ENDING A CHAPTER…
As I write this summary about myself, I am 3 days away from ending the professional life that I have worked extremely hard to cultivate since I graduated from undergrad in 1995. From the time of my first job as an analyst at a publicly-traded real estate investment trust, I have always taken the time to dream about my ideal job, at the “peak” of my career. Doing so, helped me to acquire the skills and experiences in the shorter-term that would help me with a longer term plan. Almost one year ago from the time of this posting, I joined a new company and pretty much landed my “dream job”.
“Do you know a good way to make God laugh? Tell him your plans!” – Sean Penn, Actor
My daughter was born in the second half of 2007. I — and what I wanted from my time — didn’t change immediately after she was born. From after she turned 6 months old, however, accompanied by the slowing business activity in the first half of 2008 and then the unraveling economy in the latter half of 2008, my outlook began to change significantly.
Towards the end of 2008, after having about 1.5 years to juggle both a full-time job outside the home and motherhood, I realized that I was never going to do either job to the standard at which I was used to “performing.” That would always limit my happiness.
Since my job satisfaction was going to be much less going forward (due not only to me having less time and energy for it but also the recession), it became obvious that it was not worthwhile for me to miss out on this special time with my daughter. So I resigned, which was a very hard decision for many reasons. Most importantly, my career had significantly shaped my identity and self-esteem.
WRITING THE NEXT CHAPTER…
Fortunately, one benefit of being a dreamer is that one generally has more than one dream. In addition to wanting to be a wonderful mother and to have a wonderful family life, I have always hoped to build my own business. I’ve always been highly motivated to do whatever it takes to create value.
Building a Business
I first learned more about blogging through my brilliant brother during our Christmas vacation in 2008. (His blog is www.mysavingcents.com. As a poor medical student for many years, my brother has been proactively looking for ways to save money on cool things, such as iPhone,- Mac-, and AT&T- related things. He shares his money saving tips on his blog.) My knee-jerk reaction was to use a blog as a tool to help me manage my household and research. I quickly learned from talking to my brother that this could actually become a business. So, since I am a business person, I’m thrilled at the opportunity to build a business around what I care most about: providing my daughter with the healthiest foundation possible.
I’ve really enjoyed learning more about blogging technology (could never have learned without my brother’s help!), Twitter, Facebook, Google (am totally BLOWN AWAY by Google!), Amazon, … and am thrilled for the opportunity to build a business from scratch. If I learn meaningful things, I may start a blog about my business experiences as well. In the meantime, please be patient as I continue to improve this site. I will finally be able to focus on this more once my “corporate” career wraps up!
From a business perspective, my current goals are to nurture a supportive community of like-minded individuals and grow an email subscriber base. So a valuable way you could support my business is to sign up for the FREE email subscription! For those who share the same values and perspective on health, the intention of this site is to save us time in figuring out what to buy for our home and what to feed ourselves and our families so as to minimize the likelihood that health issues will limit our quality of life.
Parenting
I believe that our choices create “butterfly effects” to various degrees. It’s hard to know which ones will create a life-altering impact. In regards to parenting, I would be forever devastated if one day my daughter developed a chronic illness, cancer, or was harmed in another way, because of an uninformed choice of mine. We can’t control many things (including health issues), but I need to know that I’ve done my best for her. I have been very lucky in my life by living by the mantra that luck is when preparation meets hard work. Right now, my daughter is the most important responsibility I have.
To those who say or think, “well, I grew up with my parents not worrying about the chemicals in our food and environment and I turned out fine,” I also thought the same thing. But if you start reading more about this topic (such as Alarming Trends, Personal Care Products, and Cleaning Products), you’ll find some thought-provoking things. Did you know that since WWII more than 80,000 new chemicals have been introduced into the world? We now live in a different environment and it’s going to take a very long time for the scientists and government to have evidence of the harmful implications of that fact. I don’t need an authoritative agency to tell me what I instinctively know: children (and adults) are being exposed to too many unnatural things.
Taking this “value system” and implementing it into practice has been very hard. As I stumble through figuring out this challenging and fortunate journey of parenting, I hope that sharing my experiences on this blog will help like-minded people to more quickly make healthier choices for ourselves. I hope that parents will think twice about what they buy and feed their kids (if they don’t already) so that their children and families are better positioned for the highest quality of life possible, which is grounded by good health.
I am FAR from an expert! I have moments of second-guessing this blog because I don’t want to come across as an expert in anything. I’m just trying to navigate a tremendous amount of information and figure out what products to buy and what to feed my daughter. Help is warmly welcomed!!
Please feel free to reach out to me at MsS@theSfile.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Best,
Ms. S
