It's been a while... again...

Life changes in dramatic and mysterious ways, always. 

In March, we had all three of our teenage boys living in our home.  After a rather dramatic argument with one, they moved out and into their own apartment.  Time has healed most of the wounds from their dramatic mass exodus, but not all.  I'm not going to talk about that here, because it's personal and I'd like to eventually say what it is I want to say to them personally, individually. 

In April, my husband was able to help get the oldest a job at his then-employer.  It's a good job, in the warehouse, at a local-ish (about an hour away) plant.  It's something he can grow with, earn enough money to pay for his school, and have a stable income that's very high for his age and work history.  He hates it.  Not just slightly dislikes it.  Absolutely hates it.  We also helped him buy a new-to-him car when his was totalled in an accident in May.  They couldn't get him financed, and took back possession of his vehicle, leaving him with a little over half of his original down payment.  He has not been to work in a week, if I'm understanding correctly.  I'm at a point where I'm not even sure how to help him.  I'm making sure he knows the door is always open, and I'm willing to answer any questions he has, but he hasn't been asking for help.  My unsolicited input into the decisions he's making tends to extend the time between our talks (I don't think he likes that I'm a little critical of his choices).  So at the moment, I'm just kind of waiting to hear something from him. 

The middle one of the three teens (19) was released from his restaurant job for not calling in sick early enough.  He's had trouble finding another job in our town, and was arguing a lot with his older brother.  He has decided to move back to Corpus, to live closer to his girlfriend, and his dad, and his former stepmother was able to help him get a job at a dealership in Corpus.  Yeah!!!  He has dreams of being a mechanic, so this is great news!  Although our relationship isn't as fragile as with his older brother, he's also not very responsive, so I hear from him once every couple of weeks to check in. 

The youngest of the three graduated from high school in June.  It was a nail-biter.  In the time he lived with us, he rarely missed classes and was an A-B student.  Once he moved out, he missed so many classes that he had to be put on special "credit recovery" status, and make up classes and work.  We did not know for sure that he would graduate (on June 3rd) until June 1st at approximately 2pm.  He has kept his restaurant job, although he is looking at other options now that he's graduated from high school.  

My daughter is recently divorced (just this week, and is waiting on the signed copy of her divorce decree).  In March, she moved to The Woodlands (where she was born, and where we believed we would be moving near) for a fresh start.  She has had trouble finding a job, despite her TWO associates degrees, but is continuing her college classes, and I have no doubt will find something soon.  Her daughters are adjusting well, love their new apartment and the oldest, her new school.  It's summer now, and they're loving the pool as well as all of the trees.  :)  I miss seeing them as often as I used to, now being so far away and having to split the time they come down here with their dad.  But I'm happy that they're moving onward and upward.

The twins had a successful school year, both earning As and Bs in pre-AP classes, and are currently enjoying their summer freedoms.  They're excited to be going into the seventh grade, and although they miss having their brothers at home sometimes, they are adjusting well to the four-person family with surprising speed. 

As for my husband and I, we have had some difficulty with some financial issues that reared their head from over 10 years ago, but are taking steps to work through those.  It's a long road, and one that meant we would need to stay here for another year before moving as we had planned.  As synchronicity would have it, the same week we made that decision, I received yet another call from a friend that had been trying to hire me on with her company for over a year.  I sent her my resume for the sixth (or was it seventh?) time, honestly not sure that I would hear back.  Within just a few days, I met with the regional manager and was hired.  In the field I have come to know, love and hate (as most do who have worked in the oilfield), but in a completely new direction. 

As you may know, I have been an Office Manager for years now.  My background is in bookkeeping, marketing, human resources, dispatch, and other logistics areas.  Over the last 10 years, I have been in every facet of this oilfield business from seismic exploration and mineral and physical leasing to manufacturing of the productions equipment (separators and more) to specialty chemicals to trucking and transportation.  I love the variety of that job, and the skills I have learned.  But I always hated being chained to the desk, so to speak. 

I wanted to be out in the field, seeing people, helping make things happen.  I wasn't sure if the solution was safety or sales, but I knew that I wanted my next job to be in one of those areas.  Essentially, when you break it all down, I'm a problem solver, a relationship builder.  I studied safety and adult education - anything I could get my hands on - during my layoff period.  But I stopped short of spending money on safety certification because I wasn't sure which direction I would go in.  I studied relationship management, sales management - building pipelines, making contact, providing solutions to problems, documentation of the relationship and steps from first contact to close.  I also studied in great detail the consultative sales approach.  This is what I'd been doing for years.  Have a problem?  Here are some options to solve those problems.  There is no "hard sales" or "hard close" (what I'm not very good at).  Just a problem and single or multiple solutions. As I studied, I got more excited that this was the direction I am meant to go in.  As anyone who knows me will tell you, I have the "gift of gab".  I enjoy meeting people, talking to them, learning what they need.  I enjoy providing solutions to their problems.  This was the consultative sales approach.  Long before I had a name for it, I used it in my own freelance business. 

So, my friend was able this time to make it work.  The job started out as a part-time offering in the sales department (outside sales - getting tickets signed) three days/week.  It would be more than I was being paid by the unemployment office, but considerably less (almost half) of what I'd been making the last year or so.  As the oilfield is very fluid, and companies that have survived this downturn have also learned to be very fluid, the job position changed before I was hired, and I was hired on full-time at only about 15% less than I was earning before my layoff, but I would get a company truck (which at a commute of approximately 42 miles each way, per day would offset the earnings lost).  I would spend 3 days/week in the field and 2 days/week working in the office.  It's also changed several times since, as there have been changes with other employees.  The company hasn't been sure of where to put me - both safety and sales have been considered, as well as a combination of those.  I'm about 6 weeks in, and I'm currently working in the field 3 days/week, in the office 2 - split between assisting the Office Manager/Controller and doing administrative work in the safety department.  It currently appears that at the end of this month, I'll be in the field full-time in sales, both getting tickets signed and making cold calls to increase our customer share.  I may still help out with safety, but probably in increments that can be measured in an hour or two here, an hour or two there, not on a 2 day/week basis. 

I'm still writing, although not regularly.  And my photography has taken a back seat as well.  I'm kind of hoping that once I settle into the new job well, I'll get back to both in a more regular form.  I have started to work out again, and eat a little healthier.  So there's that.  :)  

The day before I started my new job, my husband made the move from his previous employer to a family-owned machine shop, in charge of the maintenance of their machines.  One that happens to be owned by some of MY extended family.  :)  He's enjoying his job and his time there, and some of the possibilities that they have suggested for the future. 

I think that I have learned - finally - to not try to predict what the future will hold for us.  Instead, we are doing the best we can to plan for anything the future may hold (good and bad), and to enjoy what we have right now. 

Happy New Year 2014 - almost through

Lots of changes for the Earley household in 2014.

2013 was alternately a wonderful year for us (it brought us grandbaby #2, among other great things) and a bit of a difficult year.

Work was really difficult for me this last year, and I had to make some really tough decisions.  I am proud and honored to have helped build the company, Phoenix Chemical Technologies, during my time there, and I wish them all the best as they continue to grow.  A part of me is incredibly sad that I won't be a part of it as it continues to grow.  But I do believe it is what is best for them, and best for me and my family.

The good news is that with our current plan, I have become a partial WAHM again.  I'm working part-time with a remodeler and custom home builder, Superior Custom Builders, which is an awesome company!  I plan to pick up the pace on my fiction and non-fiction writing - to include blogging again (yeah!), AND launch a family business (No Time 4 DIY).  I have also started with dōTERRA, and am learning tons about essential oils and their uses!  I'll be experimenting with a more sustainable lifestyle, including vegetable gardening, flower gardening (for the photography business, and well, just because it's pretty), more home cooking (which means some recipes, especially the copycat-style recipes which I need to try many of), and more (which you'll read about, and see through photography and video on here).  All of this means more time for the things I love!!

The bad news is not necessarily all bad, but it does mean a reduction to one income until I can get a steady-ish income from my photography and writing, and as we build our family business.  That's scary, but a decision we did not make lightly. 

So, here's to a new chapter in our lives...  Hopefully we'll be seeing each other here for a while.  :)  Please feel free to share my posts, send your friends to check us out, and all advice from seasoned photographers, writers, recipe adventurers, and more is incredibly welcome!  (I'm close to begging).  :)

Did you think we dropped off the face of the earth?

So first, I need to apologize.  For those of you that follow my blog, I have not kept up with it since switching over to Blogger.  Blogger isn't the reason why, but it has happened.  :)

We have been continuing to home school, albeit a bit slower than before, but we're continuing.  It's taken a while to get back into a routine.  So, what's happened?  Let me fill you in a bit...

Hubby was involuntarily unemployed in May/June 2009.  I was involuntarily unemployed August 2009.  We have spent the last year and 1/2 alternately applying for jobs, traveling out of state for job opportunities and freelance work, considering building businesses, and working on our house as money allowed.  I started school, then took a break from school.  In January 2011, we both were offered full-time jobs.  This is exciting, as although we haven't accumulated a ton of debt while we weren't working (which is a big change for us, as we tended to accumulate a lot of debt before we became unemployed), we have been very behind on paying some bills, and they are bills that we really want to pay.  The other reason it is exciting is that they are both (hopefully) long-term jobs, not really subject to layoffs as our last jobs were, and they are close to where we currently live.  The concern here was that for both of us to work full-time, we were going to need to put the kids back in school, where we would prefer to continue homeschooling, and we would have so little time to make our dream life happen.  However, as fate would have it, we were able to both find jobs that will work for our lifestyle.  Each of us currently work full-time, 4 days/week, but only one day overlaps.  The downside is that we have no time off together, except for vacations or other days off that we will schedule.  Another downside is that I work weekends, which leaves little time for extended family visits.  The upside is that we are earning an income comparable to what we were earning a couple of years ago, without having to sacrifice what we want to do, long-term.

We're now making plans to a) rebuilt a financial base, hopefully better than the one we had before; b) buy some things to make some repairs/remodeling to our home which we didn't have the funds to do before; and c) get medical insurance, which means that we'll finally be able to get healthier again.

Some of our current plans include:
1)  Create a garden, for both aesthetic purposes, and frugal/healthy living purposes.  We want to start growing our own vegetables, which should help cut into our food bill, as well as encourage us to eat more fresh veggies.
2)  Finish remodeling our 4th bedroom, as well as do some other projects (extend our front porch, build a back porch, etc.) around the home.  We also need a new roof, a carport/garage, and some outside lighting, which will be hefty investments.  I'm looking into wind energy and solar, but those are further future projects.
3)  Purchase a utility trailer (my parents have graciously loaned us theirs, but we need one of our own)
4)  Purchase a (used) utility 4-wheeler.  We've wanted one for fun anyways, as we enjoy riding ATV's, but this one will primarily be used with a variety of attachments:  dump bed, mower, tiller, etc.
5)  We have been considering raising chickens, but haven't decided for sure on this one.
6)  Fruit trees/bushes.
7)  Purchase a used RV for family vacations on a frugal budget.  This one is also a little further down the road for us, but it's in the longer-short-term plan.  :)



Personally, I'm still trying to determine if I will go back to school.  There are so many things I want to do (the Scanner in me) that I haven't been able to decide what for.  My passion is writing, photography, and traveling, so I'm thinking that I might just start with a Fine Arts AA degree.  But then I realize that I am not even certain that getting my degree is what I want for me.  So I continue to debate.  I'm also still playing around with the idea of becoming a career coach, but not the typical career counselor, more like Barbara Sher, Valerie Young, or Barbara Winter.  More along the lines of helping develop entrepreneurs, and helping people find a way to earn money from their passions. 



It's nice to be able to make some plans again... now if I could just figure out what I want to do!  But, there's time to figure that out, and now there are options that we didn't have before!  :)

Have you figured out how to create your dream life? What are you doing to make your dreams come true?  I'd love to hear about it!

I'm spreading myself too thin

So I've been working on my fiction and my photography lately.  I don't know why the two go hand in hand, but they seem to.  When I'm creative at one, it bumps my creativity in the other.  But that means that I've been neglecting a few other blogs.  So, what I'm going to try for a little while is blending the blogs together.  Hopefully you'll like it.  But if you don't, let me know, and I may change it back. 

I'm going to be transitioning to this blog from my WordPress hosted Making Our Dream Life Happen blog.  There's a lot of posts there, so it'll be up for quite a while longer, but the majority of new posts will be made here.

Since part of my dream life includes earning money from my photography and my non-fiction writing, I will be combining those blogs here.  Fiction will continue to have it's own site.  I will (as always) label my posts, so you'll be able to search my photography by clicking on the label photography.  If you're only interested in homeschooling, then click that tab.  And so on and so on.  I hope it makes it easier to find something specific, while allowing me to have a single place to post all of these things. 

Newest projects

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, then you already know a few things about me. 

First and foremost, you probably need to know that I'm in love with Barbara Sher's books.  I just found them a few short months ago, and I've devoured them.  :)

If you've followed her books at all, especially I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, and Refuse to Choose, I'm what's known as a Scanner.  That means that I don't know how to focus on one thing at a time (ha!  But it's true!).  Knowing that, you'll understand that at any given moment, I have a ton of projects going on.  If I'm not posting in one place, then you'll find me working on my newest project.

That newest projects are this website, my fiction website, as well as The WAHM Experiment, and it's sister site, The WAHM Experiment - Adult Plans (18 and older on this site only, as they are "adult" in nature).  These are new non-fiction blogs that I've started to help people wanting to work at home decode the sales pitch from the real opportunity, and know what they're getting into before they invest the time/money.  I am big on saying that the majority of these business opportunities are not scams.  They're just made for a certain type of person.  I've spent the last twenty years attempting to work from home, and I've joined a number of sites and party plans, only to find out later that it's not a good fit for me.  I'm hoping to save my readers from making the same mistake and investing time and money into starting businesses by knowing if the opportunity is right for them before they make that investment.  If you're interested in learning more, please click on the links above.  If you're already a consultant for a party plan or otherwise earn a portion of your income by working at home, leave me a comment on the appropriate website, and I'll schedule a time to interview you.

You'll find links to my other blogs/websites on my About Me page.