My Story In 100 Bullets

1. I graduated from The University of Florida in 2003 with a degree in Journalism.
2. At the time I was also a single mom of two very small boys.
3. We lived in Gainesville where I worked in medical research and hated it.
4. I decided to move back to my hometown of Miami, Florida and I began looking for a job.
5. I never found one but I had to make a decision so I moved anyway.
6. My sons and I moved in with my Mama.
7. Their daddy lived in Orlando.
8. I finagled my way into a position at a local newspaper where I worked as an Executive Assistant to the Publisher.
9. I loved every minute of it although the pay was ridiculously low.
10. I wrote my own column, contributed news stories as well as organized events and re organized the HR department. I was in administrative heaven.
11. I asked for a raise and my publisher promised to give me one. When she didn’t I called her out on it and she told me to “Kiss her ass!”
12. I quit.
13. Living with my Mama, with my two sons and no job was hard. I slept on the couch and started temping and worked at Express.
14. The job climate in Miami is hard to break into if you don’t know Spanish.
15. I then worked for a customer service company at night and during the day I temped at a private school.
16. They were so impressed with me that they hired me full-time and I began working as an assistant in the Development (Fundraising) office.
17. I loved meeting all the wealthy and successful people and the perks of the job. We’d basically plan parties and give gifts and be nice so that we could meet our $10 million dollar campaign goal.
18. Two months after I started working there and one year after I first moved in with my Mama, I was able to move and get my own place.
19. It was beautiful and spacious and the rent was so high. But it was a good neighborhood and the neighborhoos elementary school was good so I didn’t mind spending more than half my income on rent.
20. I wasn’t dating at the time because I was afraid of men. My relationship with my children’s father was emotionally and verbally abusive, but now I realize that I allowed it so it’s not all his fault.
21. I spent my nights wishing I could become a real journalist and write stories in magazines and newspapers and be on TV like I’d always planned. Blogging was the closest I got to accomplishing my dream.
22. My sons were growing up and I was happy to be there with them.
23. I was never a good cook or housekeeper but they would always eat whatever I made for them and tell me it was good. I loved that!
24. Their Dad moved to Miami to work at a law firm and he started taking the boys every other weekend.
25. This led to idle time and I started dating men again.
26. No real drama. I just realized that I’m not good at dating.
27. I wanted to have a stronger relationship with God but I didn’t know how.
28. When I first started seeking God I was in college and I joined this spiritually abusive church. 29. I was full blown indoctrinated in it and under their control.
30. Breaking away from that church caused me to never want to attend church again.
31. But I still had a desire to know God so I decided to ask Him to reveal Himself to me without the interference of anyone else.
33. For the first time ever, I stood up to my children’s father’s abuse by getting a restraining order against him. It was the first time that I said NO MORE and it felt good to be free from all the insults and negativity.
34. Almost a year after I started working at the private school I began to feel the itch for writing professionally.. Blogging wasn’t doing it for me, I knew that I could do more.
35. So when 2006 came I decided to see if I could become a freelance writer. I wrote to many freelance writers asking for advice and I wrote to publications asking if I could write for them but most told me to come back when I had more experience.
36. Some of the freelancers wrote me back to encourage me but others didn’t.
37. I got my first break when a woman who worked for Trick Daddy’s label asked me to write artist bios for a new group he was developing. I wrote them for free.
38. This led to other artist bios and I was encouraged.
39. So I started pitching myself to other publications but no one wanted me because I had no experience.
40. One day I had a story idea and I decided to pitch it to the BIG DOGS, The Miami Herald. I called them up and told them my idea and they weren’t too thrilled when I offered to write the story but they gave me a chance.
41. I ROCKED THAT STORY!
42. I started writing for them too.
43. I started writing for online publications and dreaming of expanding my areas of expertise.
44. I got itchy at work as an assistant and applied for a job at a PR agency which I got.
45. I left my cushy job at the private school. There was stability there but no room for growth.
46. I started at the PR firm and I hated it. I was bored and the assignments were too easy. 47.My checks would come up short when I had to miss days to take care of my kids when they were sick and that hurt my finances even more.48. Their Daddy was not paying any child support by this time. The system sucks!
49. One day the President of the company called me in and told me, “I think I’m holding you back. You have too much of an entrepreneurial spirit. You need to be doing your own thing.” Yep. She fired me. With no warning.
50. Two kids. No child support. A HELLUVA RENT NOTE to pay and no job.
51. I became sick. Literally. I spent a week in the hospital and I got out on my 27th birthday.
52. No job. No one was hiring me. I couldn’t take jobs that would start too early in the morning because I had no one to depend on to take care of my kids. 53. I couldn’t work too far away because I had no one to pick them up after school. Stuck.
54. My friend Tamara invited me to move to Atlanta. She was about to move in with her fiancé and her apartment would be empty. She offered it to me, rent free for four months.
55. I took a long time to consider because I didn’t want to leave Miami and I never wanted to live in Atlanta.
56. I felt like I had no other choice. I had to see what would happen in Atlanta.
57. I packed my boys up to take a trip there but before we could leave their Daddy offered to keep them until I found a job. I felt that this was wise so I had him sign a contract stating that he would give me my kids back when I am settled and I left my boys with him.
58. I went to Atlanta on a Friday and on Monday morning I started my job search. By Tuesday afternoon I had my first job offer as the Content Manager of a magazine.
59. I loved everyday although it was a challenge managing PEOPLE and working with an editor who didn’t want to see my success.
60. Eventually she fired me. Yeah…I was shocked too. Call her and ask her about my work ethic if you want to. But…what can I do?
61. I was just about to sign a lease for my own apartment but I didn’t. I’m glad God didn’t allow me to. I didn’t really want to live in Atlanta. I knew it wasn’t the city for me.
62. I contacted a man that I had met through my interviews at the magazine and asked for his advice on starting my own business. He offered to teach me if I wanted to move to Houston.
I said, “Why not?” And I prepared to move to Houston.
63. Everyone thought I was crazy because I was making such a big move with nothing but I couldn’t NOT take this risk. I needed to be the captain of my own ship so that I could take care of my sons. Working for people never works out for me because they hate that I work too much and do more than they ask me to do. They always begin to be extremely disrespectful to me. 64.It was a day before I was supposed to move to Houston and I prayed and prayed that God would show up.
65. I had no money to make the drive there and nowhere to live but I didn’t know what else to do. All this time I have been blogging about my life and people have gotten caught up in my story. One of my readers emailed me asking me to meet him at the Lennox Mall and when I met him he handed me an envelope full of money. No strings attached.
66. Another reader gave a donation for gas and I rode out of Atlanta not knowing what was about to happen.
67. I stopped in Louisiana to spend a few days with my friend Ruby and we kicked it small-town style. She offered to ride with me for my first few days in Houston and I was grateful.
68. We rode into the city of Houston and contacted the CEO who had offered me a job and he was nowhere to be found. He never showed up or tried to meet me.
69. Ruby and I hung around the city for two days trying to get to know the roads and looking for a place to stay. We slept in the Houston Youth Hostel and it was clean and fun.
We drove back to Louisiana with a story to tell but no concrete idea on what I would do next.
70. I decided to go to Houston and try my luck at finding a job.
71. I drove back on Martin Luther King’s birthday. I was going to live with a family in Katy, Texas and be their nanny in exchange for room & board.
72. I couldn’t believe that I had to clean and watch kids, but I did it. I did their laundry I played with the kids until she told me that she had chosen someone else for the position.
73. I didn’t know what to do. I had no family to run back to. I could only move forward.
74. I put an ad on the internet asking for a place to stay, explaining my situation. Plenty of people in Houston contacted me and I chose to stay with a professor because of the location of his house.
75. I moved in and things were fine for a while. He was cool but it wasn’t a good situation for me. 76. I ended up leaving in the middle of the night with nowhere to go.
77. I went to a shelter for homeless women and laid down, but I didn’t sleep.
78. The next day I got a call from another woman who had seen my ad and she asked me to come stay with her.
79. I stayed with her and continued looking for work and I found a job at The Breakfast Klub a Black owned restaurant in Houston.
80. I loved it, except…I’m not a physical labor type of chick and that job had me bent over every night from standing on my feet.
81. Before I could freak out I heard back from the publisher of a newspaper and she hired me to be a reporter for her newspaper.
82. I moved out of the woman’s house and moved into the hostel where I lived for a month like a traveler, choosing my clothes from my trunk every night.
83. During my time at the newspaper I interviewed Obama over the phone, I interviewed Naomi Campbell at a fashion show and I really expanded my skillset as a journalist.
84. But that job wasn’t a good fit for me because my publisher didn’t like my writing too much and I began to feel defeated. No one had ever challenged my writing skills before.
85. A chance encounter as I covered a Power Summit for the newspaper introduced me to a gentleman who was the president of a company in Dallas. I checked out his company’s website and saw a job that I would be perfect for. I didn’t apply at first because I was exhausted from moving but I couldn’t stop thinking about it so I applied and forgot about it, struggling at work.
86. The job in Dallas was a prominent website and I had no idea what a perfect fit it was for me until I had my first phone interview.
87. All of my skills lined up with what they needed and I felt certain that I would get the job.
88. I decided to visit the city of Dallas to see what it was like and I arranged a 2nd interview for that day. I knew enough not to jump into a job without checking it out first.
89. I drove into the city of Dallas having never been to the city before and knowing no one. I checked into a hostel and went on my interview. It was cool. The women there were very pretty and young looking.
90. That day I decided that I would stay in Dallas. Why not? I began looking for other jobs to apply for, but not really because I knew that I was perfect for the job with the website.
91. They called and hired me and I visited my sons in Miami the weekend before I started working.
92. When I left them I had to remind myself that if I can just find my way in the world doing something that I am good at then I can take care of them better and be more stable.
93. They were doing well with their Daddy but we missed each other so much and I experienced many nights of agony because of all of this moving and being alone with no one to support me or hug me.
94. But I sucked it up and began working at the website and soon found the job to be just like the rest of my jobs in the past; easy.
95. But I loved this job more because it combined my favorite past-times, blogging and writing.
Soon the same scenario repeats itself. My superiors start complaining that I’m working too hard and I’m doing too much and I’m fed up with the corporate atmosphere so I leave.
96. All of my friends freak out and chastise me but I tell them that “My life is MY LIFE and I will not be unhappy or disrespected in the work place. I only have one life to live and I will keep moving until I find a company that values my overzealousness or I create my own way to support myself.”
97. No one understands or approves but they realize that I am going to do what I want to do. I realize at this point that I don’t need anyone’s approval to make decisions anymore. I trust myself to make the best decisions for my life.
98. I began looking for other positions in other cities but none have contacted me back.
I decided to work on my own dream which is to have a website dedicated to helping people in the way that I wish I had been helped. I wanted to build a website that will encourage people to go for their dreams and not waste a moment of life thinking that dreams can’t come true.
99. All of my wild experiences have taught me so much about life and going after my vision and I want to share the life lessons I have learned with everyone. I’m not sure how this will turn out but I know this is one of the ways that I plan to use the gift of writing and inspiration that God gave me.
100. I hope you will join in and Share My Dream by daring to accomplish yours.
Pray for me because I’m still holding on to the belief that my vision for a stable life, happiness with my children and the ability to give my gift to people who appreciate it will come true.