42!

No, not Jackie Robinson's number but my brand new age, today. I woke up with a smile on my face happy and blessed to begin a new day in a new year of my life. Rather than run around and celebrate me by telling everyone it's my birthday, I'm celebrating by giving everyone I know something. There was a time I couldn't give at all. A time that I promised myself if I ever was placed in a position of benevolence I would be benevolent. My family received gifts this morning and I strolled into work with a box of doughnuts and orange juice and champagne. That's how I'm living right now. The only thing I'm really asking for are hugs. I'm living to give and it is a great feeling.

Be well. Be blessed. And celebrate the life you have.

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No New Year's resolutions here. At the very end of 2012 I very quietly proclaimed, "I will be restored."

Today is exactly five months and twenty-four days since I uttered this statement.

How To Inspire The Dad In Your Life To Be His Best All Year Long


Today is also almost a year ago to the day (June 22, 2012 to be exact) I was laid off from what I thought was my dream job. And don't get me wrong, layoffs happen all the time. But it was the how it happened, rather than the why it happened. I was legitimately heartbroken as I scrambled and failed for several months to get new work. My ego suffered, my lifestyle suffered (didn't have one to begin with at the time) and my marriage was accelerating toward disaster. I stopped eating, but gained weight, and then started losing weight and my appetite stayed away. I prayed and prayed but began to lose hope, --- something I've had for as long as I can remember. Then in the fall things began to look up. Work came and I began the slow climb out of debt, began to budget and began doing my best to repair home. On New Year's Eve I forgave myself for everything, especially since I was blaming myself for everything, and told God in 2013 I'd make triple what had been taken from me in 2012. I knew I wasn't blaspheming when I financially able to slip in a trip to Disney World not soon after this. And this past Wednesday, 3 days shy of June 22, 2012, I began a new gig where I was recruited --- making double what I made in 2012. In a masterstroke of bringing things full circle, I was able to assist getting a former colleague from that old "dream" job hired into the position I just left. I'm too awestruck and thankful to question it. I'm still committed to making triple by the end of the year and with freelance stuff and blog stuff I may actually hit that mark. But that's neither here nor there right now. What is true is that I've almost unknowingly doubled what was taken from me in 12 months flat. Believe me there have been hiccups and plenty of self-doubt along the way. But don't tell me I did this "out of my own hard work" - no matter how hard I worked others who work just as hard or harder and for longer still haven't seen their circumstances change. I won't take credit for the blessings, but I will accept them thankfully and know that the Most High is driving. But what I did do and continue to do is remain steadfast to these 7 principles of self-restoration:

1. Know your value - know what you add to this life, your friends, your family, your community, your job and refuse to be undervalued by those who WILL try to convince you that you aren't special.
2. Trust and use your power - when opportunity strikes, don't spend a single second doubting your ability to rise to the occasion. Stand up, speak up and use all that you have to step into what is yours. If you don't, rest assured someone else will. Don't be on the sidelines knowing you could've done better what you should've been doing in the first place.
3. Love a little more - patience, forgiveness, reassurance...speak words that bear fruit and don't tear down, refuse to stoop to lower levels when you feel yourself being pulled down, resist temptation when you know you and/or someone around you will be hurt, resist the desire to defend and fight, instead seek concessions, be the peacemaker, see the other point of view - even if it is wrong and speak truth, calmly and assertively.
4. Surround yourself with people who make you better - this may require you to seek out folks who are better than you. [UPDATE: and separate yourself from others]. I hope your ego will allow for this to happen. 
5. Talk less, listen more - this shouldn't need any explanation, but revisit "Love a little more" for a refresher.
6. Play - if you have any children in your life, watch them for pointers. Set your imagination free, find hobbies that allow your mind to soar: cooking, reading, working, traveling, chasing down that passion on the side (Note to men: if you have a family the bills MUST be paid first and the food MUST be on the table before you begin chasing dreams).
7. Write down your goals - how do you expect to succeed if you don't have a plan? You don't have to physically write them down if that's not what you do but there's no way you're going to stay on task if you don't have any. And an unorganized mind makes for a disorganized life. 
8. *The bonus point - if you count yourself as a believer, pray and praise with all your heart mind and soul. Pray when things are bad and pray when things are good. Invite God into your life and do this FIRST. And all else will follow.

So enough about me. How is your 2013 going for you?

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Thoughts? Please, let me know in the Facebook or Disqus comment sections below.

But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?

Job: 28. 12

This will not be a New Year's Resolutions post.

With that said, 2013 will be a year of restoration for me. Restoration because I am no longer fallen.

Fallen

For eight or nine months the year before my daughter was born I was 100% comfortable in the skin I was in. I didn't owe anyone a thing, literally, I had achieved the impossible task of living debt-free and I had my eyes set on the next car I was going to buy. This while slating out renovations on ny Queens, New York, 1-bedroom co-op that I was either going to rent or sell. I fancied myself with nice clothes, shoes and ate well. I cooked at home a lot and was enjoying this, my so-called life.

Then news of my daughter, my second child, came and soon everything changed. Once she was born I lost the ability to find meaning in the life I had been living. My job no longer made any sense to the point I began to make simple mistakes I never made, even as a trainee. It was as if the people there were speaking another language. My need for meaning became all-consuming, self-sacrificing and maybe even self-sabotaging. I switched jobs in this pursuit and did well for a while. Meanwhile, the woman who would become my wife was plotting her escape from New York and went to work creating a strategy that would help her to crack through the "glass ceiling" in the workplace she so despised.

So as I began to strip down to the blood and bones to find my soul my wife was beginning to pack on muscle. It was inevitable that trouble would soon follow.

In the years that followed, we moved from New York City to Atlanta, Georgia. She completed an MBA and found a game-changing, job and career. None of this was without its challenges, hurdles and slight degree of heartbreak. But she did it, by the grace of God and her own will. During the same time, I became known as E.Payne, the unwilling Stay At Home Dad Blogger. I became scholarly in the business of love, learning the most important lesson of all: Love is an action not a feeling.

My wife evolved into a one-woman dynamo and by all outward appearances I had become an emotional crackpot who couldn't get a job if one came and beat me with a bat until the snot came out of me. I probably wasn't as bad as I've just described myself but then again I may have been worse. Meanwhile, I was learning the tools of my new trade, becoming a little savvy in Social Media and not just using it as a tool become Internet Famous. Then a "dream job" came to me wrapped in a bow in December of last year. It was all glittery. But all that glitters ain't gold.

Winter's End?

In March of this year I told a Mormon friend of mine I had just come out of a "winter" that lasted for four years. She raised an eyebrow and told me she couldn't imagine how that was possible nor how I survived. But anything is possible when you are going through it. Little did I know that the deep freeze had yet to arrive. A mere two and half months after I sipped wine at a California vineyard during a blogger trip with my friend from Utah, I went into a meeting to find out how much my raise would be only to learn my position had been dissolved. I remember going to my car immediately after receiving the news and breaking down. I clutched the steering wheel and yelled out, "My family WILL NOT suffer because of me!" I hoped God heard me.