BrianandLibby.com

Wow…I got back from Texas last night and I am still trying to process all that happened. From the ridiculousness that was Buddy and I trying to keep the top of our convertible from flying off to the awe of checking out Bay Area Fellowship’s new building to the straight up frightening plane ride from Houston to Corpus Christi…this week was unforgettable.

This week I got to meet men and women that are knocking it out for the Kingdom…Bay Area has an incredible staff who went out of their way to hook us up with resources and make us feel welcome. Can’t wait to continue to hook up with them in the future. I also got the chance to meet other Ed Young from Fellowship Church in Dallas. Huge news about Ed-Northway-and this summer…coming soon!!

The best thing about the week was hanging out with Buddy…I love working for a boss who challenges us daily but also loves to have fun! We made a lot of memories this week. Check out his blog to hear how he scammed 3 bucks out of me on the plane ride home.

I’m unemployed. It feels weird. No worries, I start a new job on Monday, but since I left my old job today, that makes me technically unemployed at the present time, right?

I have lofty plans for my day of unemployment:

• sleep in
• eat breakfast out
• go to the gym in the middle of the day (I’m always jealous of people who get to do that)
• sit outside on the deck and do nothing but listen to the birds and enjoy the SUNSHINE
• watch Gone with the Wind (that one was prompted by the urging of some colleagues who were shocked and somewhat appalled that I’d never seen it)
• Avoid showering or wearing anything but sweats until after 3pm (or later)

What would you do if you had one day completely and utterly to yourself? Reading this back, it doesn’t sound like I treat myself very well. Perhaps I should revise this plan as well.

Last night I had a salad for dinner. I decided recently that I need to eat more salad. If it were up to me and my digestive system could handle it, my diet would consist mostly of grilled cheese, Doritos, mexican food, pasta and pizza. But unfortunately I’m not one of those whose metabolism will accomodate that kind of a calorie count (without going up several sizes) so I do try to eat a “balanced” diet.

Recently my diet hasn’t been as balanced as it should be, so I decided I would go for a new plan of attack: Eat more salad. I decided if I came up with exciting delicious and healthful salads, the plan should work. So last night I bought this new asian ginger dressing (by Newman’s Own - I highly recommend it. Tasty and healthy too) and made a delicious asian chicken salad with red bell peppers, grape tomatoes, rotisserie chicken, those little chow mein noodles and sesame seeds. It was delicious.

Unfortunately I was still hungry afterwards and I ate three “serving” of Doritos. Can that be considered “balanced”? Maybe I need a new plan of attack.

With all the excitement of my new adventure, I forgot to anticipate that I was going to be really sad to leave my job. And guess what, I am! Thursday is my last day and I am becoming extremely nostalgic. This is the last time I’ll have this meeting…this is the last time I’ll go to lunch with this crew…this is the last time I’ll order office supplies…you know how it is! Fortunately the stress of wrapping things up is keeping my mind occupied, but this is still really sad!

Today is the day. Here is how it will go:

7am: shower
8am: breakfast
9am: work the show
11am: start tearing down the booth an hour early
noon: change into FLIP FLOPS
12:10: take the shuttle to DISNEYLAND (did I mention I can see it from my hotel room? Oh yes, I can)

No, you don’t ever get too old for Disney. At least I don’t. I guess Disneyland has 2 parks in the one, the original Disneyland and some “California Adventure”. We convinced our boss to buy tickets to both. Yesssssssssss. See you later! Sorry your day has little hope for being as fun as mine

(Sorry this is such horribly old news now, and that it’s totally anticlimactic since I already kind of broke the news in the last post!)

So I haven’t been able to write about this, for obvious reasons, but I officially quit my job this week. Don’t worry, I have another one lined up. My job has given me great experience over the past four years, but I’ve been thinking about trying another career path for a while now, and I started feeling like it was now or never.

So I started looking for other jobs back in December, but that fizzled for various reasons and I decided to stick around for a few more months. Once I started looking again, I had narrowed my search down to sales jobs. I know it sounds crazy and a lot of people are still raising their eyebrows at me when I tell them, but I think that I might be really good at it. At least that’s what I’m being told (you all better not be lying). Besides, the worst thing that could happen would be that I wouldn’t be good at it, and I’d end up doing something else. No biggie, I’m young…I’ll bounce back. And if I am good, well then that means I’ll have a job I like and am good at and I’ll make more money. So I decided to take the risk.

I quickly found that no one wanted to gamble on hiring (or even interviewing) a field rep without any sales experience. So the leads I was getting were, er, less than desirable. Bad hours, low base salaries…not what I was looking for. I started to wonder if that was just what I’d have to do break into sales. I hoped it wasn’t, but I still wondered!

Then a few weeks ago, we had dinner with Steve and Sissy. Sissy is basically my new life coach! She motivated me to get out there, be confident, and not settle until I got what I wanted. And she even convinced me that I was good enough to be picky! So I decided, what the heck, I will be picky. As it turns out, the better opportunities started coming my way. I turned a couple of them down, and then I found what I was looking for. Higher base, better opportunity, smaller territory close to where I live, solid business, daytime hours only and great flexibility. I was sold!

I’m still pretty nervous when I take the time to think about the immense change this will be for my lifestyle, but I keep reminding myself that was kind of the whole idea in the first place! I really do like my current job and, of course, I love the people I work with. But I wanted to do something where I’d be motivated knowing that there would be rewards for my extra efforts (by rewards of course I mean cashmoney), and something that would offer me much more flexibility and control over my schedule. So, here goes! There’s no turning back now!

It’s true, I am here in Orange County, CA. Well, I think I’m in Orange County. If not, I’m within like 10 miles of it. Either way, I’m here for work, and despite some common misconceptions, I am working VERY hard! We unloaded 8 bookshelves worth of books yesterday in the middle of a 22 hour long day, and we’ll work about 13 hours total on the show floor in our 5 days here. We will also, however, enjoy some serious sunshine, an afternoon at DISNEYLAND and an array of wonderful cuisine. So I guess it balances out.

When I resigned last week (oh yeah, I should have blogged about that by now….so this will seem out of order but I will explain soon) my boss gave me the option of not going on this trip, but I knew they were strapped for people to work the show (and they dangled the DISNEY tickets in front of me one more time) and I couldn’t resist. Besides, it’s always nice to have that break from the norm. I thought it would be a fun way to make my last 2 weeks at Delmar fly by.

Although I was right, and they’re flying (one more week and I’m done there), something else is happening too. Even before I left I started realizing all the things I’m really going to miss about Delmar. Like the nice big office I’ll be exchanging for a 3-4 foot wide cube. And the nice big beautiful office building complete with a gym (which I never use) and a little cafe (which I frequent). But more than anything I’m realizing that I work for and with some great people. Yes, it’s easy to focus on the negatives, but how many people can say that they actually like their jobs? And beyond that, how many can say they genuinely like the people they work with?

Not only have I made tons of great friends at Delmar, even those I’m not great friends with are still great people. The kind of people who will do something to help you out even if it isn’t their job. The kind of people you actually like being with…like the people I’m working with here in California. They’re just good people. And I’ll really miss them.

Although I have become privy to a secret plan they have to use this last week of mine to convince me not to leave next week, I know that I will be gone shortly, and I’m really going to miss them all. Don’t worry, I’m not starting to waver in my plans to leave. I’m definitely still ready to take this next step and get way out of my comfort zone…it’s like my new best friend Colbie Caillat says:

Tied down I’m lookin around,
I know what I want, so don’t hold me down.
But I’m findin that holdin’ on is harder than never leavin’.

This is Steve. I have stolen Libby’s computer. It’s kind of weird writing this right now because I feel like everyone is watching me…mad stage fright. No…seriously, I can’t write. Bye.

Yes, I’m still consuming large amounts of Sugar. You should too. Until you do, I will share with you two very important things I found today:

1. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet will costar in another movie as a romantic duo. Yesssssssss. Considering that I vividly remember each of the four times I saw Titanic in theaters, and the fact that I’m impressed at how both of their careers are in pretty darn good shape ten years later…I’m happy!

2. I love 30 Rock. More importantly, I love Liz Lemmon. Why? She’s the average girl’s Carrie Bradshaw. I’m convinced that there is no real Carrie out there, but I am friends with a handful of Liz Lemmons; in fact I think we all have a little bit of Liz Lemmon inside of us…misunderstood, confused, and consistently making horrible mistakes. Check out this little Liz highlight video…
Best line:
Jenna: “He wanted to buy you a drink”
Liz: “I already have a drink. Do you think he’d buy me mozzarella sticks?”

(I can’t get the video on the page despite the fact that I think I exactly followed WordPress’s instructions…so click here)

Let me tell you a story. Two stories, actually. Which by the end of this post you will hopefully realize the interconnectedness of…and ensuing tragedy.

Story #1
Easter is this weekend. Now I’m not really the shopper in the family. I mean, I’m female, and I love to shop. But I’m also really cheap, so I usually don’t shop unless I really need something, or come across something I like that is available for no more than 70% of its original price (I know, that is the real tragedy). But every year around Easter I usually end up buying myself something new. Maybe it brings me back to childhood when a new season comes around and you’ve grown out of last year’s clothes (sadly, that’s still kind of true…stupid South Beach Diet). Maybe it’s spring and the way I’m itching to get out of turtleneck sweaters. More likely, it’s because Easter’s a pretty big event at Northway, and as excessively vain as it sounds, I usually get some kind of outfit or accessory. I have no explanation. And reading that back, it does sound excessively vain. It is what it is.

So this year I hadn’t thought much about it since I’m, as usual, trying to save money, but I walked into Marshalls last week chatting with Brian about how I wanted one of those suits with the cropped pants b/c they are so cute…and practical (no wait, they’re just cute). And alas, I looked up to find a glorious white Tahari suit with adorable cropped pants. It was ridiculously marked down to about 75% of its original cost. If you know Tahari you probably know that it was still outside of my usual price range (I buy most of my clothes on clearance at Target and JCPenney), but once in a while you have to be a little unreasonable, right? They had my size in the jacket which is pretty amazing in and of itself (the breadth of my shoulders is similar to that of a 12 year old boy, and in most jackets I look like a little girl wearing her mom’s clothes). Although cropped pants don’t usually agree with me, Brian assured me that it looked great and I took it all as a sign from God (and Marshalls) that it had been placed there just for me. How rude would it be of me to not buy it? Besides, if I decided it was ridiculous (or should I say, if I realized it was ridiculous) I could take it back.

I have spent an obscene amount of time in the last week trying to rationalize the purchase…thinking of places I could wear it, convincing myself that it’s a functional addition to my wardrobe, and arguing with friends about whether it’s appropriate to wear a white suit with cropped pants to a bridal shower (someone else’s bridal shower…so far I am losing this argument), since it is one of the very few events I have identified as those I may be able to wear this outfit too.

Story #2
At the dawn of the sixth season of American Idol I was pleased to see my people (my people = anyone brown, particularly those of Indian or Pakistani descent) represented at long last in young hopeful Sanjaya Malakar. Needless to say, my enthusiasm has since waned (and turned to disgust), but the running joke in my house of him being my cousin, and me lookig like him, are still going strong. So strong in fact, that a few weeks ago at a Volunteer Appreciation event at Northway, when Sanjaya came up (b/c we know he always does) Pastor Buddy pointed out to about 300 people that Brian would joke that I look like Sanjaya. Fortunately, a lot of people made a point to tell me they disagreed (maybe I should be nervous that everyone didn’t).

Last night, of course, part of the signature Sanjaya garb that will be rehashed by reality-TV loving America all week was his (hideous) white suit. Do you realize the implications? He has cast an even more negative spin on my already questionable new apparel. I was already only about 40% convinced that I could pull it off. If I wear it this weekend…for Easter services…in which I’ll be singing on stage, to the same people who heard the Sanjaya comment a few weeks ago…

Do I dare?