Life With Lexis K.

Hey there family! It's me again.  First, can I ramble? Forgive me. I've been binging Sex and the City, so I'm definitely in my Carrie Bradshaw era.  When I was younger, elementary school-aged, I wrote lots of poetry. My 5th-grade reading teacher, Mrs. Latta, gave me a notebook that I would write long-hand poetry almost every day. Mostly, it was just word vomit on a page, but I wrote some pretty decent pieces, too. Unfortunately, I don't have any of my school-aged poetry anymore. Still, I can reminisce on this time in my life in great detail and appreciate my early creativity. I wanted to write a poem today - and title it Perfectly Imperfect.  But I write blog posts now, so I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you. If you're like me, you've read all the relationship-related think-pieces on Twitter (his mama named him Twitter!) I mean between the 50/50 conversations, red pill podcasts, horror stories of marriage mishaps, and 20v1 video clips, there's eno...

This is something that I wrote one day back in 2019. Now that was almost 5 years ago. Again a great opportunity to reflect and check back in with myself. What did I Have need then versus what do I need now? How have I grown? How have I regressed? Thank you God for the opportunity to reflect. June 13, 2019 So, I’m thinking to myself… am I okay? I think this just about every day. Some days it’s yes! I’m great, awesome, fantastic! Some days it’s no, but why am I not? And I spend some time trying to understand what’s making me feel this way. And then some days it’s no. Just no. I don’t want to think about why because I don’t know why. I just feel the way I do, and I don't even want to deal with it. Today is one of those days. I feel like I’m in the negative. I almost got into the neutral zone. I thought, “Well let me find something that will make me feel better”. I google searched “Ways to feel better”, “Ways to be happy”, and “Ways to make more money” (as if that would actually make m...

Howdy family!  It truly brings me so much happiness just to be writing to y'all again. Can I clock my tea for a minute?  As y'all know, I've been on the job hunt crazy the past six months. Over 50 applications done, 5 first round interviews, but only 1 second round. Plenty of LinkedIn posts, new resume with buzzwords, the whole nine yards. With the unsolicited help of an old fling from last year, I landed a job offer at a local nonprofit. Hold before you queue the round of applause, y'all.  On its surface, it was a hybrid position, matched next year's teaching salary, and offered me crazy-level exposure to the local government and diverse business owners in the area. Being an aspiring entrepreneur myself, I thought this would be a win-win situation. My ultimate goal and main reasoning for even bearing the trials of the job market was to get the H-E-L-L out of the toilet bowl that is education, especially in a charter district. Brings me to today's blog title: ...

Welcome back, family! I'm proud of myself for the consistency that I've been showing on the blog lately. Only 6 years in the making, but that's a story for another day (Read my post about the 3 Cs of Success ).  So the other day, I was driving to work, menially scrolling my Twitter feed (don't text and drive), when I came across a tweet about a teenager applying for a position at McDonald's. He was asked, "Why do you want to work here?" and "Why did you choose McDonald's?" While reading the comments I realized, did that interviewer even want a  real  answer? Did he want the teen to say "I need money for Robux and to start saving for grad bash? There's a McDonald's literally on every corner, why not?" I thought about myself in interviews, portraying someone that I hoped would be accepted and seen as valuable by the hiring manager. "Marketing" my best attribute in hopes of filling the position applied for. It sent me...

Welcome back, family! I do some of my best writing when I'm avoiding doing something else. Right now, I'm avoiding doing any work related to this job as I'm drained of my current profession.  In my mind, I know I should be more thankful to have gainful employment, especially in this economy. But I can't help but wonder, is this all to life? I drag myself out of bed every day and sit in my car until the very last minute. My daily commute is up to 45 minutes one way and I don't like anything about the work I'm doing anymore. It's not fun, there's no joy in it, and most days I find myself disheartened and exasperated. I'm officially just here for a paycheck. At one point, I absolutely despised those teachers who you could feel were just there for a paycheck, but in these three short years of being in education, I too have turned into one of those people I hate.  Am I complaining? Mostly I am venting because it's getting harder to get through the day...

Howdy family! First, I'm glad "howdy" became a part of my everyday greetings because Queen Bey just dropped a new country album, and it got me feeling like a local Houstonian! Is Cowboy Carter better than Renaissance? I wouldn't go that far as putting two baddies against each other because they are sisters! But you didn't come for that. You read the title - and I'm ready to share my story. Hi, my name is Alexis, and I am addicted to procrastination. Now, this isn't an introduction to a 12-step program but this is an intervention of sorts. I've been listening to  Genius Zone  by Gay Hendrick s on Audible for a few weeks and he talks about how he was addicted to self-criticizing. How can that be? How can you be addicted to something you do internally? Even subconsciously, without even thinking about it. He goes into detail about how addiction stems from a void within us, often time from childhood, and we fill it with different ways to cope. A similar sto...

Howdy family!  Amid my job search, the stress and disappointment of many rejections have left me to pause applying for new jobs. It's also caused me to take a step back and reflect on what I want to do. What are my passions? What parts of teaching do I enjoy? What skills do I feel I want to continue working at in my next profession? I've asked myself these questions many times, and I've also been asked by both supervisors and colleagues to try to help me map out my next career steps. But every time I reach a stalemate and shrug my shoulders. "I don't know what I want to do. I feel like I could do anything. I have many passions, not all related. I'm good at many things, but I want to learn how to do more things." This back and forth is usually followed by a contingent question: Do you want to stay in education? And after this question, I find myself even more frustrated than I began. Not having a straightforward answer makes me question myself in a way that...