jenna’s last post talked about how her Grandfather approved of her coming up with alternative ways to make money and support her family, instead of just doing the “normal’ thing that everyone else does.

Well, I’m happy that she’s confident enough to tell people her goals and dreams this early into her journey. For me, it’s taken me about 7 months to start gaining that same confidence.

I was laid off in February 2009. I first did a lot of activities on mindset in those first couple of months. I really wanted to bask in this new freedom that I had. (Because my belief is, the more you appreciate and get to that feeling place of what you want, the more it comes to you.) Then I worked on my mindset around money, being my own boss and succeeding at it! Oh, and having fun with it all.

Of course, while I was doing that, I wasn’t making any money, so I certainly wasn’t confident to tell many people what I was up to.

As I started to feel more and more confident, I had an interview with a start-up company in the summer. (Yes, I felt I had to do the “normal” thing that everyone else was doing and at least look for a real job.) My former boss called me to ask me about it and I basically told her that I was hesitant about working my ass off for a company to get them up and running when, meanwhile, I could be working on my own dream of getting my own business up and running. And she said “That’s great, but do you really feel like you’re ready for that?” Ouch. Knocked down. And I said “Yea, I guess not. I don’t really have a choice at this point.”

(I was the front-runner for that position, and thank GOD they actually didn’t end up calling me back.)

Now, looking back, I get it that she didn’t really understand what I’m doing. Running an affiliate marketing business is not the same as running a traditional business where you need employees or an office.

My office is my bed, my deck, my basement, or the local Barnes and Noble. It’s wherever I want it to be! And I am my own employee.

And I finally have the confidence to say that. I finally have the confidence to tell people that I work for myself and this is the best way TO work. Even though the money isn’t quite there yet (although, I’m gaining some momentum!), I am now completely confident in my abilities and my desire to do well at this.

And if I had to give advice to someone who also wanted to go on a different path than everyone else, my
advice would be…have the confidence to stand up for your dreams. (And HAVE FUN! )

I’ve sometimes had anxiety telling family members (especially) about this because I’m worried they will think I’m flaking out, not being realistic, or worst of all, not being a good mother/wife by taking this risk. I want them to realize that I know if I make this work, it will make me the best mother and wife that I can possibly be, because I will be the happiest I have ever been… and that my ENTIRE motivation behind this, is to have quality of life with my family.

Yesterday while visiting with my family, I was the most surprised by this conversation with my grandfather. Traditionally “old school”, my sweet Italian grandfather worked most of his career for one company and had retired many years ago. Although he had no formal education, when it comes to true “wisdom”, he’s the person I know with the most. So when he talks, I listen.

When he asked me what my plans were to go back to work, I swallowed hard and told him I wasn’t. I told him I was going to find some way to work at home and be with my son. He took it in for a moment (as I held my breath), and then he smiled and he said, “I think that’s the best decision you’ve made in a long time.” I gasped; he continued… “Work for yourself. Work for your family. If I had the chance to do it all over again, that’s exactly what I would have done.”
I sat in amazement… “I KNOW you can do it. I know it. And aim HIGH. Have the courage and don’t sell yourself short. Don’t sell your talent cheap.”

I couldn’t believe it. Yes I know it is traditionally “old school” to have the mother stay home with the babies. But that’s not what he was getting at. He was clearly understanding that I need to make money; I need to help support my family. And he was suggesting I do it, do it well, and have the courage to do it right. As a writer, that was just the advice that I needed also, because we DO have a tendancy to discount our intangible talents.

Money is the one thing in our lives that has always come and gone. Family has not. Health has not, so far, thank God. And time is constantly GOING. I was grateful for this chance to have his approval.

My grandfather’s voice in my head is a like burst of fresh air pushing me in a new direction – with the security of old wisdom behind it.

“You already know deep down that getting a job isn’t what you want. So don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise. Learn to trust your inner wisdom, even if the whole world says you’re wrong and foolish for doing so. Years from now you’ll look back and realize it was one of the best decisions you ever made.”

This is from my favorite blog post ever entitled “10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job” by Steve Pavlina.

As I was waiting for the internet to connect today, I decided to give this post another read for extra inspiration. (I have a copy in my work-from-home-stuff binder.)

I’ll give you the highlights here, but seriously, it’s 100% worth the time to read the entire thing. So, here are the top 10 reasons why you should never get a job:

1. Income for Dummies. Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.

2. Limited experience. You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not.

3. Lifelong domestication. Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.

4. Too many mouths to feed. Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck.

5. Way too risky. Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves. Morons.

6. Having an evil bovine master. When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”

7. Begging for money. When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for more money? Does it feel good to be thrown some extra Scooby Snacks now and then?

8. An inbred social life. Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet. They hang out with the same people working in the same field. Such incestuous relations are social dead ends.

9. Loss of freedom. It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee. The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will. A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations. This leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible.

10. Becoming a coward. Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies? But they don’t really want solutions – they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone else’s fault.

Read the rest of the story here!

So, as one of our research endeavors, we joined HireMyMom.com. I have to say that so far, I think the membership is worth the money. We paid $30 for a quarterly membership. Everyday, new jobs are posted from employers (and individuals) looking for mostly project based, work from home type of help. (hence the name hiremymom, which I think is awesome!)

If you’re interested in a job, you apply directly to the company and go from there. So far, I actually did get a writing gig from there and have applied for several others. The writing gig paid for the membership already, so even if nothing else comes out of it, that was worth it. I do check it everyday though, and especially if you are interested in project based type of work, this is a great resource to consider. I would recommend it!

First, I want to mention, due to Jenna’s post, I’ve been gathering items in my house and posting them up on eBay. What fun that is. And selling coupons? Who would’ve thought? What a great idea! I wonder what other ideas are out there?

And now, the short version of my story…

- My first job out of college was for a marketing company with a woman who I’ll just call “Bitch Master.” That was the start of the hatred for the office.

- The next job was a joke, but it was pretty fun. On Fridays, the owner brought in a fruit basket, and we’d use the contents to have some nice food fights. There’s probably still some rotten fruit under the desks there.

- The following job was at a .com company that bombed. I was there for 6 months. I wish that position had lasted a little longer because I was really getting good at ping pong.

- The next one was at another .com, but a successful one (they’re still doing good). They had a basketball court IN the office. For the first few years I was there, they allowed dogs. It was one of those places. It was somewhat fun until they became corporate-y. (Corporate-y = new building with gray cubes, no shorts, no flip-flops, no dogs and the basketball court was turned into a merchandise photo area.)

- The final job was the one that took the cake and secured my hatred for the cubicle once and for all. Every day I walked in, I felt like my soul was dying. It was like working in the movie Office Space (but way less funny). Thankfully, they put me out of my misery and laid me off (along with about 3/4 of the rest of the company) in February.

And what do you know? Things have been looking up ever since then! I’ve been learning more and more about affiliate marketing, I got to spend the summer in my flip flops hanging out with my kids, and life has been GOOD!

Our finances are actually better than ever right now. (That’s another story for another day.) Will it last? Well, I hope it will only get better from here. I can’t wait to see what happens…