Two weeks ago, the episode was titled The Climb, which is also the title of the one and only Miley Cyrus song I like. (Not a fan of the singer – just the super awesome song.)

In this episode, Tormund Giantsbane (he’s called that because he’s killed so many giants…duh) is about to lead a group of wildlings over a 700+ foot ice wall. Most of them have never made the climb before, but he’s done it half-a-hundred times. Jon Snow has been over the wall, but via a lift. He’s scared. But he does it anyway. And just as he’s reaching the top, we hear a voice-over from another character talking about the climb. He starts it out talking about chaos – but I’m going to replace that with life. It fits better.

Life is a ladder.
Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again.
The fall breaks them.
And some are given a chance to climb, they cling to the realm or the gods or love.
Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.

And that is the straight up truth.

When I was in the middle of my debt, the picture I kept in my head was that of me climbing a mountain. I had huge rocks hanging off me (the debt), and my kids strapped on me and I was trying to climb the mountain that was my debt. When I got to the top, the view was glorious. I was debt-free and the kids were standing with me instead of being drug along on my crazy climb.

And then there was nothing. I was a little lost. I didn’t have anything to climb, and I was not sure what to do next.

Because it turns out, I love a challenge.

I’m just not happy unless I’m trying to climb a mountain.

This shows up for me all over the place.

My #1 strength according to the StrengthsFinder is Woo. And the first thing they tell me about being a woo is this: “You enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you.” Truth. I will do everything in my power to win people over. When someone won’t open up to me it makes me nuts. In fact, my favorite people are the ones who are hardest to get. They are the ones I hang on to, because if they are resistant to my “powers” they must really like me when they do open up.

One of my other strengths is Activator: “When can we start?” This is a recurring question in your life. You are impatient for action. You may concede that analysis has its uses or that debate and discussion can occasionally yield some valuable insights, but deep down you know that only action is real. Only action can make things happen. Only action leads to performance. Once a decision is made, you cannot not act.

The last strength that pushes me toward the climb is Self-Assurance. Self-Assurance is similar to self-confidence. In the deepest part of you, you have faith in your strengths. You know that you are able — able to take risks, able to meet new challenges, able to stake claims, and, most important, able to deliver.

And, I’m not really a horoscope kind of gal – but I know there is more to the world than I can see or understand. And here’s what they say about being a Sagittarius: They like taking risks, exploring new worlds, taking an untried path than a known one, and are full of confidence. They love a lifestyle that provides them constant change. Again, truth.

So, long story short – I like the climb. It doesn’t matter if I fall halfway up, or if it takes me forever to get there. The top is great, and the ride down the other side can be exhilarating, but the climb is where it’s at.

I’ll leave you with Miley. It’s a terrible video, but the song is freaking fantastic.

There’s always gonna be another mountain
I’m always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Sometimes I’m gonna have to lose
Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb

And the trip was all thanks to the amazing Gry Sinding.

The original point of the trip was to attend Gry’s live event: SDD Live. It was awesome. And it was in Norwegian. So I didn’t understand a lot of it – but Gry’s charisma doesn’t need to be in English for me to get it.  I met a great bunch of amazing women, and it was really a trip that I needed in more ways than one.

At the end of the event, Gry cornered me.

I’ve known Gry for about three years, and we “get” each other. We have a connection that reaches past miles, and the fact that we hadn’t ever actually, physically met each other. And she had to tell me something, and she had to do it in person.

So, at the end of this amazing event, she told me a whole lot of stuff I didn’t want to hear about stepping it up a notch and believing in myself and letting a past injury go.

After she was done, I literally felt like she yanked the knife from the past hurt out of my chest and like I was going to bleed everywhere. She helped heal a wound that she didn’t cause, but she understood. And she told me that I simply HAVE to start believing in myself.

Now, if you know me in person at all, believing in myself is not something that you’d think I’d need to be told. I *seem* to have confidence covered.

But the fact of the matter is, I don’t. I question myself. I berate myself. And I very rarely tell myself that I did something right. If it seems like I do, it’s an act. A “fake-it-till-you-make-it” kind of thing.

Gry told me that she believed in me whether I believed in me or not.

Fast-forward to the trip home. We had the worst flight I’ve ever had in my life. 8 hours and 20 minute stuck on an aging airplane in tight seats with exactly two movies to watch and a woman in front of me who never got the memo about not reclining your seat when you are in coach.

My irritation level was excessively high. I don’t like flying very much. I get slightly claustrophobic and I can’t sleep. So eight hours with a movie I’d seen and one I didn’t have any desire to see, and I was getting a little angry.

The first film was Oz the Great and Powerful. I’ve seen it.

I wasn’t even going to watch it, but I already had my earbuds in, and whatever, it would kill some time.

So, as the movie progressed, Gry’s words echoed in my head.

In my mind, I’m just a trickster. I have puzzled my way into a world I don’t belong in. I’m not a classically trained designer. I didn’t go to school to learn how to code a website. Just like Oz.

Oz [to Glinda, as her city celebrates his arrival]: I might not actually be a wizard…

Glinda: Yes, but they don’t know that.

And, really, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t the wizard they were looking for, but he WAS the wizard they needed.

So, here I am. In all my glory. Believing in myself. Ready to transform not only your business, but mine. And super thankful to Gry, for not only saying what I needed to hear, but what she needed to say. xoxo

Natural aptitude or skill. Hmmm. There was a time when I was sure I had none of those.

I was not right.

I do have talents. And you do too.

Whether you are a Bible reader or not, you’ve probably heard Jesus’ parable about the Talents. Short summary (from wikipedia):

The parable in Matthew 25:14-30 tells of a master who was leaving his home to travel, and before going entrusted his property to his servants (property worth 8 talents, where a talent was a large unit of money). One servant receives five talents, the second two talents, and the third one talent, according to their respective abilities.

Returning after a long absence, the master asks his servants for an accounting. The first two servants explain that they have each put their money to work and doubled the value of the property they were entrusted with, and so they are each rewarded. The third servant, however, has merely hidden his talent in a hole in the ground, and is punished.

Do you get it?

God has given you talents. You are a genius at something. Have you found it yet?

Get on it. You only have so many days in this life you are living. And if you aren’t using your talents, you aren’t doing it right.

I’m going to leave you with some awesome quotes from some amazing people. They get it.

“Hide not your talents, they for use were made, What’s a sundial in the shade?”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Everyone has talent. What’s rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”
― Erica Jong

“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.” 
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Human tragedies: We all want to be extraordinary and we all just want to fit in. Unfortunately, extraordinary people rarely fit in.” 
― Sebastyne Young

I used to joke that I have it. And then I read Here’s to Not Catching Our Hair on Fire: An Absent-Minded Tale of Life with Giftedness and Attention Deficit – Oh Look! A Chicken!, and I realized it was a fact.

The latest evidence of my ADHD is here, for you to see. Meaning my website redesign. I liked my old design just fine, but it just didn’t feel like me anymore.

Too many comments about it being “clean” (which is FINE) – which sounded to me like “boring”. And I hate boring.

So, I started to reevaluate what it was that I didn’t like about my website. Really, there wasn’t much. Fonts were off. Header no longer seemed like a good fit. Plain white background was just meh.

Back to the drawing board… and we have what you see before you.

So, what does this have to do with my ADHD?

Part of what I notice about myself is that I thrive on change. When I need some juice for getting myself in action again, I have to change something. Even if it’s just the furniture. Or painting a wall. Or redoing my design board.

When I’m struggling to find my juju again, I change something. And it works almost every time.

Except when it doesn’t. Because sometimes I change things just to change things. And I end up making a mess of things.

Like the time I decided to hang some items in my kids playroom to change it up a little. (I should mention here that I suck at hanging things on the wall…) When I was done, there were a bunch of holes in the plaster. That needed to be patched. But I didn’t want to patch them. So I just covered them up with the stuff I was hanging. Years later when I decided to move things again (which is inevitable) – I was left with these awful holes everywhere.

That’s the conundrum. How to have constructive change without causing a mess. If you’ve got any great tips, I’d LOVE to hear them…

In the near future, I’ll be posting more about that. How it happened… How I paid it off… How my husband handled it… You know, the juicy details.

For now, you can check out the posts below for more info.

Here’s the code:

(FYI, there are extra spaces around the YOURURLHERE – take those out. Make the quotation marks touch the url.)

The one year anniversary of my debt being paid off is swiftly approaching. Which is both mind-boggling and wonderful all at the same time. I feel like I should have written this a year ago, but maybe it wasn’t time. Maybe I wasn’t ready to say it. Maybe I just needed to decompress.

It all started before I had my oldest son. He’s officially a decade old, and it’s strange to me that it started before him – but it did. In January of 2000, I got pregnant for the very first time. I was about 2 weeks late, and though I was nervous, I took the test. It instantly gave me the double line, so pregnant, I was. The very next day, I lost the baby.

Devastated.

That’s what I was. I barely had time to get used to the idea of the baby, and it was gone. We’d been married five years, and it was time. But if I’d just waited one more day to take that test, I would have never known. That was hard.

Four months later, it happened again.

It hurt. A lot. And though this seems odd, because I really usually say what’s on my mind (even if it’s inappropriate), I shut down. Held it all in.

Exactly two years of hard praying later, I found myself pregnant again. I was terrified to tell anyone – including my husband.

To my shock and joy, it was all fine. The pregnancy was totally normal. No morning sickness. The baby was active. We were both healthy, and he was born exactly on time.

I was ecstatic. Loved him and being a mom.

Until he was 10 months old. And I found myself pregnant again.

I cried.

I loved my boy, but I didn’t see how I could love another child as much.

And I was sick. Really really really sick with this one.

But when she arrived, I found my heart just grew. I didn’t have to make room. My heart grew in proportion.

Until she was a year old. And I found myself pregnant again.

I cried.

And then I lost the baby.

And I cried some more because I cried to start with.

And then, a month later, I got pregnant AGAIN.

Once again, perfect pregnancy + perfect baby.

But three kids (four pregnancies) in four years takes it toll. I found myself a stay-at-home mom with two kids in diapers. I literally was nursing and/or pregnant for five solid years.

I lost myself.

And the only thing that seemed to help was shopping. Buying new things made me feel better.

It sounds so ridiculous. So insanely ridiculous. But it was what it was.

I found myself in a teensy bit of debt from my spending habit, and decided I had to make some quick dough to pay that off. I felt that my husband wouldn’t understand, and he’d just make me feel dumb, so I decided to deal with it myself (to clarify – this was not accurate, just a story I told myself).

I started substitute teaching – but the cost of childcare for three children made that income virtually nil – so I stopped. I had to find something that would allow me to work from home and be with the kids.

My first thing was Mystery Shopping. Which was fun. I made a decent amount of money doing this and got a lot of free meals out of it – but I had zero restraint. If I had $10 to spend somewhere, I would spend $50.

As you can imagine – this just added to the debt. I went from a couple of thousand bucks on my credit card to $20k in no time.

This went on and on and on – and at the peak of it all, I was… (you might want to sit down for this one…)

$64,000 in debt.

That’s right. $64k.

Don’t ask what I spent it on, because the fact is, I have no idea. There was no Lexus in the garage, or any large ticket item to point at. It was just stuff. Stuff that I didn’t want, need or use. Sixty-four thousand dollars of nothing.

This is when I turned to Craigslist. (I promise – it wasn’t creepy yet). I found my first client who gave me a shot as a Virtual Assistant. I’d been an actual assistant before I had kids, and I convinced him I could handle it. After the first two years, I found more clients, and before I knew it, I was down to $48k. That’s when my husband found out.

I’ve talked about this before – and why I didn’t tell my husband here.

I’ve also talked about what I did to hustle my a$$ and get the debt paid off here.

But this post is more about the WHY and the HOW.

I wish I knew why. I wish I knew how.

I guess I was just lost. I guess I just needed more.

I hate saying it – but I did not love just being a mom. I needed more. I needed to be a mom with a purpose.

And for a very long time, my purpose was to pay off my debt.

It took six years, seven laptops, at least a hundred clients, and a lot of late nights.

But it’s gone now. And, I felt a little lost without it.

I’ve spent the last year trying to find that sweet spot again – trying to find a balance between work and downtime. I love what I do, so downtime was hard. It’s hard not to run to the laptop to hide behind work when things are rough, or slow.

I’m ready now. My new purpose is to make beautiful websites for women who are chasing their purpose. (I want to say people – but women is more accurate).

And to travel. A lot.

It was a long hard decade. That’s for sure.  But, through all of that, No Regrets. None whatsoever.