Hi everyone,
It's Saturday and I have the whole day to myself. I've been super busy with both work, play and family stuff. I've missed you guys but I've literally been in motion nearly every minute that I wasn't sleeping!
@Cele21what wonderful news! Sounds like you will have a lot to look forward to and some great time with your daughter planning for all of the events!
@CJ_Herewow, that's tough. I'm sorry to hear that it's come to this but it is good news that you have time to prepare for it. On the other side, travel is so enriching - I long for the freedom to do that and look forward to it some day! I'm sorry to hear about your sister too - that's so scary!
Some highlights and lowlights:
My ex-boyfriends birthday is Halloween. Months ago I purchased a ticket to an event through a company called Clued Up that I thought might make a fun activity for him that we could invite some of his friends to because he really liked when I took him and some friends to an escape room. It's kind a live action role play murder mystery thing that they do in cities around the world. This one took place in historic Old Town Manassas. Using their phone app, you interview witnesses, find clues and piece together the story. Since I already had the ticket for up to 6 people, I invited some friends and we had a blast. It was a beautiful mild fall day and we walked all over town. We had a brunch at one of the nicer restaurants there and happy hour at another spot afterward. Costumes were encouraged but I just wore street clothes plus some little kitty ears in my hair. We ran into some other friends of mine also playing the game. It was totally fun!
I've also been upping my Instagram and Facebook postings to focus on clients and potential clients so I've been making more of a point of going out to different spots. Last weekend my best friend Wendy and I drove out to a place near the mountains called Linden and went to The Apple House which is famous for their apple cider doughnuts. We got bbq, cider, a fall mule cocktail made with hard cider and of course doughnuts. I just uploaded a couple of images to both websites. I've committed to doing one post on each per week. Anyway, I'm getting so much more interaction - tons of likes, picking up followers, it's crazy. The reason I'm doing this is so that I have profiles that support the restaurant industry so I can then use my profiles to prospect and get appointments with restaurant owners. I didn't feel like I had enough quite yet to really get their attention. It seems to be working as I got invited to a hard hat tour of a new hotel opening in February in historic Haymarket and the CEO that invited me called me an influencer. Me! An influencer! Kind of cracks me up!
I still LOVE my job. I'm working hard - later at night and a few hours on the weekend. Last Sunday was my last day at the retail store - I no longer needed the money and the mental commitment plus the time was just getting to be too much given the demands of learning all about IT, credit card processing, financing, etc. But the hard work is paying off as I am getting a little faster, deepening my knowledge and making some bookings. I did a whopping 3 contracts this week. That's huge! Fully ramped, they expect 6 total per month. Now, these are only my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th total contracts since I started 9/13 but they don't expect of us "ramping reps" the volume they expect of those fully ramped. Our ramp period is 3 months from boot camp so for me, through the end of the year. My goal for November to get a bonus is 9 total demos and I did 4 last week alone. I'm still nervous because I don't have any scheduled for next week yet and November is a short month because of the holiday at the end when it will be impossible to get customers to sit down with me. But, I'm at least doing a solid performance - especially for a newbie.
Also, my works HQ and other offices all reopened mid-October. We got virtual tours of all of the cool technology and play places - ping pong and video game lounges, etc - and also their kitchens with gourmet coffees, high quality snacks including organic stuff, etc. Because those of in the field don't get access to all of that, in addition to the $50 technology stipend per month and the $150 wellness stipend per quarter that's automatically added to our paychecks, we are now getting, I can't even type it with a straight face, a $50 "amenities" stipend monthly for snacks and stuff. Wow!
On the downside, my dad has officially been diagnosed with alzheimers. I'm not surprised because I've seen it coming for years but my mom is taking it very hard. My sister is surprised because she thought he was doing fine given his ability to recall obscure facts from long ago but she doesn't seem to understand how the disease progresses. The good thing is that she's moved closer and is now about 45 minutes away from them and maybe an hour away from me so she can help as we need to make changes. Dad is fine - kind, gentle, patient and happy but Mom is completely falling apart so she's actually the one we need to support right now. Having my sister closer and her being a daddy's girl and not so close with mom means that mom can actually come to my place now and then to get away for a while and have something fun to look forward to and my sister can stay with dad.
