Monday, July 1, 2019

June 2019 Reflections


June was a pretty big month for me.  I had some important career developments.  I also did a number of fun outings.  Here is a rundown of some of my activity and thoughts from the month.

CPA License

I am officially a CPA now.  I finally took my ethics exam.  I got all the paperwork submitted.  I received notice from the VA Board of Accountancy that my application has been accepted.  I still am waiting for the official wall certificate which will take a few weeks to arrive.  However, I am listed as active in the online registry now.  As long as I complete my CPEs and register for the license every year, and do not commit any “acts discreditable” to the profession, I will be a CPA regardless of where my career takes me now.

Job Search

I have a job!  After feeling so frustrated in May with the lack of job search results, I had a flurry of activity during the month.  I found several job requisitions that seemed to match up to my background much better than many of the ones I saw previously.  I did a couple of phone interviews, one of which turned into an in-person interview.  It was a great interview.  I felt very calm and comfortable with all 4 interviewers (1 HR, 3 accountants).  I walked out of there feeling very confident about the interviews and the position.  They must have felt the same, because everything turned around very fast.  This will be a senior accountant position with a telecom company.  I will be working with the general ledger for the U.S. subsidiary, though technically its financials will roll up to a huge Asian company.  I am making more than I thought would be possible for a senior position, and I will not have to deal with the stress of management.  They are going through an acquisition and some internal changes, so it might be a bit challenging at the beginning.  I just hope this works out for me, at least for a few years until I figure out what I really want to be doing.

Blush Coaching

I started a life coaching program online.  I was having such struggles with the job search process.  I felt very disconnected from it and unmotivated to go back to work.  While I am glad to have the new job for practical reasons, I do not want to just settle into it for another 10 years without question.  I still have interest in teaching or working with some kind of non-profit organization or doing financial coaching or something along those lines in the future.  I also still have some idea of doing more with my writing in the future.  I need to figure out some things with my various family relationships and my marriage gripes.  I thought about going back to therapy, but ultimately decided coaching might be better.  I do not want to dig into my past hurts as much this time, but would rather focus on the future steps.  I want the feedback on some of the topics I bring up of course, but I am also hoping that it will create some outside accountability for me to keep moving forward.

Life coaching is such a scam business, so it was hard for me to choose one that I felt comfortable using.  I chose Blush for two reasons.  The first is that they claim all their coaches have actual Masters in Counseling degrees, which calms my fears for the quality I might receive.  The second was their pricing structure was very reasonable and incredibly clear on their website.  They offer two types of coaching, written and video.  They also have several payment plans, including monthly memberships of varying frequency and pay per session options.  I am doing the written version for now, and I am just paying as I go.  I have done two sessions so far, and I am hoping to do a session about every other week.  So far it seems good.

Festivals

June is festival season around here.  I made it to all three of them this year and had a great time at each.  I went to Herndon Festival on June 2nd.  I got there in time to walk quickly around the booths and grab some kettle corn before heading over to the main stage area for the Sunday afternoon main show.  Vertical Horizon played about half their set before they were rained out.  I still enjoyed it, but of course I wish the weather had held off just slightly longer.  I also wish I had made it out a little earlier in the day so I could enjoy the atmosphere and wander the arts & crafts a bit more.  The following weekend I went with my husband to Celebrate Fairfax on June 7th.  We mainly go for the concerts and fireworks, but we went a little earlier so we had time to wander around the fair grounds and grab some dinner first.  The concert was Better Than Ezra which was a lot of fun.  They always get such great nostalgic 90s era bands.  After the concert, we watched fireworks before heading home.  Finally, I went to Taste of Reston on June 15th.  I went right around lunch time by myself.  I still bought the whole sheet of tickets so I could gorge on whatever I wanted without having to ration my tickets carefully to feed us all.  I listened to some music, sampled way too many things, and generally wandered around in the sun.  It was a great festival season.  I enjoyed everything although my general feeling was I wish I had spent more time at each one.

Book Club & Wine Night

Aside from the festival, I had two social events during the month.  The first was book club.  We met at 8 Chains Winery this month.  I was initially a little skeptical at doing it at a winery, but it turned out to be a really nice time.  Two of our book club members were also members of the winery, so we were able to use their memberships to cover everyone’s tastings.  Then, we just had to pay for any bottles we took for the table (or home).  We were allowed to bring snacks into the winery so we could still share some nibbles.  It was a miserable day, but this worked out in our favor.  We were inside so the rain did not really bother us, and the winery was relatively uncrowded for the duration of our meeting.  We read My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie.  It is historical fiction centering around Eliza Hamilton and her relationship with founding father Alexander Hamilton.  The book was really not my cup of tea.  It was very long, and the story crawled in places.  It also felt a bit too contrived, which it was because there is not much directly sourced information about Eliza out there.  I do not know enough about the historical figures to be certain, but it seemed to have a lot of modern political views being overlaid on historical times, which unfortunately seems quite common lately.

The second social event was a wine tasting at a friend’s house.  This was a MLM marketing party.  The company was called Wine Shop at Home.  They sell California wines online and through MLM marketing.  The wine itself was OK.  We tasted 8.  I liked 3, felt 2 were OK, and disliked 3.  I think there were too many people there for a social gathering and not too many interested in the actual wine pitch.  The woman who ran it seemed quite annoyed by the general lack of attention paid to her presentation of the wines.  I originally did not plan to go because I am wary of MLM parties, and I had no intention of buying wine.  I politely paid attention during her presentation, but I did not buy wine.  After she wrapped up, a good portion of the party left and the rest of us just chilled on the patio.  I enjoyed this later portion of the party much more.  Overall it was a nice time, but I just really hate being sold to in the guise of a party.  This one turned out OK, but I still will probably avoid the majority of MLM parties in the future.

Stepson Stay

We had my stepson staying with us for two weeks while his mother was in Chicago.  While I never do much anyway, I definitely had to plan around his presence.  My husband barely curbed his normal activities, so a good portion of the time I was home alone with my stepson.  He can stay by himself for an hour or so during the day, but he is not old enough to leave alone for a long time or at night.  I made sure to spend one night each week playing board games with him so that he would not spend the entire time playing video games and watching Youtube videos.  The time my husband did choose to spend with him was spent watching movies.   I watched a couple with them, and then they watched more just the two of them.  On his last day with us, I took him to the movie theater to see Aladdin and then for ice cream afterwards.  He seemed to really enjoy his time here, though he was ready to go back to his house at the end of it.  I feel like we need to really increase our interaction with him while he is here.  He seems to spend most of the time on his own, except when we all watch movies together.

The Witness

I sort of won The Witness.  I technically made it through the end game.  Once you complete the final elevator puzzle, it takes you through the final sequence and ends the game.  You do not have to complete all the puzzles though to initiate the ending, and I definitely had not done so.  Luckily, it saves the game automatically shortly before the end, so I was able to resume from that saved point.  I am now trying to solve all the puzzles I missed before heading back to the end sequence to win it for real.

Personal Products Project

In June, I used up/trashed 10 items – 1 lipstick, 1 mascara, 1 detoxifying face mask, 1 face mist, 1 lip balm, 1 perfume, 1 foot cream, 1 shaving cream, 1 shampoo, and 1 curl defining spray.  I bought 2 Dermalogica Ultracalming Mists during the month.  Normally, I would not buy double like that, but they are reformulating/repackaging the product, so I was able to get a good discount on it.  I have gone through several of these in the past, so I have no qualms about using that much of it.

For June, I thought I would give a little mid-year update on how my products project is progressing.

Total Purged:  61 products – 21 skincare, 17 bath & body, 4 haircare, and 19 makeup products
Total Bought:  7 products – 4 skincare, 3 bath & body, 0 haircare, and 0 makeup products
Current Totals:  289 products – 37 skincare, 43 bath & body, 20 haircare, and 189 makeup products

I feel like I am making good progress for the year.  I gave myself a goal to reduce the combined total for skincare, bath & body, and haircare category to fewer than 105 items.  I have already achieved this, and I should continue to use up several more items during the remainder of the year.  I gave myself a goal to reduce the total makeup to below 185 by the end of the year.  I am almost there.  I expect to clear out a few more liquid face products and to use up at least one more mascara by the end of the year.  I might uncover a few more dried up cream products but I think I have tested most of these by this point.  I still think 185 is completely achievable, but I doubt I will get much below that.

Starting next month, I am going to do one category a month to discuss some of my product usage insights and thoughts from doing this purge.

Books

I read a pretty good mixture of genres during June.  There were several enjoyable books here, but again nothing that stood out as particularly amazing.  Here are the books I read during the month with my ratings (1-Awful, 2-Disappointing, 3-Decent, 4-Good, 5-Amazing).

The Summons by John Grisham – 4 stars
My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie – 3 stars
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin – 3 stars
The Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard – 4 stars
Sole Survivor by Dean Koontz – 3 stars
The First Affair by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus – 3 stars

There you have it, my month in review.  I have two weeks before I start my new job, so I am going to try to make the most of them.

See you next month!