"mommy no work?"

as i continue to work on making my blog look less "blah," i find myself wondering what would be an interesting thing to blog about! is my sandwich interesting enough? perhaps my son's latest tantrum. people relate to that stuff right? ugh. so much pressure!

but then i remembered that no one is really reading this yet and i have the rest of my life (or for as long as blogs stay relevant) to write about anything i want!

so let's go ahead and start with the fact that i'm sitting at my desk at my new-ish job, pretending to work, but blogging instead :] my manager called in sick today which definitely made it feel like a "woohoo! i can do anything i want and leave early!" kind of day. i was planning on leaving around lunch and working the rest of the day at home (a HUGE perk when you have a kid at home!) but then suddenly task after task, email after email, issue after issue, i found myself being quite productive and self sufficient! i know that's the way it's supposed to work, but it felt nice being able to handle things and answer questions about my business on my own.

in case you were wondering, i am currently a Merchandise Coordinator (by contract) for Old Navy Online Maternity. i know it doesn't sound too glamorous, but it's exactly where i want to be. i worked for Gap Inc. in stores for about 5 years at Banana Republic and Old Navy, starting as a Sales Associate and working my way up with In-Store Merchandising and 2 internal internships under my belt. i never got to finish my degree (something i still plan on pursuing) which made following my dream pretty tough. not finishing was partially my being a "lost soul" for the first few years, then becoming "unfocused," and then i got knocked up (classy, right?). after Makai was born, i always planned on finishing up, but because of his medical needs (more on that sometime in the future), i found myself too busy and just too caught up in being his mom. needless to say, having no degree and no true product merchandising experience made it difficult to get into the field, which is already pretty competitive as is. but what can i say? i worked hard, kicked butt, networked, linked-in like crazy, and leveraged my experience in-store and passion for product to weasel my way in :] so now i get to merchandise my OWN categories from start to finish, own part of this million dollar business, and see my work come to fruition on a billion dollar website that thousands of people traffic daily.

yes, it is a contract, but at the end of the day, if i don't magically find a job here at the end like i've always dreamed, i'll have active merchandising experience under my belt! and that's exciting! building up my resume and my linked-in profile is always a plus. 

the only tough part to this new gig is being away from Makai for so long :[ it was EXTREMELY difficult in the beginning (duh). he would cry every time that i would leave, and i mean, how do you leave a crying kid that says "don't go mommy! please don't go!" ugh. it's freaking heartbreaking! but i know that in the end i'm doing this for him and the time away has gotten easier. i've learned to tell him that i have work when i put him to sleep at night so that it's not a surprise when he wakes up. and ultimately he's figured out that i always come home, and almost always in time to put him to bed myself. he still wakes up sometimes and asks "no work mommy?? no work? stay home??" but when i say that i do, he understands and gives me a kiss goodbye.

new goal: get paid major bucks doing nothing/something easy so i can stay at home with my family :]