The Price of Hard Work.
I got my hair done Friday just as a storm was beginning to hit. I am happy with the color and cut. Pardon the fact that it wasn't brushed in this photo. I hadn't gotten my hair dyed professionally in a few years, and I thought it might be nice to treat myself to it and not have to worry about the time and energy it takes when I do it myself. Prior to this, it was about three different faded out colors with half-inch roots because I hadn't touched it in six weeks. I figured that it needed a break from the torture.
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I will take the time the reflect on something that is, I believe, vital to understanding who I am as a person. Growing up, I did not have very many luxuries. We often had to struggle to get by -- to have money to pay the bills, to have food to eat for the following week. We always had a place to live but rarely had the money to buy new clothes. Much of what I wore in my younger years were either gifted to me or second-hand. I had to sacrifice some interests in my teenage years because money wouldn't allow it. When I was given "shopping money," it was usually about $20.
When I was 16, I picked up a part time job. Every Sunday, I would get up at 4:30 a.m. to be to work by 5:30 a.m. at a radio station. I started out with six hours a week, which was cut to five hours. My two-week paychecks were usually $50-60, and if I wanted something, I saved up to buy it myself. I provided my own spending money for the band trip my senior year, I bought my own school clothes, I saved up to buy a VCR and to pay my mom and step-dad for a TV that I could take to college with me.
When I was 18, many things changed for me. I went to college, didn't do so well. I had to take time off, I got pregnant and I got laid off. Pregnancy wasn't so great at the end, since I developed pre-eclampsia, had to be induced four weeks early and almost died. Despite that, I went back to college nine days after I gave birth. A semester later, I transferred back to my original college.
I went through some terrible hell during my first semester back, which I'll spare you the details of. It still rocks me sometimes. But know that I had to go through that going to school fulltime and with an infant to care for. I worked very hard in college. I finally found a major that I would stick with. I graduated with a 3.2 cumulative GPA, a member of the English honorary and with a spot on the deans list.
Four months after graduation, I got my first fulltime job, working as a reporter at a newspaper. I worked there for 14 months, under a great deal of stress making $8 an hour with no overtime pay, before I quit. I did what I had to do to support my family.
After I quit, I used some saved up money and picked up a parttime job working for my grandpa to pay payments on my first car. [You see, I wasn't allowed to get my driver's license growing up because we couldn't afford the insurance or an extra vehicle. When I started working at the paper, they required me to get it. For the time I worked there, I had to drive an old 1988 Chevy S-10 Durango that was on loan to me from my in-laws.] I paid my friend's mom monthly payments on a 2000 Chevy Malibu, despite how tight money was because I knew it was the right thing to do.
At the end of April, the gig with my grandfather became a fulltime job. TJ got hired by him also to do the same thing. We finally had some semblance of financial stability nearly two years after we graduated from college. I was able to pay the car off early. I traded it in for a newer model a few months later. TJ got a new car too. [He had been driving an old 1992 Chevy Blazer, which he crashed taking me to work the year before. So, on top of having many failed attempts to get fulltime employment, he was also short a vehicle. He was working for a state senator parttime and he was driving a car loaned to him by the senator.] We won a bid and got a loan to buy a house, but turned it down because we were going to have to pay $10,000 worth of taxes for the year. Instead, we put our money toward a house that TJ's dad was renovating for us.
I had my breakdown last year, which was followed by other unfortunate events. TJ and I finally got married, which was the best thing. Both of his grandmas died. He got laid off in at the beginning of June. I got laid off at the end. After a few months without a new project, he took a job working as a waiter, which only lasted a couple of weeks, and I took a job work nightshift 11-7, five days a week at a group home for troubled boys making $7.25 an hour. Money was tight to non-existent. I was under a great deal of stress, but I kept doing what I was doing to keep my family above water. TJ got back to work in November at the job he had been working before. A new project for me didn't come until the end of December.
We finally moved out and life started to improve but here's the point in all of this...not without hard work.
My entire life, I have had to work for everything I've wanted. Weight loss, finances, relationships, modeling -- everything! I've never had anything handed to me. I am, for this reason, very ambitious. I know that only I can better my situation. If I don't like something, I try to change it! For this reason, some people will accuse me of being spoiled because they only see that I have something they don't and disregard how hard I worked to get it. I've had people angry at me for making more money than they do, which is really a silly reason to get upset at someone. Some haters will even accuse me of lying because they can't accept any other explanation. I reflect everything they are not. It is not as though I choose to be that way. I do what I do because it's right for me and for those around me. Their naysaying doesn't actually change anything. I still do what I do; I still am what I am. Try as they may, they won't beat me down.