Took My Eyes Off the Ball

~ KMJang ~ Leave a comment

Many weekends ago I wrote this article. I never picked myself back up from the stress I decided to accept from this event. I cant attribute my silence online only to this – I have had many other distractions and complications over the past few months. Some of which were the holidays. But none of them are good enough excuses. My goodness, I had so many plans moving through the end of the year, but I definitely let myself spiral into a rut. It’s baffling, but the biggest, most absurd reason that I stalled on posting: I wanted to include an art piece with this article. I never decided what to create, so I never got around to it… and because I wanted my articles to be chronological to my life experiences and timeline of business progress, I completely stopped. How’s that for a terrible reason to stall my progress? haha! Not being able to post in chronological order caused my timeline to completely come to a standstill. Shaking my head. Well, here it is… Originally dated November 2021, now dated March 2022. I not only dropped the ball, I completely lost it. Here’s to finding it again.

I admire all of you out there that work a full time job, have a family, a pet, extracurricular activities… and still find time for yourself. I don’t know what “time for yourself” means to you, but in this situation “time for self” means, to me, time to grow, learn, work on and develop my side hustle, so that I no longer have to call it a side hustle… but my business.

I walked up to the past weekend with a brave face, excess energy, overflowing enthusiasm, legitimate motivation, and a rock solid will to take a huge step forward. I was going to complete my first freebies release and prepare for my debut “welcome” email. I finished all of my out-of-house chores on Friday, so I wouldn’t have to leave the house to spend hours shopping and running errands over the weekend.

And then our new puppy peed all over our house every-single-time I brought him back in from trying to potty-train outside. Note: He doesn’t do puddles, he does winding trails.

I blew a fuse.

I shook with frustration and had tears in my eyes as I cleaned our floors for the umpteenth time on Saturday. With all of the floor mopping and sanitizing added to my adulting responsibilities at home I had zero energy and time to myself. By evening, it broke my will, dissipated my motivation, evaporated my enthusiasm, depleted my energy, and crushed my hope to get anything done. My poor kids suffered a mom with a short temper, no energy to give them any attention, and barely enough energy to throw something in the oven for their dinner. (Prior to dinner prep I sat defeated on the kitchen floor for a solid 10 minutes before laying down, realizing the floor still smelled vaguely of pee, then slowly getting up to drag myself to the freezer.)

Yes, I still had Sunday. I had the choice to forge on and go for it. But, instead, I gave myself the excuse: this stress I’m feeling is too much. This weight on my chest is unbearable. So, I quit on myself. I decided that I’d experienced so much stress, that I was off the hook from completing my forged out plans for the weekend. Some people might say, “It’s ok to give in sometimes.” Others might say “Really? Why did you throw a tantrum like a juvenile?” It doesn’t matter what I did rather than trying achieve my goals and it doesn’t matter whether I could give a legitimate excuse or not. The bottom line is: I wasted the precious time I had.

What went wrong? With all of my readiness, I should have been able to achieve what I set out to do. But I was setting myself up for failure. While I was making and executing plans for the weekend I was focusing on and using God’s graced energy, and I was doing greater than great… But, I amped myself up so much that I got tunnel vision. I forgot to keep my peripherals open, forgot that there’s an enemy. Imagine a football player thinking, “Yea! Going for the touchdown!” Then a linebacker comes from his blind spot and knocks him off his feet because he was too focused on the goal line to see him coming. That’s what happened.

The minute my plans were disrupted and didn’t didn’t fall into place the exact way I envisioned them, I so easily took my eyes off the ball… and I let it drop. In the way my last post “Fear Procrastination” talked about not doing something due fear accumulated from looking past the small steps in order to reach the un-reachable, this weekend’s hyper-realistic plans and expectations didn’t allow room for flexibility to react, adjust, and regroup. It created a brittle mindset that snapped from the small (or not so small) pressure.

I stopped focusing on God’s plans for me last weekend, stopped accepting his encouragement, energy, and help and instead I focused on all of the disasters. I stopped following his plans and started creating my own. This chiseled away at my will and I didn’t get back up. I remembered my drive and my goals, but I chose not to care. I don’t have proof of what would have happened if, instead, I chose to refocus back on God. But, I can say, in all honesty, that I probably would have experienced peace and would have been able to move forward. I’m still practicing at relenting rigid control of my life in order to bounce back into His grace. I’ve fully depended on God a handful of times and the memory of the immeasurable success that I’d been given in those instances keeps me practicing.

Root for me, cheer me on, pray for me if that is something you feel comfortable doing. I need it immensely as I forge onward. Let’s see how well I put this into practice this weekend. May God glorify Himself, El Shaddai – Lord Almighty – my shield and fortress and my comfort, the One who goes before his people and blesses their path.

March 2022

An update on the puppy:

His name is Dante. He’s now 7 months old! He’s huge! … and here is the missing image that held up my post for so long. Not calligraphy, but I think you’ll like it nonetheless. 😀

The weekend after writing this article I was determined not to have potty problems that would derail my plans. I thought he was just being an annoying puppy and needing attention. So, I paid attention. Guess what I discovered? He’s a smart guy, haha. He had actually been telling me that he needed to go out. He would generally leave me alone, but every so often he’d come over and start to nip at me and start to bark. Then he’d give up and go away, presumably to pee in my house somewhere for me to find and lament about later. I thought he was challenging me for dominance or asking for attention because, how could he possibly need to go again? I just took him out 20 mins ago! I should have realized he was saying “Hey! PEE TIME! Can’t hold it anymore! Meh, I’m not waiting for you to open the door.” Remember, this guy is only 7 months old right now. At the time, he was only 4 months old. I forgot this because he’s the size of my adult German shepherd. He had no bladder control AT ALL. It appears he knew it. He still has accidents now and again. But not every time I bring him into the house. Whew! My next challenge is getting this big guy to stop jumping when he’s excited. ;P

Fear Procrastination

~ KMJang ~ 1 Comment

I’m sure you know it. Maybe you haven’t put a name to it. Maybe you haven’t even thought about why you procrastinate. If not, let me tell you about my “fear procrastination”.

Funny, not so funny, story:

I went to university once upon a time. UC Irvine is where I started, but it is not where I finished. Had absolutely no idea “what I wanted to be when I grew up”. So, like many other delusional Asian kids, I chose to be a Bio Major. Big mistake. Why did we all think that being a Bio Major was the golden major?! I think the best doctors should study poetry… or sociology. Then go to med school. Where they can directly learn the basics of bio that are applicable to becoming a doctor and then move on the the crazy hard stuff they have to learn to be be a doctor. But, I digress… rant for another type of blog! haha!

Long… long… story short – I dropped out of UCI. Why? Because I chose a major that was not for me… and one that this school amped up so much that 80% of the first year students in this major would drop out by the second year (this is probably not true, but it sure felt like it!)… on top of not knowing what I even wanted for my life, so I began collecting my heap of burdens. My brain could not (and still sometimes doesn’t) grasp the idea of doing bits and pieces to reach my goal and could only see the huge, final product. Rather than knowing how to take the stairs step by step, I tried to jump to the rooftop from the ground. This is where fear procrastination came into play. The feat I had imagined in front of myself was impossible, especially from the direction I was taking. It was daunting, it was scary, it made me panic every time I looked in it’s direction. So, I decided I’d do it later. I fear-procrastinated so much, that my burdens became bigger and bigger with Time hand-in-hand with a university curriculum piling more on my plate everyday.

Can you see where this is going? I was in this vicious cycle of fear procrastination: I was collecting all sorts of negative, imaginary mountains that I had to climb. I’d panic when I had a big project, or a due date, or an exam, so I’d put it off. Then I’d try to scramble to catch up, but I’d only fall further behind. My burden became bigger and scarier… so I’d procrastinate more. My habits became so bad that I didn’t even know I had a final exam one day. I walked into another class after my missed final exam and my now husband and his roommate looked at me and said,

“Where were you? How did you do on the Final?”

“Final?”

I thought they were joking. They thought I was joking. I had missed a final that affected 40% of my grade. Slept right through it. I stared blankly at them, then panicked and left the class. I don’t even remember where I went after I left the class. Did I go to the teacher’s office hours? Did I walk around campus pulling out my hair? Did I go back to the dorm to email the teacher some lame excuse? Who knows… but at that time, I had no idea how to advocate for myself, nor how to navigate the problems that I was collecting. I’d panic when I looked at my work loads. I’d panic when I tried to envision my future. I had no idea why I was making such monumental mistakes with my life. I began to believe that I wasn’t capable. And I became so overwhelmed that I gave up.

It didn’t seem funny then, but we laugh about it now. It’s this “fear procrastination” that drove my life until very recently. I didn’t know why I felt like I wasn’t capable. I didn’t know why I couldn’t get anywhere with my goals and my life.

I’m writing this “novel” of a blog post because maybe someone out there doesn’t know either. And I want to share what I’ve learned: It’s because I was never able to break things down and look at the step directly in front of me. I wanted to be at the finish line; don’t we all? But, I couldn’t visualize the journey in steps rather than impossible leaps and bounds. Everything was always out of reach and hopeless so I sat at the side of the road, waiting for handouts, waiting for someone to lead me forward. I still fall into the same old habits. Even this current adventure. It’s terrifying. I have to constantly remind myself: If I get stuck, it’s because I’m trying to take a huge leap without seeing the steps in between. If I find myself fear-procrastinating, I know I need to find an even smaller step. I’ve been trying to avoid looking at the finish line… because, honestly, I don’t know where that is. Only God knows where he’s leading me. So, I’m keeping my eyes on Him, and trusting the steps he’s always been placing in front of me but I was too blinded by my own, contrived big finish line to see. So, I open my eyes. Break down the task. Find a part that I can do right now. And do that tiny part of it, and then another tiny part of it. And, have you ever noticed: once you find that first step, you often end up running?!

We’ll all get to where we’re going someday. It’s just… if we want to get somewhere intentionally, we need to make an effort to take steps, rather than float down the river to wherever that will eventually lead. Will we, together, gaze down from that mountaintop someday, friends? Or be carried away by the river and washed out to sea?

To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.”

William Shakespeare

Forging Onward

~ KMJang ~ Leave a comment

We’re looking at the first weekend after this website launched, friends! I’m working hard to get the weekend household responsibilities completed today so that my mind isn’t cluttered with “need-to-do’s” like laundry, vacuuming, extra dishes, etc. (Friday when I started writing this… but yea… it took a while to get that silly quote done… finally gave in to the crooked angles… I’ll do better next time! Still working on the brush pen… :P)

Are you expecting big things from me this weekend? Me, too! Cheer me on & let’s make things happen!

As I was searching for a quote about weekends, I noticed three schools of thought (more like two… but you’ll see what I mean):

  1. The “yay, it’s the weekend” people. Whether in the spirit of “hooray!”, “whew!”, “ahhh”, “you made it!”, or “the weekend is almost here!” these quotes are all relieved that they’ve made it to the weekend. Lot’s of people must really need to re-think their careers.
  2. The “do this on the weekend” people. These quotes all look at the weekend as an oasis at the end of the week to do with as you please, but definitely not to work. They are different, yet related to the first group I mentioned because, rather than just being relieved to reach the weekend, they have also assigned the weekends the the responsibility to make up for the lack of joy or rest during the rest of the week: “shine on the weekend”, “they don’t count unless you do something pointless”, “weekend therapy”, “weekends are too short”, “take the joy of the weekend into your week.” They describe, mourn the passing of, and celebrate the ways to use weekends differently.
  3. The “don’t live waiting for the weekend” people. This group seems to be very small still, but maybe a growing trend? With visions of a better future now just peeking over the horizon, I’m falling into this category more than ever. I still look forward to the weekends, but mainly because I can focus on more work. What?! More work? I am feeling the thrill of waking up everyday, trying to figure out what God is pointing me to do today… to make today, and tomorrow, and the next day one step closer to the vision I’ve been given of a future where I can do even more, and be even more useful to everyone around me. So… I’m adding this corny quote to the list of quotes out there for the weekend:

I have Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday almost all day to do all that I can to push this thing to forward. I still want to pace myself, so that I don’t burn out, but I really am excited… and I’m getting impatient about looking like a complete noob online. I know I have to accept this feeling for at least 6-12 more months, but you’ve got to believe that I’m going to do everything in my power to aim for the 6 month mark! These are my goals for this weekend, so call me out on it if I look like I’m not even putting in the effort!

  1. draft, format, complete, and digitize kick-off freebie
    1. I’m probably going to need to try 100 times before I get a completed piece that I actually accept, so… this may take a while… would you all like to see the “in-progress” pics?!
  2. Figure out how to create email that will distribute this freebie for you to print and have as a reference for fonts that I will teach you!
  3. Currently the WordPress logo is all over my site… and it looks silly… I really need to create my site logo…

I think…. that I will overload… if I pile more than this on my plate for this weekend. I can always visit for seconds, right? If I can do more than this, woo hoo! Give me a high five and a pat on the back. But… I have kids… and something called responsibilities… like feeding them… so, yea… Don’t judge me. Adulting hahaha

So, already learning new stuff!

~ KMJang ~ Leave a comment

Hi all! Second day in and I’m already learning that I have a long, long way to go in building a website. Well, I already knew that… but you get what I mean. I followed what I could of the introductory instructions when I bought my website domain and used one of the basic, pre-built themes because, duh, I know nothing of building from scratch. But, even with all of the great help and information that is provided, I already found that I’ve misunderstood some things and I still cant figure out a ton more. Yes, all of this is novice stuff to all of you experts out there in the E-World, but I did say that I’d be very candid about all of the stumbling that I’d be doing as I set up. The online stuff is where I lack expertise… I’m just working towards being able to share what I’m actually good at…someday! haha

  1. “Publish” is different from “Launch”

Honestly, I still don’t actually know what publish is on it’s own… I’m guessing it’s only applicable after you actually Launch your whole website to the public (Launch happens once – the “Grand Opening” and Publish is how you add new content thereafter) … but it obviously did not mean that my website was online without launching. I set the intro pages on which I was working this week to publish on Monday at 7am. But, when my husband came home from work, I asked him to take a look at my website from his phone and the site still displayed the “Coming Soon” page. I poked around and clicked the giant “Launch” button, that I was ignoring. Because… it was a big scary button.

  1. “Subscribe” is different from joining an email list.

Yes, I knew both existed. But I thought that I had set an email-list “subscribe form” on my website home-page, when in fact it was just a glorified “follow” button, plus apparently you have to have a WordPress account to subscribe. hahaha!

So, for all of my billions of followers… I’ve now set up an actual email list and it is marked as such, right at the top of my Home Page… the glorified “follow” button to subscribe is at the bottom. 😀

First Day Online

~ KMJang ~ Leave a comment

So, today (well, yesterday now that it’s past midnight) was the day I set for my site to launch. I was… am… terrified where this will lead me. I sat around all of yesterday and today and didn’t touch my computer. I am paralyzed with the idea of what I have set out to do. But, it’s here now. It would be silly to take steps backward now.

I’ve taken courses that mentioned “imposter syndrome” and I didn’t quite relate to the idea until I took my first real steps. I admitted this to my husband yesterday. I now feel like a true imposter. I feel it nagging at my whole presence in this online space. The more I thought about it, the more I realized: I didn’t feel it before, because I had been hiding in my “safe space”. I wasn’t putting myself out there. I wasn’t claiming to be an artist with my whole being. I was avoiding the responsibility of this claim. Before this I had so many excuses: it was just a “hobby”, just something that I practiced when I had the energy and time, it was a work in progress, an idea that I was half-heartedly developing into a business with which I could someday support my family. I rarely, if ever, posted on my Instagram account because I had no accountability to this idea as a business.

This step – putting my work officially into a website and creating an online school – feels like I’ve thrown myself head-first down the rabbit hole. And, now I’m finding myself chasing the white rabbit through wonderland. I don’t know where each turn will take me. I don’t know if I will naively make the wrong choice – will I grow, or shrink into invisibility?

Well, here I go, friends. Writing this first post gave me an idea. I know absolutely nothing about creating an online business. Yes, I’ve seen some of those “free” lead magnet courses. There are so many successful online entrepreneurs out there that have released “how to start your online business” courses. I may even have a few very basic ones in my courses library… yes, that long list of online classes that I will eventually make time to watch. (Maybe it’s ignorant of me not to watch them first, but I just can’t seem to get a handle on the very, very beginning. Plus, because I don’t know how to start, I just kept putting off starting!) Watching someone start from scratch, though? I can’t seem to find a single one of their very successful websites broadcasting the very beginning of their adventure. Not in detail, at least. Yes, they say it. Yes, they give a great and inspirational summary. Yes, they can give you the shortcuts and all of the info. But day one? Month two? No, maybe that’s too boring for most people to read. So, they very wisely display all of their beautiful, hard earned, successful glory all over their websites. That is why they all have to state “I am, like all successful entrepreneurs, not an overnight success. It took me a lot of hard work, and years to get here.” Because it’s no longer visible in who they are online. It’s almost like they’ve forgotten how hard it was at the very beginning and they’ve left out all of the tiny baby steps they needed to take before they got to those “shortcuts”. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge them this, not at all. This is beautiful to me. It’s what I, too, strive for. Autonomy from the structure of this broken system of work-for-an-eventual-life? I love that I’m seeing so many strong men and women, putting themselves out there and creating the lives that they’ve always dreamed of.

But, maybe I’ll be different from them in that, I will lay my whole journey out here for you to see. All of the ugly stumbling that I will have to do to get to the first big milestone of my online business. That milestone that makes a noteworthy “aha! moment”. And then everything that it takes to get to the next milestone, and the next.

It may create for me an imaginary accountability, too. At least at first. (I hope that maybe someday I’ll have an audience to whom I’ll actually be accountable.) It will keep me going day to day. Thinking of you out there. Someone who is reading this and cheering me on. 🙂 Someone who learns like me: slowly, step by step, piece by piece. You, who need encouragement to take that leap and believe in yourself – and might actually do it if you can see that someone, like you, started as a scared, normal person, with nothing in the beginning, for whom excess time is a luxury (I work a full time, dead-end job, have two kids, and a husband that currently works upwards of 65-80hrs a week in the culinary industry), & has no money to waste.

This will be my promise to you, if you are reading this kind of blog that I am starting: I am not going to give up. I will be a successful online entrepreneur of some sort, someday. If you want to know what I did last week, last month, last year, to get to this point… this first, very basic post… maybe you can do it faster than me: I worked up the courage to believe in myself and do more than wait for things to start happening. I finally decided to make them happen. I made lists, I Googled, I practiced… but then I kept going in circles… until this week. I purchased a domain, an account on a teaching website, and started forging forward.

I wrote the quote above a couple months ago, just to play with this discontinued Jacquard ink that I finally hunted down (it took me months to find it after falling in love with the colors in a post of someone writing with it!)

But, it’s so applicable to how I feel now. I definitely don’t see the whole staircase. I just know it’s the top that I want to reach. Taking that first step was so, so vital for me because once I did, I knew: the feeling of fear could have made me turn tail and run, but knowing that fear, feeling the reality of it, I now know my life before it had me walking around in a lifeless haze like a zombie, no control over the direction of my life, just running where I’d find my next meal.

If I’m not feeling that fear, I’m playing it too safe and I’ll never be more than I was yesterday. It’s like taking the red pill … Hey, maybe that will be the next quote I write. 🙂

Cheers! To all those that read this and still want to follow my blog! 🙂