I Am a Badass

Don’t ask me where, but I stumbled upon this book not too long ago. It is aptly titled You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, by Jen Sincero.

First of all, you should know that I am an avid hater of any book with even the faintest whiff of self-help to it. If ever I find myself at a vulnerable state in life during which one might find themselves seeking guidance and answers to “what does it all meeeaan? When will it all get betttterrrrrr?” I tend to just have an extra mimosa while sitting in the sunshine and eventually I feel okay again.

But last year I found myself reading a book by an author whose work I greatly admire, Anne Lamott, called Help Thanks Wow, which I quickly realized was helping me to see a different perspective on ways that I could perhaps better myself…goddammit that sneaky bitch! I allowed myself to take a step back and acknowledge that I’d been tricked – TRICKED, I say! – into enjoying a self-helpy-ish book. Sure, the subtitle of The Three Essential Prayers might have tipped me off, but as a follower of Lamott’s writing for the past dozen years or so, I knew I ran the risk of some God-speak when reading her work, so I wasn’t really paying close attention to the cover itself. Oops, my bad.

Gol-dangit, though, it seems Anne opened up a teeny tiny small little pinprick of consideration toward the idea that maybe – if it wasn’t written too dryly or hyperly or spacey or new agey – just maybe I could open myself up a little bit to enlightenment.

Not that I needed it or anything, because, psh.

So somewhere, somehow, I stumbled upon this book (actually I know exactly where I came across it – while perusing the ‘Freshly Pressed’ blogs featured on WordPress. Someone else wrote about coming across the book, too. But I found that person’s review steeped in ‘hey this book had some bad words but I guess I can forgive that and even though I’m a good Christian girl I was still able to take some interesting things out of it, and allow me to now relate those things back to Bible verses so you’ll know I haven’t crossed into the dark side’…so I decided to forget the name of that particular blog post and blogger, and to just buy the damn book myself, given my penchant for the dark side and swear words and all).

Now I own the book. And I’m reading the book. And since this is the first day of 40 Days of Writing, I thought I’d tell you about said book, thus setting myself up for possible follow-up posts during this session because hey, this ain’t my first 40 Day Rodeo (third round, people, and I’m still on this bull), and I know that I might need something to draw from around day 25 or so.

In a nutshell, the book has been good so far. There are warnings about how as I journey toward my newly-stated goals, The Universe will throw up road blocks just so I don’t think that pleasantries will be simply handed to me on a silver platter. Lesson learned, Universe!

No but seriously. I realized while reading the book that the things I’d asked The Universe for a while ago had all come to me, kind of without my noticing or, more importantly, without my acknowledging. As kind of a reminder, The Universe decided to fuck with me a little bit.

But I was undeterred. And guess what? That one thing that I’d asked for in a list of things all those months ago? The one thing out of a list of five that hadn’t come to me and had, in fact, made itself even more scarce than it’d been before, as if that was even possible? Money. Money!! Why does it vex me so?!

So I said “okay then. Back then I asked for it halfheartedly because I hate asking for it, but fuck it – balls to the wall – I want to make more money! I want to make money doing something that I want to be doing! I want to be able to keep my job and make money at my job!” etc etc, you get the point.

Then guess what happened? GUESS!!

*disclaimer – I am super-scared of jinxing things and so I almost don’t want to talk about this because none of it has actually happened yet so very well may fizzle into nothing…but my new book talks about, like, believing in shit that isn’t actually real as if it were real, so, here you go*

1. I answered an ad for a woman who wants a “Social Media Pro and Blogger Extraordinaire” and well, hey, that’s me. Basically I’d be writing a blog about her business, as well as posting for her on Facebook and Twitter and whatnot. Um….hell YES I can do that! Aaaaaaand I can do it while I’m at my day job. Blammo!! We’ve done some back-and-forth and have a meeting set up. Basically, it’s exactly what I was asking for.

2. This is the one that blows my motherloving mind. A couple of days ago my Social Media instructor told me they were looking for people to help teach the class I’d just taken at the JC, and was I interested? I was like “wait, so you want me to teach the class I just took last semester? Um, hell to the YES I’m interested!!”

We, too, will be meeting soon to talk details.

So…yeah. Things are happening. And hey, don’t even get me started on my car situation! (see what I did there? Set myself up for future 40 Days writing, that’s what).

I’ll keep you posted, *wink*. In the meantime, I have some reading to do.

 

 

Photos of Amanda & her new favorite book courtesy of Suzanne Karp Photography