Ramble Ramble

I’m working on something new. Something possibly exciting. Something to give me some professional joy in my off hours. I’m working on a way to take all the things I love about marketing books and authors and artists and brands and the internet and social media and make my own happiness.

I want to take the things that I’m good at, the things I enjoy and bring that to my everyday life–even if it’s not my 9-5 job. So what am I good at? I’m good at big picture strategy. I’m good at analyzing how to adapt social media for individual books, authors, artists, and brands. I’m good at researching where a market is and where it’s not. I’m good at big picture that has lots of small details.

I’m good with books. I’m good with authors. I’m good with artists. I’m good with small brands that have personality and strong identities. I’m good with all those things. So that’s what I want to work on. I want to exploit my strengths ALL the time. Not just occasionally. I find all this stuff fun and energizing and I want to have that. So I’m going to make it happen.

And I know I should keep my mouth shut until I’ve got everything figured out and planned (since that’s how I normally roll), but I’m so excited about this that I can’t help but say something. Albeit on a Friday when no one reads my blog anyway!

The plan is coming, the details are coming, the ACTUAL is coming. But in the meantime, if you know of  any authors or artists who might be looking for some marketing help, go ahead and send them my way (ginger@rambleramble.com). Because I’m going to make my own happiness–and I need some people to work with that want to use my passion and knowledge to their advantage.

As 2009 comes to a close, it’s time for a little reflection on whether I achieved the goals I set for myself in 2009. I posted those goals in January, and I think it’s time to see how I did. My own little personal performance review, laid out for the whole world to see.

• Be a grownup about my health. Ok, I did great at this one. Now I attribute that ENTIRELY to being pregnant for the majority of the year–the prenatal care thing kind of forces your hand with doctor visits and all. I still need a primary care physician, but I can say with certainty that I’m healthy, I understand my health insurance (!), and I feel a responsibility now with the kid to stay healthy for us both.
• Be more realistic about finances. I did great with this one too. I’ll credit some of this to the kid as well–I knew I wanted to take my full 3 months of available maternity leave, which required thinking through our finances verrrrrry carefully. 3 months without full income made us very realistic about our finances, which is all for the better. We are in a good spot now, for a variety of reasons, but the best part of all is having my head wrapped around our financial situation for the first time, like, ever.
• Learn more about photography and photoshop. Yeah, so this one. Um, not so much. As a matter of fact, I think I’ve forgotten everything I once knew about photography, and my camera, and let’s not even get started on photoshop shall we? I utterly and completely FAIL at this goal. BUT, I’m getting the itch once again and have some ideas on how to make this happen in 2010. It’s not a hobby thrown to the wolves folks, just one that got waylaid in 09.
• Find some additional income sources. Well, this didn’t happen either. But in retrospect, I’m ok with that. I bring home the bacon every payday–that’s enough. I have a full time job, and some hobbies and a baby–I think I’m pulling my weight. If the opportunity arises someday to do some outside projects for cashola, then fantastic. But otherwise, I’m not really going to worry about it.
• Grow this blog, and all the networks associated with it. This is the one that I think hurts the most. I love this blog and have let it go to shameful waste over the last year. I let all the groups and networks and people and connections that I had started to build fall by the wayside of my pregnancy (and the resulting sloth). I stopped commenting on blogs–though I swear I still read more than I should have time for!–and stopped responding to people who commented on my blog. I stopped being part of various communities. And the thing that sucks the most about it all, is this is the place for ME–so it mirrors how I let ME go over the year. I got sucked into the vacuum of being pregnant, as did everything around me. I  vow that this will be different next year. So yeah, 2010–you’re MINE!
• Refocus my career. I somehow managed to do this. Not to brag, but I’m kind of a rock star at work. I’m leading my company forward into the digital age. I created a social media program from nothing. I’m reworking how we do just about everything in marketing in my company. I’m building my “brand” at work, and have been absolutely thrilled with how I’ve done. I came back from maternity leave, scared of not being needed anymore, to find that they really couldn’t cope well without me. I kind of kick ass at my job, and that makes me feel all “I am woman, hear me roar”ish.
• Travel. Well, we got in one little trip to Chicago this summer, which I guess is more than normal. It wasn’t quite as much as I was hoping for, but at least it was something, right?

Hmmm. Overall, I’d say that it’s not too horrible, but there’s room for improvement. I could cop out and say that the ones I failed at were a result of the pregnancy/baby brain, but while that may be somewhat true, I knew it was happening and let it happen. I let myself go a little, which I intend to rectify in ‘10. I’m already working on my goals for the next year in my head, which you know I’ll post as soon as I’ve got them figured out. I think 2010 is going to be an interesting year, and I can’t wait to see what it brings!

So I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Actually, I’m a little under my pre-preg weight, and have been for a little over a month. But before you’re all, “woohoo, yay you!”, I must clarify…

I may be at that number, but I am a looooong way from that body. This new body is squishy, and jiggly, and mushy all around my middle section. If I laugh too hard, my belly feels like that line from ‘Twas the Night before Christmas…you know the one:

He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

Yeah, never really thought I’d know exactly what a bowlful of jelly feels like. I need to work out, I know that’s the cure, but I still get worn out and hurt if I overdo it. Not to say I shouldn’t be doing something (well, something more than the million trips up and down the stairs I make everyday), but it’s not like I’m able to do an hour on the elliptical to really get some cardio going. And forget about ab workouts–that just flat out makes my eyes water with pain. I know some people are able to handle ab workouts right after a c-section, but I obviously am not one of them.

So yeah, the number on the scale is back to where it was a year ago, but NONE of my clothes fit me. I could technically get in my old jeans, if it weren’t for the fact that they hurt my incision something wicked. Add in my ginormo breastfeeding boobs, and you’ve got a closet full of nothing to wear. I can’t wear my old clothes cuz they’re too small, and I can’t even get away with my maternity clothes because they’re all too BIG.

Unfortunately for me, though, I go back to work in two weeks. Two weeks, and I have approximately 1 outfit I can get away with at work. Which means I need to go shopping! On the one hand, that’s just what you want when your body isn’t at its best, to spend money on new clothes that you’re hoping won’t fit you in a few short months. But on the other…it’s been what feels like a really long time since I felt like I look presentable, between the old pregnant whale who couldn’t wear shoes and the post-partum mommy who never leaves the house. So there’s a part of me that is looking forward to at least looking put together, and maybe even…pretty?

So here’s my question kids…given that I don’t want to (and can’t) spend a fortune, and given that I’m not exactly what you would call svelte at the moment, and given that I could really use the personal boost of looking nice at work 5 days a week….where does one shop? I need enough clothes to get through 5 days at work–I don’t mind repeating my wardrobe week to week–but I definitely don’t have a big budget for that, probably no more than a couple hundred dollars (including shoes, since my feet have also gone up in size). I’ve looked at Old Navy (their stuff never fit me well even in the pre-squishy days), Target (same), and a little bit at Khol’s (which is hit or miss for me style wise). What other places are there for business casual, non-teenage body types on a budget?

I love…

snuggling down into the duvet on a chilly night. diet coke. getting email that isn’t spam. the feeling I get when I totally rock something at work. the smile that my baby has started to show. cooking with my husband. a warm cat in the lap. a good book. rockin’ out in the car with the music blaring. tacos. spending time with family when there’s no drama. paying off bills. not feeling buried financially. a good massage. previews at the movie theater. DVR. my slowly renewing interest in photography. reading a good blog. my alma mater actually winning football games. casual entertaining. baby feet.

…focusing on the good stuff.

I’m in a blogging rut. Well, not so much a rut as an identity crisis…and I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it for the time being.

Right now, the majority of my world is comprised of baby. Baby, baby, baby, baby. I mean, it makes sense–I’ve got a newborn, I’m staying home from work, I don’t have a lot of outside world interaction most days. Even when I talk to people in the “outside world” they want to hear about the baby, or how we’re doing with the baby, or how I feel about when I have to leave the baby. And even if they don’t, I don’t have a whole lot besides baby to add to the conversation (unless you want to talk about TV, that’s about my only adult contribution at the moment). I’m tired, a little cut off from the grown up world, removed from my job, and spend the majority of my day with a being who’s not the greatest conversationalist (yet). On top of that, most of my thoughts right now are about being a mom, about the kid, about how our lives have changed, yadda yadda yadda.

But it feels weird to me to blog only about the kid. I don’t FEEL like a mommy blogger, but that’s where my head is right now. I know a lot (maybe even most) of my readers don’t have kids, so I know there’s some relatability that’s being lost. But then, this blog is about my life, and the kid is my life right now, so there’s that.

Like I said, I think it’s an identity crisis, brought on by the circumstances of my life right now. I KNOW that there will come a time when I’m not so immersed in everything baby all the time (like when I go back to work most likely), but for now it feels weird to be in this place, and to have this blog be so…singleminded. I can’t really fight it, I’ve been trying and that just leads to little to no posting, so I’m just going to go with my identity crisis and see where it takes me.