THANK YOU

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

This letter is overdue. I should have written it long ago when you began this Facebook idea and sucked me in with the ease of the pages and moving my MS friends list here and all the other things I first loved as I made my way through the unfamiliar but common sensical pages.

Thanks to you from the bottom of my heart for bringing old high school and grade school friends, people who influenced the woman I became, back into my everyday life. Almost like we were never separated by miles and life style changes and contributions to work places and families. Friends on the other side of the country, friends who live hours from me are now on my home page almost every day. I talk with them and we catch up or I leave a message and they answer when they have time. It's wonderful.  Want to share pictures of my kids or my grandkids with all the old friends? Clickity click and it's a done deal. I get to see all their fun stuff and hear all about what they do some 45 years later, as if we still lived in the same town.

New friends, oh, the new friends I have made. I am a writer and up until I got involved with Facebook, I was a lonely and solitary writer with the exception of a very dear friend who has passed now and my family, who would read my stuff and tell me how great I am.  Not that I don't like hearing that, but I love being part of a writing group. A group that supports, encourages and teaches by their own writings what works and what doesn't. A group that moved to Facebook from My Space and I am so glad I found them.

I have written 3 books without a clue how to write a book. I have learned and I have developed some as a writer just from being part of this group and my next book will be so much better. If I can stay off Facebook long enough to actually write a next book, that is.

I imagine a lot of people have written to tell you how much they hate this or hate that about anything you have changed or anything you need to change, but this letter is not about what I would restructure, but just about saying Thank You, Mr. Zuckerberg for putting this idea into the universe and allowing me to reconnect and branch out and really bloom in my relationships with people who are just too busy to be hanging on the phone or even to find each other.

Thank you for keeping us relatively safe here in cyber space and providing such an incredibly simple tool that even those who have little computer knowledge beyond checking email and forwarding jokes, can navigate through the pages and enjoy their friends old and new.  I have friends on here that hardly know more than how to turn on their machines, but they are safe here and will explore and learn and I love that.

Now about the timeline thing..........................

Jo

Simplicity & Gratitude

Combining Simplicity and Gratitude prompts today.  Gratitude for BFF  Friday and for Sunday’s GBE2, Simplicity.  Let’s see where this takes us, shall we?

Almost every young family or couple that I know today is way too busy. What does that mean?  Well, they work full time jobs or maybe 2 or even 3 part time jobs in order to pay their bills and they have children and hobbies or friends and family that require some of their time away from those children or each other, in some cases. 

The jobs these young men and women have secured in this crazy economy, might require long drives daily or perhaps they are required to travel, either regularly or now and then.  Point being, that a job isn’t usually 9-5 anymore. It’s longer regular hours, or it’s nights instead of days or it’s two days off but not together.  Some jobs require week-end gatherings or maybe they have to host parties for clients or co-workers in their own homes or at some meeting place.  Meetings, there’s another time consumer.  Meetings used to be on the clock during business hours and some still are, but many are now events at some hotel or conference hall located near or far from the usual work place. Those can take a day or two away from home.  It’s obvious that jobs steal a lot of family time from today’s young parents and couples.  I think that’s a shame and I wish they would all step back and reassess their life choices.  A good job is very difficult to find right now, but these days of raising one’s family or building a foundation for their lives together are days they can never get back. It is a part of their history that forms their future and the ties that are not formed now, cannot be formed later. The all-encompassing jobs are better left to later in life when time away isn’t such a high price.

Being so busy day and night and not having real connection time becomes a way of life for so many people and they never realize what they have missed out on until they are living with teenagers.  Teenagers they hardly know and who don’t know their parents; they just share a house and maybe a car. It’s a recipe for disaster. Teenagers are very difficult to get close to if they don’t have a background of closeness.

Simplicity in your life while you are creating your family is an excellent plan.  Time for grandparents and time for siblings won’t be so difficult to work out. In the long run, the job is a job and can be lost in a moment. Your family is forever, if you allow them to be that important in your life. If you don’t simplify your life now, it will be way too simple one day.

Fewer obligations in your everyday life will allow you to grow and develop a good foundation for the rest of your life and the biggest prize for having simplified now is that you will have much to be grateful for in your senior years.  You will have family who knows you and loves you. You will have people you genuinely care for and whose company you actually enjoy. They are the people who know you and share your history. The people you will tell stories with and about for the rest of your life. They are the top of your gratitude list.

Simplicity = Gratitude.

Live your lives with your priorities intact. You don’t have to be rich before you hit 50, but you do have to bond with people long before that to have a close and loving relationship for your lifetime.

Jo

One Day At A Time

One Day At A Time~

I was inspired to write about the one professional regret I have and this topic prompt is just right for that.

(*winks at Kathy*)

In the mid nineties I left the salon to work for a product company.  It was my favorite product line and the job to educate other hairdressers throughout Michigan on this great line just kind of jumped in my face.  I went after it.

I interviewed for the position and discovered that I had always hoped to end my hairdressing career doing exactly this job!  As I listened to the owner of the distribution center for all of Michigan and parts of Canada tell me all about what this position consisted of doing, I was totally aware that I was meant to have this job.  I would be as good for this company as they would be good for me.

I was offered the job on the spot at the conclusion of the interview with a compensation package I would never be able to earn as a hairdresser.  I was to take a couple of days to think it over and a couple of days to talk with my employer then give the owner a call and let him know IF and WHEN I wanted to start my training.

There was no IF in my mind.  I wanted this job.  I knew I would be very good at it with the proper training and I knew the man who would be doing the training was exactly the person I wanted to learn from.  He had been with this company since before it's inception.  He and the founder had been colleagues and friends for many years and he knew these products from a chemical point of view as well as from the marketing point of view.  I knew the inside outs of salon life and which products were beneficial and which were essential.  It was a match made in heaven or California.

Overview of the job~I traveled four days a week throughout the state teaching and motivating.  I did a little sales work here and there and I did paper work, follow ups, emails and scheduling from the office one day a week.  Weekends were free unless there was a show someplace.  I attended and worked every show where our product was offered or showcased.  I got to attend a seminar in Palm Springs when their new color line was being introduced and I got to officially join the National Educators Team.  It was a slice of heaven for this wannabe teacher and dyed in the wool hairdresser.  I loved this job!  My bosses were there for the final presentation, at which I had 2 models to show and I got extremely high praise for my professional and entertaining approach.  They were (Mr. & Mrs. Owner) very impressed with my knowledge and my work on the models.  They raved about how comfortable I was on stage and told me everyone was asking who I was and could they 'borrow' me for their introductions in their areas.  I was so pleased and so satisfied.

Jumping forward one year~I was hosting a workshop at corporate headquarters and Mr. Boss informed me that the sales managers would be sitting in, if I didn't mind. I really didn't mind and I had no real choice anyway.  He da Boss.

I assumed they were there because I had many of their clients in this workshop and they wanted to hear what the customers were hearing.

Not exactly the case.  They were 'ordered' there to 'critique' my workshop.  

Let me stop right here a minute.  Every workshop had questionnaires filled out by all attendees and I had seen every one of them.  I had a few negative comments about not giving away enough free product, not giving them enough discounts for attending and also one who said she thought I was very aggressive.  The other hundreds were about learning a lot, loving the hands on, liking the way I made learning fun and exciting and how they left not being able to wait for their next order to come in so they could get busy doing what we had learned at that workshop.  Seriously, excellent comments and many hundreds of them!

So...following the workshop and the departure of all the participants, the managers, Mrs. Boss and I all went to dinner.  Apparently Mr. Boss was busy or just didn't want to be part of the dinner or should I say roasting.  

We had a lovely dinner and Mrs. Boss ordered everyone an after-dinner drink.  While we were all enjoying that and discussing the workshop, she said something like, "Let's get down to business now.  First Manager, please tell Jo what your take on her presentation would be."

And the party turned ugly.  The three of them began tearing me limb from limb.  There was not one positive statement made.  They didn't like my light-hearted attitude during the product knowledge section.  They didn't like that I wore a suit and heels, it seemed too upity to them.  They didn't like my hairstyle, recently done at OUR show by OUR designers on platform.  They didn't like my interaction with the clients, I was to teach not them.  They didn't like my handouts.  Not enough of them and I didn't really follow them as I taught.  They didn't think I taught as much as I talked.  It went on and on.  Mrs. Boss had asked me to just listen and then I would, of course, be given the floor.

When they had finished, I  had basically nothing to say.  I looked at each of them while I gathered myself and my self-respect and finally I said, "Wow, I am shocked.  I am deflated.  I am  angry.  What I am not feeling is critiqued.  I am feeling steamrolled and beaten.  I am going to leave now and collect my thoughts.  I will think through everything that was said here and I'll possibly have more to say later, but for now, I need to separate myself from the three of you and try to figure out exactly what would make anyone think this was a good thing.  This, my co-workers and Mrs. Boss, was NOT a good thing.  Good evening and thank you for the wonderful dinner Mrs. Boss."

I left.

One day at a time.  I listened.  I reran my year with this company in my head all the way home.  An hours drive is long enough to clear muck and mire and make some sense of what my evening had turned into.  It really made no sense unless Mr. & Mrs. Boss had enlisted the managers to help get me to decide to resign, based on my obvious poor performance.  They had pretty much convinced me that I sucked at a job where I thought I was a rock star!  Two weeks before this happened, I was given glowing accolades for my presentation to a chain salon.  Mr. Boss had been present and he was over the top impressed with my growth and comfort in my position.  That was another day.  This one was different.

Reviewing my year, seeing the ups and the downs and the future compared to my past, one day at a time, it was so clear to me that I had to leave this job.  I had to stop doing what I knew was the best thing I had ever done because the people who were signing my check no longer held my respect.

I left.

I regret having done that because I believe now that I could have become stronger and better and I could have moved way beyond this distributorship if I hadn't let the ridiculousness of the attack take me down.  If I had stood my ground and gone to Mr. Boss the following work day and said, "No, I didn't enjoy being attacked and I will, for the record, never sit through another one, I did learn something.  Co-workers are not friends and professionalism does not exists here.  I am very good at what I do and both you and I know that.  I have no idea what that was all about and frankly, I don't care.  I am staying on here until or unless there is a real reason to move on.  If you choose to fire me, that's okay.  But I am not quitting and I am not changing my entire program.  You and I built that program together and it is solid and good."

But, I left.

I learned a big lesson that evening and it has led me down a good road.  I learned to treat every employee and co-worker with great respect and remember how I felt during the attack anytime I had to address a situation.  It served me well the rest of my career.  When I did have to fire someone, they often thanked me for the opportunity to work with me.  I allowed them to leave my business with their self-respect in tact.

Now I see that I got through that whole end of a dream time by opening my own salon and moving on one day at a time.  My life has always been one day at a time because that's all we have.

Jo

Walking Away

Walking Away
Writer's Post #17

My career was who I was for many years.  When I introduced myself to someone I would usually say, "Hi, I'm Jo Heroux.  I'm a hairdresser."  So my name is most important, but the very next thing was what I do.  Odd, because it wasn't really the most important thing to me.  I just thought it was the most important thing to the people I was meeting.  It wasn't.  I know that now.

I walked away from my career and I have no regrets.  It was the right time and the right thing for me and everyone else involved.  

So, since I walked away from who I was, who am I now?



I am a daughter.  Been that my entire life.  I was raised with a lot of love and understanding.  My parents were loving and fun.  They had time for me, well, Mom did.  Dad worked a lot and wasn't home as much as she was, but he made time for us when he could.  I was the baby of three and I liked being the youngest.  I know that being the first born is special and I know that that sometimes is considered the favorite position in the birth order books.  I can see why that might be true.  I can see why first borns often think they carry more responsibility and maybe they do.  In our family the second born is the first (and only) boy child.  Those who study birth order say this is the same special spot as the first born in many ways.  The first boy is often treated with some royalty regardless of his actual order.  My sister and I dubbed our brother The Prince and I guess he will always be just that.  He is the only one who carries our family name.  The baby, me, is always the baby.  In our family it has taken me 6 decades to establish myself as a real adult.  Both my siblings are smart and successful people.  They have both raised wonderful girls into womanhood.  I have respect for each of them for their individual accomplishments and I love them both as people besides being my brother and sister.  My sister lives relatively nearby and she would be my friend even if we weren't related, I am sure of that.  My brother has lived hours away for many years and we aren't in contact nearly as often as we should be.  Moving away leads to living in different worlds, sometimes.  I still enjoy visiting with him when he is here and I still look forward to seeing him. We love each other, we just aren't on the same page very often.  Not walking away from my siblings.

I am an adult now.  I have succeeded in raising my son and my daughter into adulthood.  I am the grandmother to their perfectly perfect children.  I inherited 2 boys when I married Mike and they have given me 3 more grand daughters, another something is due in November.  I am happy in this place.  I have the life I have worked toward for most of my adult years.  I'm not rich and I'm not famous, but I'm not dead so either of those could still happen!  :)  Not walking away from these jobs nor these possibilities.


I am a friend.  My best friend and I have been together for 34 years and I cannot imagine not having her with me for the good and the bad.  She is the shoulder and she is also the sunshine.  Love my Shirley.  Not walking away from her.



I am a wife. Twenty-nine years and counting, we have shared our days, nights, children and parents, siblings and friends.  We have shared our lives for better or worse, more betters than worses.  We have sorrow and joy and again more joy than sorrow.  We have nearly called it quits more than once and found a way to stay together.  We have found a way to still be in love and still be best friends. At this age and at this point, not walking away from him.

Apparently, I am not very good at the walking away thing.  I am much more into sticking it out and making changes to make things better or if that can't be done, learning to accept what is.  



What I will walk  away from-every time-is anyone who just causes drama and stress in my life.  People who plug into me and proceed to just drain all my energy until I am just useless.  People who cannot make good decisions and then cannot figure out why everything goes badly for them.  People who constantly look for change in their lives by doing exactly the same thing over and over and over!  Stupid people aren't going to stay in my life very long because I am required to remind them of their stupidity.  I can't help myself.  I don't really want to either.  From these, I will walk away and not look back.


I did walk away from what I did...I won't walk away from who I have become.

Jo

What Do You Love

BFF  prompt for today is What do you love?
 Easy-peasy one.


I love God.

I love summer.                                                          
I love babies.
I love dogs.
I love writing.
I love my life.
I love my husband.
I love my Momma.
I love my children.
I love my grandchildren.
I love my sister.
I love my brother.
I love my sisters-in-law.
I love my brothers-in-law.
I love my nieces.
I love my nephews.
I love my friends.
I love flowers.
I love driving.
I love road trips.
I love cruises.
I love Hawaii.
I love Arizona.
I love the Caribbean Islands.
I love cooking.
I love reading.
I love TV.
I love my computer.
I love my neighbors.
I love my little town.
I love a good steak.
I love my country.
I love being retired.
I love most of my memories.
I love most of my past.




And if you're still reading this, 
and aren't in any of the above categories, 
I love you, too.


<3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3

Wildflowers Growing

Please leave your thoughts...I love when you do that!

This is the picture prompt for the week on GBE2 along with 'Growing Wild" as the word prompt and here are my wandering mind thoughts.

As I study this picture I see beautiful wildflowers in my favorite color combo for flowers. ( Purple and yellow, my yard is full of purple and yellow flowers, not wild, but rather planted and tended by my own hands.)  Here, I see God's work.  No human hands tending, lovingly or otherwise, just God's gift of beauty and unfettered growth.  There are no sculpted paths, no design plan and weeds just grow where the seeds fall with great abandon and fertility.  The blooms are startling amongst the green in front of the shimmering lake.  It is breathtaking and serene.  It is pure and unadulterated.  It is Nature in all her splendor.  Growing wild and free and there for all humanity to share or disrespect.  To photograph or paint or trample. He provides the canvas and we provide the appreciation or destruction.

It is exactly how we are created.  We come into this world free of all encumbrances. We have no moral code at birth.  We owe nothing to anyone.  If it is perceived that we owe our very existence to our parents, the obvious answer is, we didn't ask to be born.  They chose, either by actual decision or by actions to make this baby.  We are the 'gift' not the ever indebted product.

It takes a very short time for each of us to change into the people we are to become.  To grow wild.  Some of us do so and some of us never learn what wild means.  A soul roaming wild in this earthly world is free to experience life.  EXPERIENCE it not just LIVE it.  I feel sorrow for those who are unwilling or unable to let go of pain or sadness; they will never feel wildness.  I want to always feel pain when appropriate, always feel sad when appropriate and always then be capable of unbridled joy when it comes to me.  I haven't always grown wildly, not by a long shot.  Many years of my life were regimented years of doing.  Doing what I had to do.  Doing what no one else could or would do.  Doing what my children needed done.  Just doing, not experiencing.  In recent years, however, I have learned to Let Go and Let God.  One of the most important lessons I have ever embraced.  Growing Wild requires that I do that and then and only then can I see all the beauty around me.  Only then can I feel the love that showers me every single day.  I take the time to appreciate my time here in preparation for my next life.

I'm not in a rush to get to that next life, but I am ready when I am called.  I have lived a full and rich life with people who love me and have allowed me to share their lives.  Great friends and family have blessed me always.  I have had my share of pain and heartbreak and because of that, I love more deeply and with fewer reservations that I did in my youth.  I am growing wilder with each passing day with less human tending and more God's blessing.  It's a good thing to be in His hands today and always.

The natural beauty around me is not to be missed.  A free and loving heart is meant to beat in me and it does.

For us, just like the field of wildflowers...He creates the canvas for us to appreciate or destroy.

Trust=Risk

Please leave your thoughts...I love when you do that!

The challenge on GBE2 this week is "Trust" and I am in the perfect frame of mind to discuss trust and the ramifications of both giving and expecting trust.  So here we go...


Every relationship involves trust.  When we meet someone new we immediately assess them to decide if they are trustworthy.  Sometimes we guess right and sometimes not.  But innately we decide.  The people whom we deem trustworthy often become members of our circle of friends or acquaintances we enjoy in our lives.  Those we deem not, often are never given a chance to get close.  Why?  Because we don't want to be hurt. People we allow into our inner circles have the ability to hurt us by their actions and words and those we keep outside, most likely do not.  Therefore, trust becomes one of the first factors in determining whether or not we will move forward with a newly introduced person.

For those we choose to keep, the few we deem trustworthy, we believe offer safety with them.  We can be ourselves and say what we think and know that they will do the same.  We create give and take habits with these people and some of them become integral parts of our everyday lives and some remain on the fringe,  nice to touch once in awhile and still very important to us.  The close ones, the ones who 'get' us and support us are the ones who hold the most trust.  They are the ones we count on NOT to hurt us.  Yet, they are the only ones who really can hurt us.  They are the only ones whose opinions and actions matter to us and therefore, they are capable of causing irreparable damage to our hearts, heads and lives.  They have been entrusted with our well being and thereby have the ability to bring everything crashing down.  Our treatment of our  friends and family is the most important thing about who we are.

I find the people around me to be, for the most part, trustworthy and able to protect my heart.  I find that I don't open up quite as easily as I once did.  I have learned from past heartache to be just a bit guarded in my experience with people who are new to my life.  I let them in easily enough, but I don't really embrace them until I see the redeeming qualities that I enjoy being surrounded by and will give back freely.  The ability to listen when needed, the ability to give what I can, the ability to share my feelings, fears or excitement.  The ability to feel what someone else is feeling and hurt if they hurt, smile if they are happy and help if I know how.  To just BE there, if I don't know how to help.  I want that in my life from my friends and family.  I want to be able to reach out and find support when I feel weak.  I want someone who will say, "Wait, let's think this over because you may be wrong about this one."  No 'yes men' in my life, please.  I need people of strength and character and I have them.

I believe with all that I am that life is exactly what you make it.  I believe with all that I am that we are each a product of our environment.  We are the person life has taught us to be.  I hope life isn't done teaching me to be a better, stronger more compassionate person because I need more of all of those.  I also hope life isn't done teaching me to reach out and be the support someone needs.  I need to do more of that.  I hope life isn't done teaching me ways to be more charitable, I certainly need more of that.

I want to be the person with whom you can deposit your 'trust account' and know that it will be forever safe and protected within me.  To know that if I cause you pain, I will be there to do whatever you need me to do to repair or remove that pain.  To know that if I caused it, I also feel it.   There is a huge risk to giving or receiving someones trust.  The risk is the pain, heartache and disappointment which  may occur.  In the end, it is usually worth the risk.  Sometimes...it just isn't.

The rewards, of course, are self evident.  Someone in your life who is imperfect, but steadfast.  Someone who will ride the waves and open their arms at the end of the ride to embrace and hold you and your trust.

Jo