I'm not one to celebrate anniversaries.
Holidays in general have always felt kind of manufactured to me -- and they give people an excuse to behave badly the rest of the year. I express my love to my loved ones ALL THE TIME. They don't need Christmas or an anniversary to hear it from me. If I'm not broke (I'm so broke), I tend to buy gifts JUST BECAUSE. I know how important it is to tell the people that you love how you feel about them.
That said, there are a couple of interesting, very personal anniveraries that I stumbled across today.
First, and happiest, today marks the six-year anniversary of my leaving the Hard Rock Cafe. I worked there for almost 28 years and leaving wasn't a decision that I came to lightly. But it was a huge, and very rare for me, step in terms of me understanding my own worth. I left that job because I was doing a kick-ass job and they weren't paying me what I was worth, plain and simple. I gave them the chance -- they refused. I left and I've never looked back. My life in hospitality got SO much better. I now work far fewer hours and make similar (or more) money.
Since then, I've passed on writing gigs that didn't offer enough in terms of either money or JOY. I'll work on something that I love for less money, but even though I suffer from insane imposter syndrome, I know that if I'm going to be a professonial, I need to recognize my worth, the same way I did at Hard Rock.
Sadly, and more recently, today is the anniversary of the day I revealed to most of my friends and family that my sister had passed. We weren't going to tell anyone yet -- my mother, my brother, and I were absolutely reeling from the loss and we were struggling, along with my brothers-in-law, with how to tell my niece and nephew that their mother was gone. We certainly didn't want them to find out from someone else because of social media, but some of Ashley's friends that weren't connected with the family were putting it out on social media. People were starting to ask questions and we were afraid that someone would blurt something out where Ashley's kids might hear.
I finally posted something three days after we lost Ashley, just so we had control of the narrative. Once I decided to do it, it was just a matter of pouring my heart into the post. I don't often write as compellingly as I did when talking about my sister, but then I don't often have reason to. I hope never to again.
Anyway, I'd be remiss to let the collective weirdness of today go unremarked -- and this is as good a place as any to do it.
Thanks for reading.
