Hello everyone and welcome to another blog post!!!

I’ve been…missing for practically 5 months at this point and that’s truly shameful on my part. I started this blog because I wanted a way to express my creative energy while also having my little corner of the internet. As you can see though, I am terrible at updating and maintaining this blog, at least with the current schedule I have.

So, I’ve decided to put myself on a schedule for creating content both for my blog and for TikTok. Right now, the plan is to post a crochet video twice a week, a singing video once a week, a blog post every two weeks, and a dance video every two weeks. So far, I’ve done better than I have in the past with posting, but I’m still not quite on the schedule I need to be on. I don’t want to give up on myself too early, so I’m going to keep trying for the current schedule I have for at least a month or two before I decide to make adjustments.

Truth be told, this post was supposed to be out last week, but I kept telling myself that I had time to make the blog post instead of actually making it. Thus, I missed the deadline and am just now posting this post. Typically, I would want to update on Saturdays, but because I’ve been missing for so long, I’m going to post this one as soon as I’m finished with it.

Now that a bit of an overview of the scheduling is over with, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of where I’ve been and why I’ve been gone for so long.

Pride Festival

It’s a month past pride month, but Happy Belated Pride Month to everyone!!!

Similar to last year, I decided to sell at the pride festival in Smyrna to 1) be able to attend the festival that’s in my area and 2) to promote and expand my small business. This year, instead of making beanies, bandanas, and mini flag keychains, I made cat hats, bandanas, and pride bee keychains. I had one goal for this year: make more than I made last year.

Since I am financially dependent on myself and the job market is horrendous right now (more on that later), the money I made at the pride festival was going to aid me in buying groceries and taking care of some of my debts. Despite not selling as much this year, I did end up making more money somehow. To exact, I almost made $100 more than I made last year.

While I was happy to have met my goal, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t sell as many products nor did I hand out as many business cards as I had hoped. Additionally, it was hotter this year than it was last year and despite my best attempts to prepare me and my friends for the festival, I could not afford to buy an electric fan to keep us cool. Thankfully, I bought plenty of water for hydration and we had the tent to provide us with shade. Plus, I managed to find some pride related manual fans I had a few days before the festival, so we weren’t completely out of luck.

As of right now, I’m not sure if I will sell at the festival again next year. On one hand, I have a lot of ideas for products and items I can sell next year and some ideas on how I can make the experience better for my friends and I (since they insist on accompanying me at the event). However, the booth fee is a bit outrageous for it to be a small pride event and they don’t provide enough services for that fee to make sense. If this event were being held in a major city or was a bigger event, I would understand. Smyrna, GA, however, is not a big or major city, so I feel as though the booth fee is a bit much.

I still have until next year to make a decision on whether I want to sell or not, so for now, I’ll mull it over in my brain between the other things I have going on in life.

Here are some pictures from the event and pictures of the products I sold.

This isn’t a complete image gallery of all the products I sold at the event, but it’s enough images for you to get the idea of what I had. I sold out of all of the black cat hats and almost all of the dark grey ones as well. I have plenty of the beige ones leftover. As for the bandanas, I still have a lot of the asexual, aromantic, aroace, and nonbinary bandanas left. For the bees, I pretty much sold out of all the bees except four.

However, I am very much capable of making more products should someone want them. If you or anyone you know is interested in buying something pride related from me, feel free to check out my Etsy shop at this link:

https://handmadecrochetbykay.etsy.com

If you want something specifically made that you do not see or would like the items I sold last year at pride, feel free to message me on Etsy and I’ll see what I can do.

Grad School (spring semester)

Y’all, I’m not going to lie to you.

This last spring semester almost had me dropping out of grad school and changing my whole career path.

There’s no logical explanation for why I aced the last semester, let alone passed. I definitely should have failed at least two out of the three classes I was taking. To start, I had to retake Intro because I got a C the first time and you cannot have two Cs on your transcript at my college. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, almost halfway through the semester, my professor in Counseling Skills pulls me aside to tell me that I am failing her class. I wasn’t failing because I was slacking or anything. I was failing because I kept missing an important assignment due to mental health problems.

I hold myself to a high academic standard because that’s the way my grandparents raised me. You either get an A or you failed. Even though they lessened up on that mindset as my brothers and I got older, I never managed to curve that mindset. Every time I don’t get the grade I wanted, I feel like a failure and a disappointment. For my professor to take me aside after all my classmates had left and tell me that I’m failing almost broke me. I had been struggling with my ADHD all semester and hearing that news made me feel like there was no hope for me. I simply was not meant for grad school because I couldn’t get my act together enough to be a grad school student. I was a failure and if I couldn’t even pass a class, what kind of therapist was I going to be? Would I even be an effective therapist? What was I even doing with my life?

Long story short, my professors let me by with more bullshit than they should have. I should have gotten more points off. I should have failed more assignments. I should have had to retake those two classes during the summer to stay on track. But they showed me grace and I’m not sure how I feel about that. At the end of the day, I did not deserve the grades I got at the end of the semester (all As remember) and now I feel as though I need to overwork myself during the fall semester to make up for my disappointing performance of the spring.

If I stay strict on myself and stop procrastinating so badly, this is how I will look throughout the fall semester.

But hey, I have to do better because I refuse to lower my standards when I know what I’m capable of.

Job Market

We have finally reached the section of this post where I tell you about my misadventures in searching for a job.

For those who don’t know or have the pleasure of being with job, THE JOB MARKET AIN’T SHIT RIGHT NOW.

My friends and I have been searching for jobs for MONTHS and have yet to hear anything back from most of them. When we do hear back, it’s a rejection letter and another dent to the hard work we keep putting in.

I did manage to get an independent contracting position, but I kept getting clients who wouldn’t show up to sessions, and I only got paid if I was able to write an effective note about the session. On top of that, it felt like every time I tried to write a note, there was something wrong with it that wouldn’t allow me to get paid. The main problem I had with the “job” was that we had two days of orientation that did not go into true depth about what we were supposed to be doing and that everything was based on whether your client showed up to the session or not.

This kind of position would be great if I had the time for a less restrictive position, but I don’t. Additionally, I need a form of income that is constant so that I can support myself and possibly save on the side (we know that’s becoming a rare art too). Ultimately, after two months of trying, I left that position without a single paycheck.

Truly, what a waste of time.

I’ve been applying like crazy to all kinds of positions, hoping to hear anything back from anyone at this point. This has literally been me for months.

The only positions I haven’t truly applied to are food service positions because that’s a been there, done that type situation for me. I hated working in food service and if I can help it, I don’t plan to return. Considering the position I’m in, however, I may have choke down my pride and apply for some food service positions.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to find something that doesn’t make me want to jump off a bridge, but I am also aware of the kind of privilege that is.

Anyway, that’s the end of the post!!! It’s been a long journey to get to this point, but I’m feeling a bit more hopeful about life and don’t want to walk into oncoming traffic for now.

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, thank you so much for sticking around and I hope to see you in the next post!!!