My Goals for 2011

1. Read More

      I often times let myself get side-tracked by the plethora of television shows I watch every week. Instead of only making time to watch TV, I need to make time to pick up this old habit that I love - reading! I have so many books I want to read, and I keep asking for books that I want to read, so I need to make time to read them! I also need to keep up with my Entertainment Weekly magazines, instead of letting them build up for five weeks on the coffee table before reading them all at once.

2. Write More

     I love to write. I majored in English. I've dappled in various blogs or online diaries and journals, but I never write like I used to. If you saw me in middle school and high school, a day never went by where I didn't work on writing a story. I was always writing. I got really beaten up during college over my writing, the topics I chose to write about, and the dumb details, like character names. I always felt like because my stories actually related to things that had happened in my own life, I took the harsh criticism from my peers personally. Now that I finished school, I have no excuse. I need to start writing much more frequently, even if it's something no one else ever reads. If I want to ever have a book published one day, I need to write consistently.

3. Use our Nintendo Wii to work out, by playing Michael Jackson: The Experience or Zumba at least 3-4 times a week.

     I have become far too lazy. I spent a summer sitting inside and the fall and winter sitting at a desk for 8+ hours a day staring at a computer screen. The time has come to get back into shape. While I am not overweight by any means, there are parts of me that could definitely use some toning. So, since I hate to run and am terrified of exercising in public, why not make use of some great Christmas presents and keep in shape from the comforts of my own home?

4. Stop eating so much fast food and cook more.

      Let's face it. Fast food is convenient. It's addicting. It's delicious. But, it's a new year. (Okay, I know - it's been a new year for almost a month now). I have already taken a step in the right direction. I made lasagna! Obviously, I can't very well make lasagna for dinner every night, but I felt like I conquered something with that first pan of lasagna. Now, I need to make use of more Christmas presents - new cookbooks!

5. Have a more positive attitude.

     I tend to let negativity get the best of me at times. Instead of following my motto of "Everything happens for a reason," I often sit and dwell on the bad things in life instead of moving on and focusing on the positive. Granted, some things, you just can't figure out the reason for right away, but I have to tell myself that eventually, I will figure it out. There's no reason to sit around and feel sad. Tomorrow is always another day.

Back to the World of Unemployment

Last May, I quit my job without having another one in place. (Not smart, I know). I was hurt by a lot of things going on, and it just wasn't a positive work environment for me anymore. So, just two short weeks before my wedding, I left my position as an Assistant Manager at the movie theater I'd worked at for seven-and-a-half years.

I thought I would be able to easily find a job. I'm young, I have a degree, I'm a fast learner - why wouldn't I be able to find a job? Well, the economy sucks, people who have degrees and more experience are settling for entry level jobs and a lower pay rate just to make a living, and any job I could possibly find that was something related to my English major that I thought I'd be interested in required years of experience I didn't have. Needless to say, my hunt was going nowhere until I received a message from an old colleague asking if I was interested in full-time employment. After that, I went through an incredibly long process and ended up with a different position than I'd originally applied for, but it was a job, nonetheless.

While sitting in a cubicle conducting phone interviews and employment reference checks was never something I envisioned myself doing, I quickly found that the people I worked with made the job worthwhile, and I had a great boss who always seemed to be in a good mood and regularly said thank you. It wasn't easy to adjust to an 8-5:00 schedule five days a week, but the time went by quickly, and before I knew it, Jeans Friday rolled around each week, and then I had a whole weekend to sleep in and recover before heading back to work again on Monday morning.

In December, we even got to work overtime! I was so excited! It was the first time I'd been able to earn overtime for working more than 40 hours, and I worked through my lunches and stayed an hour later a few days out of each week. Right before Christmas, my boss sent around an e-mail letting us all know we could take whatever time off we wanted for the holidays because things would be slowing down and picking back up again at the start of the year.

Things didn't pick up for the client I was working on. Before I knew it, seven people had been laid off, and I had no security blanket left. Despite being hired with in weeks of one another, all in a row, the last person to be laid off was the one who started the week after myself and the other person that started the same day as me. It was getting too close for comfort.

Last week Friday, we had a meeting for the second day in a row, but this time, my boss let the remaining six of us left working on that client that they had decided to stop using us for their hiring. He said they would look into trying to find us new positions, but that everything would be wrapping up by February 1st and he'd keep us posted on the details.

I sent a couple of e-mails throughout the week to ask my boss questions in order to find out more information about my impending layoff. When he asked for my resume and the resume of the other person who started the same day as I did, we both thought we were important and that it meant something. Then, that all changed Thursday afternoon. The three of us with the later hire dates were sent e-mails telling us Friday would be our last days, and my boss would give us a call if there was any more work for us to come back and do. For the two of us whose resumes he'd asked for, I quickly realized it wasn't because we were any better than the others - he knew we'd be the ones getting laid off. Meanwhile, the three of them were able to switch over to a different client and continue to work there.

I know that I can't take this personally. Things went strictly according to dates of hire, no matter how close to one another those dates are. It wasn't that I loved my job, but I quickly became attached to the people there. I was just getting comfortable with everyone and not as scared to sit with them to eat lunches in the break room. I got extremely close to three other people - one of which is the one I started with. I was surprised at how easily the friendship came for the four of us, but it was the three of them that made work so much fun. Now that two of them got to stay, it made it harder to leave. Prior to Thursday, I thought we were all in it together. Learning that wasn't the case just made me feel bad about myself.

Surprisingly, not long after I received the dreaded e-mail, I got a voicemail from someone at another branch from the same company I work for. He wanted to talk to me about a position there, so I called him back right away and set up an interview for this Tuesday morning at 10. This office would be farther away from my house and bump my commute to work up to 20 minutes instead of 12, but at this point, I need a job, so I am going to see what this is all about.

It just feels like sometimes, there's nothing you can do about how things end up. Leaving this job was harder because it wasn't my choice to leave, and I was still happy there. I can only hope the job hunt this time around is more successful than last time and that I find something sooner that makes me just as happy and is something I enjoy. Is that too much to ask?

All About Angela

Today, I got to thinking, and I decided I wanted to start fresh and begin writing a brand new blog. I write articles - mainly television show recaps and reviews - for another website, but my topic is restricted to television shows or articles related to television, and I always feel like there's more I'd like to write about. I majored in English in college, I love to write, and I am no stranger to the world of blogging, so I figured, why not try something different?

While I am constantly known as someone who always has shows to clear off her DVR, I am also someone who has a tendency to want to share my opinions on everything. Give me a topic, and I can talk about pretty much anything. I also can write about pretty much anything.

My goals for this blog are going to be to share my opinions on everyday occurrences, including ones in my own life, in addition to posts about television shows, movies, or books where I can give recaps, reviews, or my own opinions about what is going on. I won't restrict myself to just one topic when I have the freedom to write about anything I want.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave those. It may take a couple of weeks to get things going, but I hope to get more out of this blog than I have with others and to make this into something readers enjoy coming back to check in on on a regular basis.