Tag Archives: confidence

Excitement and Speaking Up (or My Last Monthly Challenge of 2021)

Posted on December 1, 2021 | Comments Off on Excitement and Speaking Up (or My Last Monthly Challenge of 2021)

It’s so crazy that it’s already December. This year feels like it didn’t happen, but I think part of that is similar to what happened last year with the pandemic. I didn’t get to fully live my life the way I’m used to, but in other ways I created new things within my life. But still, this year is almost done and that just seems bonkers!

And since it’s the beginning of the last month of the year, it’s also time for me to review last month’s challenge and plan out this month’s challenge. Last month, my monthly challenge was to be more excited in my life. I knew I needed this challenge because I was feeling like I focused more on negatives and preparing for the worst and it was really starting to affect my life. I know I did this partially as a coping or protection mechanism because of some things happening in my life, but I knew last month I needed to move on from that feeling.

And I think I did a pretty good job with this challenge. A lot of the things that were causing me to focus on the negative were out of my life. I also worked on trying to make plans or have more things in my life that make me happy. Things are still not perfect and I do still worry about things more than I probably should, but I think the balance is much more toward the positive and excitement than to the negative. And just like with so many of these types of challenges, the biggest progress has been in my ability to recognize when my thoughts are getting this way and being able to take action sooner than I did before.

And for my last challenge this year, I have decided to do something that I have struggled with for a while but I have taken steps toward progress recently. This month, I challenge myself to speak up more for myself. This isn’t about being bossy or not listening to others, but about being a better advocate for myself.

I struggle a lot with this because I feel like speaking up could make me seem difficult or unlikeable. But I need to get over that feeling because I shouldn’t have to tolerate something that I’m not ok with just to assume the other person is going to be upset with me if I say otherwise. And this is something I struggle with in both my personal life and my work life.

For my personal life, I see this being an issue most with dating. There is the idea of being the cool girl and not pushing for things or stating you might want something more than what a situation is at the moment. I don’t think I was ever fully like that, but I know I didn’t speak up a lot in the past when I could have done so. I shouldn’t have to fear asking for what I want. If me saying I want to find something serious scares someone off, then they never would have been right for me. There is a saying that you will never be too much for the right person. I have to remember that. It would be better to stay single than to tolerate multiple half relationships where I don’t say what I really am hoping to find. I’ve been getting better at this, but there’s still a lot of work to go and fear to get over.

And for work, I’ve gotten much better about this, especially recently. There are a lot of systems at my job that just don’t make sense or work for me. And for many of them, there doesn’t seem to be a reason why things are like that other than that’s how it was done before and how we were trained. But as the company grows, there’s no reason to avoid change. But unless someone speaks up and explains why a system isn’t working, there’s no way for those in charge to know and look into alternatives.

I feel like I do have an advantage with this since one of the executives at the company is a friend of mine. And when he was sitting in with me while I worked, I was able to be very blunt and honest about systems that just make work harder than it needs to be. I know that this really is a benefit with this job that I can keep in mind when discussing ideas like this with other jobs. But it’s still the same idea about not fearing I will be fired because I bring up a concern.

I hope that I find some good ways to speak up more for myself when I need to this month. I know that I am worth asking for what I want or expressing when things don’t seem right to me, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that in the moment.

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Being Organized and Stylish (or Working On Getting Into A Post-Pandemic Life)

Posted on July 1, 2021 | Comments Off on Being Organized and Stylish (or Working On Getting Into A Post-Pandemic Life)

Happy July! 2021 is officially half over! And half my monthly challenges for the year are done as well. I haven’t done really well with my monthly challenges, but it’s also been a tough first half of the year for me. Things are getting better for me, so hopefully the challenges will as well. But I also have been picking challenges that I know might take me longer than just a month.

For June, I had a challenge to work on organizing my desk. This was a project that I have been putting off for a while and I knew it needed to be done. My desk has been very messy for a long time and I got lazy with keeping it organized when my work life was in flux. I was storing a lot of paperwork that I might need or used to need and wasn’t too worried about keeping my workspace clean and easy to find everything. But as I started to work more and more, the piles were making my workspace cluttered and I wasted time looking for things.

While this challenge can’t be considered complete, I have made a lot of steps in the right direction and have more work I plan on doing. I have to do a big overhaul of my filing cabinet and storage and it takes time to go through everything I have in there and decide what to keep. I also have been working on scanning paperwork that I want to keep but don’t need the originals. This is a big project and I knew that going into it, but I’m seeing lots of progress and I know it will continue to be worked on. Hopefully soon, I’ll have the nice and clean workspace that I dream of.

And for July, my challenge is all about being out and about in the world again. I tend to wear a lot of comfortable clothes. When working at home, you don’t need to dress cute and I would prefer to be comfortable. And when I wasn’t going out for anything, staying in comfortable clothes all the time became the norm. But as I am going out and doing things more and more, I want to find ways to feel cute and stylish again.

This doesn’t necessarily mean I need to buy a ton of new clothes. I will buy a few new things, but I’m working on being a bit picky and making sure they are really what I want. But I have plenty of clothes that I could wear, I just am out of the habit of putting together outfits. And I want to take more risks with style a bit. For a long time, I dressed to hide my body. I don’t know if that made me think I was hiding my size and shape or it was just a lack of confidence. But I’ve realized that there’s no point in me doing that. I want to feel cute and if someone sees what I really look like then they do. A good example of a risk (that seems like a very nothing risk) I took recently with clothes was tucking in a flowy shirt with jeans. In the past, I would let it stay flowy over my stomach and feel ok that you couldn’t see anything. But it also made me look bigger than I really am. So I did a French tuck in the front so it was still flowy but you could see my shape. I won’t say I was completely comfortable with it, but it felt good to not feel like I’m in shapeless clothes and I tried to feel more confident. But I think the more I do this, the easier it will be for me.

So hopefully this month, I will work on finding new favorite outfits in my closet and finding ways to feel more stylish. I know this is superficial, but finding some more confidence is important to me. And I think being confident can lead to other positive things in my life.

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Working On Speaking Up For Myself (or Finding A Balance Between Confident and Bossy)

Posted on April 30, 2021 | Comments Off on Working On Speaking Up For Myself (or Finding A Balance Between Confident and Bossy)

I think a lot of women were raised to be polite or demure. We aren’t supposed to make a lot of trouble for people and try to go with the flow. We are called bossy if we do speak up and that’s used as an insult. Men are called assertive and that’s a good thing, but women are bossy and it’s bad. I wasn’t raised to not speak up for myself, but I was raised to be kind and polite. And sometimes being kind and polite means being quiet because speaking up could cause issues. And this is a mindset that I’ve had for a long time even when I wanted to fight it.

A big place this has been a problem for me in the past has been in jobs. I know that having a job isn’t always a given. There are a lot of times that I know I’m lucky to have a job or opportunity and I don’t want to lose it. But this also means that I’ve tolerated a lot of bad workplaces in the past. There’s one job where I was harrassed by my manager, but I never spoke up because I was worried about being fired. I did speak to HR, but they didn’t seem to take it seriously. My manager would call me fat or make fun of my personal life in front of others and I just stayed quiet. There was another job where my boss was verbally abusive to all the employees. I was a receptionist and when I asked for a raise (which was a part of my contract) he screamed at me saying that I was an awful person for not appreciating what I had. The one time that I did speak up a bit was at one job that wanted me to take some continuing education classes and then I found out the only places I could take them that they would be ok with would be through their religious headquarters. But even then, I didn’t speak up that much. I just said that the job wasn’t a good fit for me and not that it was illegal for them to require me to pay for classes from a religious group.

And I think from my posts on here it’s clear that another place I have struggled with speaking up is with dating. I don’t think this one is as gendered, but I do think a lot of women want to be the cool girl who doesn’t push too hard. You don’t want to be the one to bring up where your relationship is going because you don’t want to seem like you are pushing for marriage and scare the guy off. I’m slowly starting to learn that if the guy is the right guy, discussing the tough stuff won’t scare them off. But I still am always worried that I will scare a guy off and for some reason they are the last person who will ever be interested in me. It doesn’t help that I have had some relationships end when I had the “what are we” conversation and another relationship end because a guy claimed he didn’t believe me enough when I said I wasn’t pushing for us to be in a relationship. But I also can look back at those past relationships and realize that even if I didn’t have that conversation, the relationship wouldn’t have lasted for other reasons.

But I’m noticing that I am getting better at speaking up lately.

I’ve spoken up at all of my jobs now to make sure that things are working out for me. I’ve spoken up about asking for a raise when it was in the job offer that one would be coming. I’ve spoken up about my schedule and what would work best for me. And I’ve spoken up about job responsibilities and what seems reasonable.

And with dating, even though it’s still tough to date during the pandemic, it is getting easier as things get safer. And that means I have more chances to speak up and advocate for myself. I’m not pushing hard for anything that feels unreasonable, but I am setting boundaries and expectations. For example, someone from my past reached out to me and I had some hesitation about trying things again with them. They had some issues with being reliable and being an infrequent texter. So I told them that if they wanted to start talking again, it had to be on the phone and not over text. And I’m holding them to that. They still are texting, but I am not responding most of the time. And when I do respond, I say the same thing again about how if they want to talk to me they need to call. I don’t have to just go with what they want when it’s not what I want. And if there is someone that I have talked to that I want to see again, I am getting more comfortable with being very upfront and asking them out again. I’m not waiting on them to ask me out. If I want to see them again, I am clear about that so they know where I stand.

I do still worry that sometimes I seem bossy or demanding, but I’m working through that more and more. And the more that I do speak up for myself and see the positive response I get in return, the more comfortable I feel doing this. I know that it’s not always going to work out for me and I do have stories of where it didn’t work, but more often it either works or opens up the conversation to discuss things more so I can make sure that I’m getting what I want out of life, work, and relationships.

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Overcoming The Confidence Gap (or Taking A Risk And Having It Pay Off)

Posted on August 14, 2019 | Comments Off on Overcoming The Confidence Gap (or Taking A Risk And Having It Pay Off)

I’ve heard multiple stories of the idea of the confidence gap. There’s a lot to the idea of it, but it comes down to the idea that women tend to wait until they feel more confident before taking a chance. Studies show when it comes to taking a risk or asking for a promotion, women usually will wait until they feel that they can do 100% of the tasks required while men will go ahead when they feel they can do 60%. This is something that I have tried to overcome, but it is not easy when it almost is a natural feeling that I want to be perfect before I take a chance. I don’t want to look stupid or make a mistake and have someone tell me that I shouldn’t have tried.

I am getting better about taking chances, but that usually only happens when those chances only affect me and not anyone else. If someone else may need to make up for my mistakes or it could delay or affect someone else’s day, I tend to not want to try. It’s hard to not be scared that someone might be upset with me if I try and fail. But I also know that if someone took a chance and it affected me when they couldn’t accomplish it, I wouldn’t blame them because at least they tried. I just need to believe that someone else would feel the same way about me.

I had the opportunity to try to take a chance last week. With this election, we have all been working hard at creating different things like graphics and videos. We do have people who’s primary jobs are to create things like that, but sometimes things come up and either they are swamped with other work (or with life since this is all volunteer work) or we have to pitch in to help because we have a time crunch and the person who typically does the work is not available. Everyone is happy to pitch in where they can because we all are passionate about what we are doing and want to make sure we do everything we can to get the word out about the vote and the slate.

We had recorded some videos recently and they were being edited into individual videos for each candidate that filmed. But we had an idea to turn it into a larger video that included everyone who was there that day. But the person who was editing the video did not have the time to put that video together. I have edited a few things before, but nothing like this. But I said I would give it a shot. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I wanted to try. I knew if I couldn’t do it, someone else could try and we wouldn’t be any worse off than we were before I started. So I was sent all the video footage from the shoot and spent some time watching it and seeing what made sense to me as a bigger video.

Fortunately, the concept came to me quickly. And, while I’m sure there are multiple ways I could have done the editing a lot faster or more efficiently, I had to do it the way I knew how and pull the clips I knew I was going to use and put them in one section and put all the extra clips in another. Then I got to trying to sort those clips and organizing them and moving them around until I was happy with the order and it seemed to make sense to me.

Fortunately, I was able to send multiple versions of the work in progress to some people from the slate for notes and they were able to give me feedback on what they thought and if they felt things needed to be moved around. They also got me the still frame for the end of the video that included the required disclosure that the video was not paid for with union funds. And my friend Ben had a lot of credits on a royalty-free music website so he let me use his login information and download a few options so we tested some music clips out. When I originally tested the clips out, I was torn between 4 different ones. But once I put them all into the video I made, one stood out as the clear winner.

From the time I got the video footage until the time I finished exporting the final file, it was only about 24 hours (and probably about 8-10 hours of total work). That’s not that long, but it also is only about a 2-minute video. When I was done, I sent it out to the leaders of the slate and said that I could fix anything if they noticed anything off and for some reason, I felt like I also had to apologize because I’m not an editor. Thinking back, I feel so stupid that I apologized for my work, but at the time I did it. I guess it was that feeling that I wasn’t 100% ready to edit a video so there was something for me to be sorry for. But I was ready enough to create something that I am now extremely proud of.


This video has been posted on our social media and I think everyone is very happy about it. And now I am happy about it too. Taking the risk of editing a video even though I wasn’t completely sure I could do it worked in my favor. And not only did it work in my favor, I proved to myself that I can do something that I questioned I could do. It wasn’t easy and I had to look up how to do a lot of things, but I got it done. And while this isn’t something I will probably do regularly, it is something that I want to practice a bit more so I feel more confident doing when I need to edit something in the future.

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Doing Some Beautification (or Feeling Better From The Outside In)

Posted on November 7, 2018 | 1 comment

This isn’t a recap of my current monthly challenge (I’m only a few days into it), but it is related to it. I’ve been working on finding myself again and getting back to me. And I really thought a lot of that was going to be stuff about my emotions and feelings and that I needed to reconnect to myself that way. But over the past few days I did a few things for my outside that really did help me feel so much better.

I’ve been getting better about doing self-care and taking care of myself, including things like skincare and beauty. I have noticed that I have looked better on the outside since I’ve been making more of an effort on those things. I don’t know if weekly sheet masks are really making my skin better or if doing those sheet masks is bringing down my stress which is helping my skin look better, but either way it’s working. I know that physical beauty isn’t everything, but when you don’t feel at your best it can be a hit on your self-esteem and how you feel about yourself.

Since I have been doing all these new self-care things, I really didn’t think that doing some more beauty stuff was going to make a difference. But there were some beauty things that I have been slacking on for a bit that I finally got a chance to do. A lot of this slacking has to do with not having the money to do it, but it also has to do with timing.

The first thing I did for myself was getting my eyebrows done. I know this is a luxury thing to do, but for me it almost feels like a necessity. My eyebrows are pretty crazy to begin with, but I cannot trust myself to do the work on my own. I don’t even try to use tweezers because I will overdo things and pluck way more than I should. I don’t want to do any damage to my eyebrows so I try to get them done professionally on a regular basis. When I went to cheap places, I would try to go once a month or every other month. But those cheap places were not worth it as I would get burns from wax and other issues from them. So I go to a slightly more expensive place (but still on the cheap end of things) and I can’t go as often.

My eyebrows weren’t the worst they have been, but they weren’t great. And I have something happening this week that I want to look my best for so I wanted to get them done. Even though this wasn’t the most dramatic eyebrow makeover I’ve had from getting them done, just having them look clean and professional really helped. Since I don’t wear a lot of makeup on a regular basis, having my eyebrows look good makes a big difference in my appearance.

The other beauty thing I did recently was getting my hair done. I used to be much better about getting my hair done on a regular schedule. Since I color my hair, when I don’t get it done it’s usually very noticeable. It used to be bad because I went lighter with my color, but since I’ve been going darker my roots don’t show as much. But since I’ve been getting more and more gray hair, now it’s really bad! When I was getting it done, my friend who does my hair said I’m about 30% gray now. I started going gray around 20, but it got drastically worse in the past 2 years. Now, my gray hair is all over and there’s no way to pretend it’s not there. I do have powder I can use to cover them, but it still needed to be done.

I was going to have my hair done around my birthday, but I put that off because I didn’t do a big birthday thing. Then I was thinking about doing it in September, but because I can’t afford to get it done as often as I like I didn’t want to do it then and have my hair look bad for Thanksgiving. I put it off longer than I would have liked to, but I finally got it done this week when it was looking really bad.

I like to take before and after photos of my hair, and the before ones are always much worse than I look on a normal basis. I always remember to take them right before my appointment, but that’s when I haven’t done anything to my hair. I just wash and condition it and let it air dry. Normally, I put product in my hair after it’s washed and I blow dry it. So my before picture has much more frizz and random curls than I do on normal days. But you can still tell a big difference between the before and after photo when you ignore the style of my hair.

The color is back to what I like it to be and you don’t see any gray or weird color changes from the top to the bottom of my hair. My hair was also super long and looking stringy so it was cut and shaped. It looks like a lot of length was taken off, but it’s actually not that much. In my after photo my hair is curled a bit so it looks shorter. I still had about 2 inches taken off to make it look healthier, but it’s still long. I have toyed with the idea of going short again, but I still love it long right now.

Before getting my eyebrows and hair done I didn’t think it was going to make that much of a difference, but it really did. I feel so much better about myself and just much calmer about things. It’s so weird how working on how I look on the outside made that much of a difference about the uneasy feeling I’ve been having. I still need to do more work on myself and I’ll recap that at the end of the month. But for now, I’m just so glad that doing something that seemed so frivolous really ended up being a big deal.

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Working On Rejection (or Why Can’t Dating Be Like Acting)

Posted on September 21, 2018 | Comments Off on Working On Rejection (or Why Can’t Dating Be Like Acting)

As an actor, you deal with rejection all the time. Actors get rejected for more jobs than they are offered. Every single day, I submit myself to various projects and my agents submit me as well. A majority of the time, I never hear back from those submissions so I was rejected for even an audition. And when I do get an audition, I don’t usually book the job. I don’t see that rejection as anything bad since everyone deals with it. And I know that not every part is right for me. My job when I audition is to do the best job I can in the room so the casting director wants to bring me back when there is another part I might be right for.

But even though I am very comfortable with rejection in my acting career and it doesn’t bother me one bit, I can’t say the same about dating. There are some times that I think everyone would agree that I am right to be upset over rejection or someone lying to me. I don’t think anyone expects someone to be ok with being hurt that way, especially when it’s someone who you cared about and you thought cared about you. I also know that those situations are sometimes inevitable and are a part of life. Dating has always had some rejection or heartache, that’s not just something that started with online dating.

And I guess ghosting could have been a thing before as well, but it seems like it really picked up with dating apps. I’ve had a couple of guys ghost me, but more recently there have been 2 that really got to me. One guy I had 2 dates with and then they were out-of-town (this was something we had discussed on our first date). From before our first date through their time out-of-town, we were texting at least once a day. We were making tentative plans for when they were back in LA. And once they were back, they stopped texting. They never unmatched with me on the app we matched on, but all communication stopped. I reached out one more time, they responded, but then ghosted me again. That really bugged me because there was nothing that made me feel like things weren’t going to move forward with another date. But I guess he didn’t care to see me again and he didn’t feel like he should say something to me.

And more recently, there was someone who seemed like a real great guy. We got along, could talk about a ton of different subjects without awkward silences, and he was planning creative dates for us. On our last date, something just didn’t seem right to me. I mentioned it hoping that would make things better (sometimes it’s better to bring up a weird feeling than ignore it and hope it goes away) and he said everything was fine but he was just tired from working long hours. That could have been it, but I still had a gut feeling that something was off and he wasn’t telling me. We made plans for the next day, and I haven’t heard from him since. I honestly have no clue what happened, but again I was ghosted by a guy who didn’t have the manners to end things like an adult.

Those ghosting situations are the standard ones because I had met these guys in person and we had been talking and dating. I don’t know what to call the guys who disappear before I even meet them since I don’t know if it’s really the same thing as ghosting. But a new trend I’ve been seeing is a guy who is messaging with me on whatever app we connect with (I don’t give out my number until I meet a guy in person to protect myself from scammers and catfish) and we make plans for a date. Sometimes everything is planned, sometimes it’s just the date and time and we are going to figure out a location later. And then the day of the date I go to the app to message them to either finalize plans or say that I’m excited to meet them, and they are no longer listed in my matches. They could have been scammers or had their accounts blocked, but more often than not they just unmatched with me.

I know that there are some guys on the apps who are in relationships that use dating apps to get an ego boost. They don’t consider it cheating if they never meet someone in person, but they message as if they wanted to meet up just to get the validation that a woman likes them. I think it’s stupid and if I ever figured out in advance that a guy was doing that with me I’d unmatch with them first. But of course, most of these guys give no clue that they are doing that so I just feel rejected because I had been excited about the date that won’t be happening.

I’ve gotten much better with dealing with dating rejection in the past year, but it’s still not easy for me. I think a lot of the rejection I struggle with comes from when I meet a guy (or am messaging with a guy) who seems genuine and kind. I don’t try to imagine what a future could be with them, but I think everyone thinks about stuff like that when they meet someone they are interested in. The rejection is almost more of feeling hurt that a potential future isn’t going to happen anymore. And while I have the same feeling with auditions (whenever I go out for a big role I have to stop myself from imagining how it could change my life), but I have had so much more practice with acting.

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Sometimes I Miss Not Caring (or The Grass Is Always Greener)

Posted on July 13, 2018 | Comments Off on Sometimes I Miss Not Caring (or The Grass Is Always Greener)

It’s been interesting being one of the only single people in my group of friends. So many of my friends who are married or are in serious relationships have loved hearing about my online dating adventures. They live vicariously through me and usually they ask if they can swipe on the apps for me. I limit them to swiping on Bumble because on there the woman has to message the guy first. If I let them swipe on Tinder, that could lead to a creeper message I don’t want to see. I always will get gross and creepy messages, but I like to limit those if possible.

A lot of the time, I complain to those friends that I just want to meet someone so I can get off of the apps. I am having fun dating and it’s so different now compared to other times in my life, but I also am tired of meeting new guys and hoping something will happen. I’m tired of the bad dates and the stress before a first date wondering if it will be good or bad. I do think I’ve been lucky compared to other single people as I have had more good dates (or bad dates with good stories) than truly awful dates. And nothing too horrible has happened to me which is a risk every time I meet someone even though I meet them somewhere public and a friend always knows where I am and when I am home safe.

Whenever I complain, many of my friends in relationships say that being in a relationship isn’t necessarily easier than dating. I’m aware this is true and relationships take work, but it’s a different type of work than dating. Some of them miss being single and having freedom to do whatever they want whenever they want. But I know that even though some of them miss their single time, they love their significant other and are glad to have the love and companionship from them.

The grass is always greener no matter what the situation is. I want to be in a relationship and some of my relationship friends want to be single (or at least single for a day so they can do whatever they want). But the grass is also greener for me when I compare myself to my old self.

Prior to about a year and a half ago, I rarely dated. When I did date, I really didn’t care too much about it. I did have some nerves about things, but they were more muted than they are now. I never imagined a future with any of the guys I went out with and I never really cared if I never saw them again after the first date. You’d like having fewer dates would have made me care more about each one, but that wasn’t the case for me.

I am not totally sure why things were the way they were before, but I am curious if it has to do with being on hormonal birth control before. I know that any hormonal birth control can change your mood and how you feel certain emotions. So maybe for me it was muting my feelings about wanting a relationship and companionship. This is just a theory, but it seems to make sense with the timing of things. Either way, before about April of last year I didn’t really care about dating and now I do.

And even though I’m having fun (despite some of the sucky parts of dating I’ve experienced) and it’s nice to feel wanted and enjoy that feeling, I miss not caring. I miss when dating wasn’t something I thought about all the time and didn’t care about. I miss not wondering if a guy who I like likes me back or if he’s going to text me back. I’m trying to not stress about the little things, but I do. I miss feeling neutral about things and not getting my hopes up or feeling heartbroken.

I think even with the annoyance of caring about things, I do still prefer now over how things were before. I do want to get married and have kids and I have to date to do that. I am learning about myself through dating a bit and I’ve become much more confident and self-assured. And I have learned that I don’t have to be as tolerant of people treating me badly like I did before. I can stand up for myself and I’m not scared about being called a bitch for doing so. I guess in some way, learning to care about dating has made me not care about what some people think about me.

While my dating adventures have made for some interesting blog posts, I do hope that these are not going to happen for forever. I am trying to stay optimistic that there is someone out there for me and that we will connect somehow. Chances will be we meet on an app since that’s the only place I’m really meeting guys, but you never know. And I know that even when I meet someone who is right for me that I will still stress out about things. But hopefully that stress will be easier to deal with when it’s about one person and not that I’m stressing about who I’ve met, will be meeting, or wondering if I should be meeting.

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More Thoughts On Online Dating (or Not Letting My Past Dictate My Future)

Posted on June 7, 2017 | 7 comments

I know that I just recently wrote about online dating, but I wanted to write about it again. I still think it’s so crazy how I was having no luck with dating for years and now it’s coming much easier to me. I’m still not dating anyone seriously, but I’m having fun meeting new people. And the fact that dating is fun again for me is a novelty that I’m not used to. I’m glad that this is a fun experience for me since it hasn’t been that way before. I’m due for lots of good things in my life and I’m glad that dating is now one of them.

For so long, dating meant putting up with someone who I lowered my standards for. Or dealing with someone who didn’t treat me the way I deserved to be treated. There are many dating regrets I’ve had in the past and I have tried to learn from them. I’ve always assumed that this is due to low self-esteem but never thought too much about it. But I’ve had some dates lately where I am able to see that I don’t want to put up with someone like that so I leave and I couldn’t figure out why I’m able to react like that now when I wasn’t before.

I’ve been doing some soul-searching and having some honest conversations with friends and I think that being open and honest has helped me make the most of this dating adventure. I’m finally realizing things that may have been affecting me and my life without me really knowing about it.

When I was a teenager, there was someone in my life who told me that I was unloveable. They told me that people didn’t care about me and that nobody would ever care about me. They felt this way about me because I was fat. This person was someone who should not have treated me this way, but they did. When this person told me all this, I knew that they were crazy and I tried to ignore it. I didn’t tell anyone else in my life that this happened for years and just tried to put it behind me.

But now that I’m having some more reflection in my life, I think that maybe this person did end up influencing me and my beliefs about myself. Maybe I have been tolerating people who didn’t treat me the way I deserve to be treated because deep down I’m terrified that I’m unloveable. Maybe I’ve clung to something because I’m scared that the guy is the only person who will ever like me. Maybe I have let rejection affect me more because I am afraid that this would be the last guy that I would date. I know that those things aren’t the truth, but it’s tough when there’s something deep down in your subconscious mind.

I’m trying to remember that if one guy rejects me that I like, it doesn’t mean that everything is over. It can feel like that sometimes when I will meet a bunch of people one week and then nobody the next week. But just when I think that I will never match with someone else online, I match with someone and have a fun first date! I’ve never been a big dater before so I’m not used to this pattern. But I’m trying to realize that this is just the way it is, no matter who you are and what you look like.

Even though in the dating world I have to fight this voice in my head saying I might be unloveable, I’m so lucky that I don’t have to fight that voice when it comes to my friends. And having great friends while navigating the online dating world is so important. I sometimes need to rant after a really horrible date or talk to someone about a really great date.

And because I know how important it is to be careful, I have a friend who I send details of who I’m meeting before I meet them. I usually send her their name, phone number, where I’m meeting them, and a screenshot of their profile. I joke that this gives her what she needs in case something happens to me. But I really haven’t felt unsafe on any dates which is good too. In the past, it seemed like my bad dates outweighed the good ones. I don’t know if I’m being picker now or what, but most of my dates are now good ones. And I have met guys who I would like to keep seeing but that just hasn’t happened yet. But “yet” is the key to that sentence and I’m trying to stay hopeful.

I’m sure that having the voice in my head saying that I’m unloveable is part of the problem in my dating life in the past. I just never realized that before and let it keep affecting me. But now that I’m able to do more reflection on myself I’m glad that I have realized this and am now able to make some changes in my attitude so I don’t have to let this voice in my head control things from now on.

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“Unapologetic” (or Being A Documentary Subject)

Posted on May 9, 2017 | Comments Off on “Unapologetic” (or Being A Documentary Subject)

Sometimes, I feel like fate guides me to go places because I am really meant to be there for some other reason. And this is a story of fate directing me that I’m so proud of.

Not too long ago, I attend a SAG-AFTRA panel on diversity. Originally, there was no way I could attend that panel because I would have either still been in the hospital after surgery or just home from the hospital. And even without having surgery, that was during the time that my parents were in town so I was sure I’d be busy with them that evening. But I ended up having the evening free and was able to attend and I loved it!

Everyone on the panel was incredible and I got to meet many of them at the reception after the panel. And one of the panelists that I got to talk to more than others was Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez, who is a stunt performer. I knew after listening to her on the panel that I wanted to see about getting her on the Inside Acting Podcast, so I pitched her at the reception. After talking to her about the podcast I gave her my card. I only had my personal/acting/blogging card but since that has all my contact information on it I always seem to give it out. And when I did, Michelle noticed the name of this blog on the card.

She immediately told me about an amazing documentary that she’s producing called “Unapologetic”. And as soon as she sent me the synopsis, I knew immediately that I wanted to be a part of this!

“Unapologetic”: Why apologize for a body frame that doesn’t fit in a very narrow measurement of subjective definitions of beauty? In this documentary we will explore the opinions, struggles, and accomplishments of numerous women that not only broke the mold, but also opened the door for other women to feel empowered in their own natural beauty.

I was so honored that Michelle and her producing partner, Sarah, asked me to be interviewed for this project! I would have loved to help out in any way but to be one of the subjects was so much more than I expected. Of course, I immediately said yes and this past weekend I was interviewed for “Unapologetic”.

When I arrived, Michelle was still doing her own interview so I got to listen to her story and get an idea of the questions that were going to be asked of me when I was in front of the camera.

When it was my turn, I got miked up and ready to go. Most of the questions were pretty easy for me to answer and are things that I talk about on here (body image, my eating disorder, my fitness journey, acting) but there were plenty of questions that made me stop and think really hard about how I wanted to answer it. In answering some of the questions, I learned a lot about myself and realized new things that I never thought about before. It was really an amazing self-discovery journey that happened in front of the camera.

I do think that I am pretty unapologetic for myself. I am who I am and I know that I’m not going to make everyone happy at all times. But all I can do is to make myself happy and make sure I’m not hurting others in that process. But another part of being unapologetic is to not be apologizing for yourself or saying sorry all the time. I’m totally guilty of saying “sorry” when I don’t need to and it’s a bad habit that I’ve been working on stopping. There are so many articles on why women say sorry so often, and I know that I totally fit into that stereotype.

I even apologized after my interview for the documentary was done. I was saying that I was sorry for rambling and talking too much. It’s so ironic that I finished being interviewed for a project called “Unapologetic” by apologizing! But I know that fixing this constant apologizing habit takes a lot of time and I haven’t been working on it as hard as I should be.

I was interviewed on the first day of interviews, so this film may not be coming out for a while. Of course I will keep you all posted on any updates I have on the film because I want you to be able to check it out! I only know 2 of the stories in it (mine and Michelle’s) and I really want to hear what everyone else had to say. It’s such a powerful topic and I know that I will learn so much from everyone else!

Thank you again to Michelle, Sarah, and the entire crew of “Unapologetic” for asking me to participate! I had the best time on set and you were all awesome! It’s still crazy to me that people want to hear my story because I feel like I’m not that unique. But maybe by speaking openly about my experience that is what is unique about me. I’m not scared to share the good, bad, and the ugly about my life and I hope that others will be able to relate and feel understood or not alone.

Now I’m just going to have to be patient to find out when this is done and ready to share with the world!

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Feeling Secure (or Not Letting Past Jobs Make Me Feel Bad Anymore)

Posted on June 26, 2015 | Comments Off on Feeling Secure (or Not Letting Past Jobs Make Me Feel Bad Anymore)

I’ve always had confidence issues with my day jobs. I’m not quite sure what set it off to begin with. The after school jobs I had in high school and college were fine (although my high school job did expose me to TB but that wasn’t too much of an issue). And while it’s always tough to find good day jobs, I’ve found several that work out for me.

But for as long as I can remember, if a boss at a day job wanted to talk to me, I was so sure that I was being let go or I did something horribly wrong.

I have had some horrible day jobs, but nothing that made them horrible was something that I brought on to myself. I had one boss who was very verbally abusive and threatened me when I questioned something that turned out to be insurance fraud. I left that job after my boss said that I really should die (and sadly, I never reported anything because I didn’t know that I should). I’ve had bosses who were awesome for a week or two, but then required me to take a class at a place of worship for me to continue working for them. I’m fine with continuing education, but I don’t want to be forced to take the class inside of someone’s church. And I’ve had bosses who were just outright mean to me and talked about my weight loudly behind my back so I could hear it.

Even though I didn’t deserve any of those things to happen to me, somehow I have it in my head that it is my fault. I’ve compared myself to a puppy who came from an abusive situation and is now in a good home. I don’t know how to react with good things and I’m always assuming that I’m doing something bad.

I’ve been pretty lucky with my box office job. Even though I work alone in my house, I do get feedback from time to time. My manager lets me know when things are going well and when I have to email different locations about things, I do get praised for taking initiative.

With my new job, it’s a little more difficult and easier at the same time. It’s easier because I used to work for this boss before and she knows my confidence issues with work. She’s happy to reassure me that I’m doing the right thing and knows that I’m very paranoid about it all. But it’s more difficult because there is less feedback because so much of this job is creating the procedure to get things done. So there’s really no way to know if I’m doing things “right” or not until we figure out that it isn’t working.

Because I’m finally feeling more comfortable that I’m not going to be fired tomorrow at either of my day jobs (seriously, I’ve felt like that every day for forever), I’m trying to readjust my feelings and thoughts about day jobs. This is not just a situation where I’m working because I need a job. The companies I work for need me too. I’m a valuable employee and not disposable (although I have had people in the past say that I am always going to be a disposable employee).

Hopefully by rebuilding my day job confidence I can just do better in my work and be able to focus at the tasks I need to get done and not have to worry about if I will still be working tomorrow.

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