Well for starters I’m typing this out on my new iPad, that I’m totally in love with, with the word press app I just downloaded. Super easy to use and I have a lot of ideas to utilize this little invention. For one thing, I finally bought one of the many cameras I’ve been dying to have, that being the Nikon D90. So I’m really getting into the photography world and actually have a few
Photo shoots lined up, including a wedding! I think with the iPad it would very useful and sleek looking to show potential clients my work through here quickly, rather then your everyday laptop. I have the same idea for my web design clients too.

In life related news I was hired as a graphic designer for a nursing clothing line called Motherwear. I really love it and it’s a refreshing change from all of my past web design related jobs. There I create their seasonal catalog, edit their garment images for both print and web, help with marketing, and in a few weeks, will be assisting with the photo shoot for the summer line. It’s a very fun job indeed!

Well, I would write more but I’m being beckoned, so this is what I will leave you with until next time. Have a Happy Easter everyone!

I’ve been pretty busy this past month to be honest, packing and throwing away things have taken a major part of my time, but I’ve also been designing and coding like crazy. Yea, where are the fruits of that labor for this poor site, huh? Ah well, at some point I’ll redesign this site with my own design, but just not right now.

Like I mentioned a few posts back, I’m creating a multimedia company. That’s basically what I have been working on this whole time. I wanted to build my portfolio and have been taking a few clients here and there. So far, I have a really good thing going on with it and am actually happy that it’s all going in the right direction. If you’re wondering, the website is RoxehMedia.com, but it’s of course under construction. I’m looking to have the grand opening around the middle or end of January 2010, so wish me luck.

Another website taking up some of my time has been Twitter believe it or not. Micro-blogging is so much easier! If you guys have a Twitter account, be sure to follow me. I’ll follow back! =)

Well, its back to designing and coding for me. Thanks for all the comments and good luck wishes, very much appreciated! I’ll be sure to comment back as soon as I can.

Not only that, but when we would tell that something was just not right with my mother on how she was feeling, the nurses would just come up with, “well that’s normal after surgery.” This came from when my mother said she was feeling wheezy and short of breath. Now my mother has asthma, always have, and I would like to think she knows the difference from one feeling to another, so when we told the nurse this, she didn’t believe us and just gave us that line above. It took us two more tries, one finding my mother’s inhaler to prove she did have one, and two to get her doctors “confirmation” that she indeed had asthma and had her inhaler for this reason. The nurse then came back to apologize saying how it wasn’t in her paperwork. So, I guess because it’s not in the paper work, lets act like the patient is crazy and doesn’t know what he or she is talking about?

I know you RN’s go to school for this, but seriously, listen to the patients once in a while. I think after about 50 years of knowing yourself and how your body works…you should know when you have this feeling or can’t take this one drug or the other. Just don’t assume because you have schooling for what, 2-4 years, that you’re the only one who knows what’s wrong and right! (this totally doesn’t go to all RN’s out there, only the few who pissed me and my family off on the 7th floor at ORLANDO REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER!)

Onto happier thoughts, my mother is currently in a rehabilitation center until she knows that she can come back home and have the strength to do so. She is doing much better then when she was in the hospital. She can do pretty much everything on her own, except for changing clothes and bathing herself, since she isn’t supposed to move or use her arms too much due to the incision and broken sternum she has because of the surgery.

There are nights where she feels a lot of pain due to the broken sternum and her back (she also had back surgery a few years back), but she is usually unwilling to take an extra dose of pain medication, because she doesn’t want to feel drowsy and incoherent. I don’t blame her, since they always had her doped up in the hospital, yet they wanted her to walk around and attend classes before she left…I just didn’t see the point.

All I know now, is that for the next couple of months, my mother will be needing a lot of extra care and help to get through all of this. The sad part about it, is that I’m the only one here to do all of this. My aunt, from MA, is currently staying with us, but will be leaving next month. A few family members who do live here in FL, are about an hour away and usually don’t communicate or visit that often, so its as if we’re the only family we got, just the two of us.

I’ll be starting school in the Spring and hope to find a job soon. With all this in mind, I feel like it’ll be a lot of stress for me to handle. To be honest, I’ve been “watching” over her since I was 13 when she had a major stroke. I’m 21, so you can imagine all that I’ve been through throughout the years. We came to live here in FL when I was 15, so between 13 to 15 I had some help from my family when we still lived in MA. After that, it was just us. My sister did come to live here about a year or two later, but she never stayed long, and has already moved back to MA.

I’ve always been there for my mother, taking care of her when she would cry out in pain at 3 AM. When she wanted and needed to go to the hospital and we’d be there for literally 10-12 hours in the ER, before they would decide to admit her, I’d be there, wide awake throughout the whole night, to make sure she was feeling OK and that when doctors and nurses came in to ask questions or find out information, I would be awake and ready (she would already be passed out from the many medicines they would give her). When she needs someone to go pick up her prescriptions at her doctors office, which is a 30 minute drive to the place, who is the one to do it, me.

For 8 years, it has only been me who has been there for her. As many times as I’ve said that I’ll be leaving or moving out, I can’t. Not only because I don’t have the money (I’ve been paying bills here since I was 16), but because if I left, I know she wouldn’t have anyone to take care of her, and sadly, I know she wouldn’t make it on her own.

You’re probably thinking, well why doesn’t she just go back to MA where all our family is, so that they can be there for her? Well, she doesn’t want to go back…I don’t blame her though. I can understand why she wouldn’t, but for now, it seems like the only thing she can do. Sooner or later, I want to live on my own…go to school in NY and start my life. I’m 21 years of age! I don’t want to start my life late and feel like I’ll never accomplish anything if I keep getting held back. That’s right, that’s how I feel. It may sound terrible to others and maybe not, but it’s how I feel sometimes and I wish I could just have a little bit of help and understanding from some people.

I didn’t want complain or rant too much in this blog post, but the feelings just washed over me and poured into my fingers typing on this keyboard.

All I can say is I hope that one day, all this stress will be free from us and that we can both live happily ever after…if only for a few months at least.

Go back to school: A personal goal I set for myself and so far have 95% completed. I have already paid the application fee and just need to send send proof of my residence! After that, I need to take the CPT (college placement test) and register for classes for the fall! If you’re wondering, I will be attending Valencia Community College. It’s cheap, an excellent school, and exactly what I need to raise my GPA!

Get a job: I’ve been applying EVERYWHERE like crazy! For now, I’m not too worried where I work, but I have been avoiding anything that has to do with food. Since I’ll be starting school in the fall, I’m not to hell bent on getting a full-time position. Of course, if the opportunity presents itself and is well worth it, I’ll go for it.

Start a business: For a while now I have been trying to start my own web design business. It’s a little dream of mine to actually have one huge multimedia company, but I need to start somewhere. Web design of course was the first thing in mind. Currently I have a few friends who I know I can trust to help me and have some excellent skills in their own respected fields, I just need to know where to start. I’m actually starting to research of all this now and hope to maybe have something going by the end of the year. Wish me luck!

Move out: This has been a great topic for posts on my blog for a while now. I always say I’m going to move out, but something always ends up happening that hinders that idea. I NEED to move out and asap! I just need the finical stability to do so…and possibly a roommate or two. Hopefully when I get a new job, I can work towards this goal.

For now, these are my major goals for 2009 and I really hope that I will be able to fulfill them before the year ends. I just need patients, smarts, and a whole lot of luck!

PS: I was tagged by LingLingfor the “What’s in My Bag?” game. I currently don’t use a purse/bag and just happily have a Chanel wallet with everything I need inside. My cellphone has a pocket case that fits on the side of my belt buckle or pant pocket and I usually hold my keys or attach them to my belt loop. So, not much need for a purse, unless of course it’s that time of the month or I’m going somewhere fancy.

I totally fail at this game!

I’m really looking forward to this though. If you’re wondering, the position is for a short-term HTML/CSS class. With the help of my old teacher, she said this could possibly lead into a full-time teaching position either there at WPT (Winter Park Tech) or in the new school they built by my house. The new school would actually be more convenient, since it is closer then WPT. Wish me luck!

Now onto the stress portion! My sister, her husband, 4 children, and some random girl are coming to stay at my house for Spring Break. They will be arriving this Saturday, most likely during the evening and I am freaking out! My sister and I aren’t what you would call loving siblings, we are far from it…much worse then sibling rivalry, so I’m a little antsy on her arrival. While I love my nieces and nephews, they can be very hard to handle sometimes and knowing my sister, at one point in time during her stay here, she will have either me or my mother babysit them. Which when that happens, I will be staying at my boyfriends house! =P

Not only that, but she is bringing some random 14 year old girl with her. OK, so she isn’t THAT random, my sister says she is the daughter of the lady who sometimes babysits her kids and said she could come down with my sister. Personally, I think it’s odd, but whatever, I’m just surprised my mom is OK with it…>_>

That’s not the only thing that has me raising a brow, but apparently the girl wants to go to an all ages club. Basically, some nights clubs have like a “kids night”, where I think they let ages 12 to 18 in the club and they get to party till like 12 or 1AM. I think at 14 you should worry more about school and not going to a stupid club. My sister was like, can you take her? One, no because why would I want to do that and two because I’m 20 years of age, they wouldn’t let me in. I’m totally against it as you can see and would someone would smack some sense into this girl and tell her not want to grow up so fast. Geez…you’re only 14 once and before you know it, you’ll be 18 and can then have all the clubbing fun you want! >_<

So for the past month and a half…a lot has happened! I lost my job, am struggling to pay my bills, signed up for college, am helping my aunt in Tallahassee with this business “project” she has, got offered a teaching position at the old tech school I went, and my sister and her family are coming down to our house for summer break! I’ll break each one of those down below:

Lost My Job: Yup, it’s true! The one thing that just needed to screw me over…my job! As some of you know, I was working as a web designer for a small Internet marketing and “web design” firm.

I was really excited when I got a call for an interview (or was it an email?). When in the interview though, one of the many questions that the boss asked me should have had me running for the hills!

“Can you design websites like this?” Basically he showed me a nice SIMPLE design created by their EX-web designer. Me being in need of a job BADLY, said yes of course! Not realizing the underlining question he was really asking, which was:

“Can you be a clone of our LAST designer?” If I had known then that was the real question, I probably would have answered with a “No sir, no designer is always the same.”

Through out my whole 4 or 5 months there, a day could not pass without them talking about the ex-designer. Of course I played it off saying it didn’t bother me, but it did. How would you feel if that happened to you on a daily basis?

Anyways, I created the layouts to how THEY wanted it. I had no creative freedom, although once or twice, the boss scolded me telling me that “he’s not the designer, that’s what I’m here for”. Then why the crap are you asking to see the design and go over it and make changes to how YOU see fit? Don’t get me wrong, I know a second opinion or eye to make sure everything fits the bill is fine, but in the end they always ended up designing it themselves and believe me, it wasn’t anything special. VERY simple…usually two colors max and usually the same “layout” as other designs they have made.

I’m not trying to complain, but it was very frustrating at times to work for them and then at the end of the December…they “laid me off”. They didn’t “fire” me (that’s what they said). They said I was doing great and fine during the beginning, but slowly was going down hill. That comment was probably because of the two or three clients who weren’t statisfied with anything, but that was all my fault! They even started to give side work to their EX-designer who they loved and worshiped. Saying “he just gets it”, gets what?!

For one thing, the guy codes in nothing but tables, his coding was horribly messy (I could never find ANYTHING and would always just re-do it from scratch, which took more time). Even his Photoshop layers were in a complete mess. I ALWAYS had to re-do the layout and copy it to the best of my ability, but did the job see that? Of course not!

I created more on spot designs then ones who needed 5 -6 samples and never chose one (even though 4 out those samples would be practically designed by the boss and team), but hey who’s counting?

As people, they’re not horrible, they gave me an extra check that I didn’t work for, because they felt bad, and were sometimes good listeners to problems I had (not that I said much), but overall as a company, I was a little disappointed.

I will talk about the other topics I mentioned above in another blog post. Gives me more to blog about!

Yep, I have FINALLY decided to leave the nest and start living on my own…I had to sometime. The place I want to move to is NEW YORK! I love the city (as I have mentioned a million times) and it has always been a dream of mine to live there. I don’t care what anyone says, you have your good times and you have your bad, I’m moving to NY no matter what!

Not only that, but I want to start school there also! My second dream is to go to NYU (New York University), although from my high school transcripts (not sure if they would look at my technical school ones?) I’ll probably have to do some community college first to get my GPA (Grade Point Average) up. So I have to look into that.

So far, my boyfriend and I (who I will be moving with…yay!) are planning for a trip up there for the end of February or beginning March! I’ll hopefully be staying with family members and in that time, scoping out jobs and apartments in/or around the city. I REALLY don’t want live in the projects…I know how that goes…and if I have anything to do with it, I WILL NOT be moving into them.

I’ve been looking for jobs on Craig’s List and am surprised at how many jobs you can find there, that I’ve never seen a listing for here in Orlando. Not only that, but some of them are simple to do jobs that actually pay better then working a McDonald’s (which I will never work at…).

All this planning is getting me so excited and I cannot wait to start it all out. I know I might have some tough times, but knowing I did it on my own, rather my mother or family member helping me out, really just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Haha, I know lame!

Not only that, but traffic from my job to my house is killer! Orlando traffic in general is killer, but when I worked in downtown Orlando, it wasn’t THAT bad like it is from my job here in Casselberry to my house by UCF (University of Central Florida), which seems to be quite the distance and there is no way to take shortcut.

So you can imagen how I feel by the time I get home ( which is a good hour later *sigh*). I need to start working out again, becuase I’m going to sleep pretty early and I wake up refreshed, but by the end of the day, I’m wiped out!

Yes, working out might just do the trick!

Anywho, to start this blog off. I got a new job! Yup, no more SurpassHosting, although I still do love them to death and will ALWAYS use their web hosting services. I now work for an internet marketing and web design company named OnTarget Web Solutions. I’m really learning a lot more about the web design industry and dipping more into marketing and SEO. It’s a great job and I even get my own office, which isn’t half bad! Hopefully with this new job, I’ll be able to save up for college and my big move to NYC in the future. Can’t wait!

Talking about moving, I’m REALLY thinking about moving out on my own. Unfortunately, my mother and I are arguing more and more everyday more so then speaking normally and it is taking a toll on me as well as her. I think that it might be time for me to move out and leave the nest. I just want to make sure that she is in a stable living place and can manage on her own. I’m actually trying to push her to either live in Tallahasse where one of her best friends lives or back in my hometown of MA. I KNOW for a fact she HATES MA so I’m hoping Tally will be the alternative and ultimate choice. At least she wouldn’t be too far away from me, only 4 hours! Just something we really need to sit down and talk about over a nice dinner…hmm…idea!

In the Web Design ABM, they had presidents and lead web developers from local design companies around the area, also from local radio stations. We were all able to talk about the new trends and what employers are looking for these days for entry level. I was really surprised by some of the answers.

The Digital Design ABM was a little larger then Web designs and was more informative. Everyone had really outstanding responses to some of the questions that students asked and also that the instructors asked the board members. I felt much more comfortable responding to some of these questions more so then in the Web Design ABM and I feel a little bad for it. In the Digital Design ABM there were presidents, senior art directors/designers and head managers from Disney World, SeaWorld, and local graphic and print companies. I was really impressed and honored to be invited to attend this meeting.

Contacts like these in this industry are highly wanted and I was lucky to be able to meet all of these people and hear what they have they have to say about the industry. Remember, networking is a key feature to success in the multimedia industry. To be able to know people higher up in the scale then you can sometimes get you by in certain aspects in life believe or not.