My Pushing Through Life and Crossroads {Divorce & 2nd Job}

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I Wasn’t really sure what to name this post but my pushing through life and crossroads and getting unstuck sounds about right! This entire post has been in my head for almost a year now and just never shared it. 

Over the last 14 months, I lost track of how many emails and DM’s I have gotten on social media about, “why don’t you share personal life anymore, is everything ok?” 

The truth is, I stopped mostly because of time and because I just didn’t want to. 🤷‍♀️

I originally wrote this post and it ended up over 2500 words and my head was spinning by the end of it so I decided to break it up into multiple parts.

This way, I am not vomiting my personal feelings all in one place and boring you 🙃. 

There are no pictures in this post (I know you all know what we look like! -ha), just real-raw life. It’s not written for google SEO (that’s how google shares your content in case you are wondering what SEO is), has emoji’s which is REALLY bad for SEO and it’s probably not even grammatically correct. 🤷‍♀️

I have included many links in the post if you want to refer back to history or catch up on previous blog posts that you may have missed. 

“What’s Up Jess and where have you been?”

That’s an ongoing question that I get weekly.

You see, what you may not know (my fault for not sharing) is when I got separated from my ex-husband in 2018, it was not planned. At least not on my end. Life as I knew it just stopped.

Talk about a crossroad! That’s a topic for another day. 

Looking back though, it was the best thing that ever happened.  Thank you ex husband!  😀

I cannot even imagine my life without Jim and had my life not been turned upside down and shaken to my core, I would have never known the joy I have now. 

Things have a funny way of turning out that’s for sure! 

Marriage is a funny thing when you have kids. You tend to overlook, push the obstacles aside and many times stay together for your children. That’s just what I thought you were suppose to do. Through thick and thin – you figure it out. 

However, that isn’t always the best course of action. I am very thankful today, that my life was shook to the core and turned upside down. 

There are so many emails from a lot of you asking the same thing so I will answer a couple here today and then each week, will plan to share more.

Deal?

If you want to know something particular, shoot me an email or leave a comment. Many of these questions are also coming from Instagram direct messages so if you follow me there, you can continue to leave comments or messages there too. 

“Is everything ok? Why don’t you blog about your family and post as much anymore?” 

The biggest reason why I haven’t shared was lack of time. What you don’t know is I got a 2nd job in September 2018 after I got separated.

I started working for a family friend who builds subdivisions in our area. My brother was running the friends office, doing the quickbooks and accounting stuff and decided to go back to Corporate America (his old job).

My brother asked me if I wanted the job so I took it! Did I want a second a job? Hell no but it couldn’t have come at a better time because I was scrambling trying to figure out how I was going to keep my new house, pay my bills and not have a huge change in lifestyle due to getting divorced. 

I was determined to not let finances cause my son any further disruption in his life. He was adjusting to his dad not being around so keeping other aspects of his life stable was very important to me.

Fortunately, I have been able to earn a healthy income from my blog for over 7+ years but I needed to make more money.

Working two jobs is no joke. Forget about the time commitment of two jobs, I found it difficult to “switch hats.” Many days there was just not enough of me to go around.  🤷‍♀️ There were many days where I felt stuck. 

Trying to keep up with blogging – the planning and actual completion of projects take time. DIY home projects take time. A lot of time!

Sometimes I think it would be a lot easier blogging about a cute shirt vs. ripping apart a room and doing a makeover! -ha. 

Styling, shooting the photography, editing the photographs and then actually having enough passion and energy to write the blog post was/is VERY challenging.

Oh and being a full time single mom on top of all of that somewhere fit in between. -ha. 

Blogging is not a consistent monthly income so I needed to make a certain amount each month that was consistent so I wasn’t stressed about bills.

Blogging is a funny very unpredictable job. Some months you can make thousands and other months you can make hundreds. 

That’s the short version of where I have been.

HOWEVER, I did end up leaving that job right before Thanksgiving 2020 and Jim and I have joined forces as I took over his books (he’s a general contractor who renovates homes and does custom builds for clients) and will be working for him (you may have seen that announcement on Instagram Stories in December) part-time along with my blog work. 

A lot of his business and my blogging overlap each other so we think it’s a great opportunity to work together and have some fun along the way! 

I don’t remember the last time I wrote a blog post this long so time to wrap it up – feeling like a rambler over here!

I know many have gone through similar crossroads in life or maybe you are going through a life changing event now. Regardless, just know that crossroads can be good.

Crossroads that seem devastating can turn out to be a huge blessing  😉

Stay tuned, next week I will share answers to another common question, “Jess, do you still like blogging?” and “how is it living with your parents and Jim?”