Well, it’s been a busy 6 weeks. Let me bullet point, and then elaborate on the important parts.

• Got depressed
• Gained 50 lbs from the Pizza & Fast Food Diet (from May 2008) *** EDIT to include
• Got laid off from work
• Moved 250 miles back to Houston, Texas
• Started my own business
• Scored my first client
• Pitched a few others, managing a small sales funnel
• Became happy again
• Lost 8 lbs (and counting [down]).

Yeah, it’s quite a list. Today, Mother’s Day, in fact — I felt the need to post I was still alive (and celebrating my mother and mentor) because I had thought for the first time in a long time. The above summary is basically the summary of my year since graduation, and I’m not sad about it.

Today marks the one-year mark since I finished college classes (end of BAMF-student-status). 5 days from now marks the one-year anniversary since I graduated from Texas Tech University. I was sitting on the couch mocking up a Web site, and I couldn’t help but think of my past year and how up and down it was. I laughed, cried, was silently rejected, started falling and then moved, verbally rejected by my job as my job became “unnecessary,” and used 29,900 cell phone minutes (almost 500 hours) in an attempt to maintain my validation as a person, long distance.

In the past 6 weeks, I’ve been thrown to the ground, picked myself up, run away and started over. I’m losing weight and gaining sanity. I don’t regret my roller coaster ride with my first grown-up job, because I learned about what’s truly important to me - family, friends and room to grow professionally. Hopefully my new full-time job (when I get one) will give me the former, and I know I already have the two latter. I also hope my side business will buy a BMW by the end of the year (at least half of one).

So when you don’t know what to do, drop everything and start fresh. That’s what my first year of college has taught me.

*****************

Edit: 10:30 pm, 5/10/2009

I wanted to add some additional thoughts that led to how I actually bounced back. @davidbadash on Twitter was nice enough to give me some Retweet love, so I wanted to expound.

Over the past year, I spent a lot of time feeling inadequate, and sorry for myself. I felt under loved, like I didn’t have any friends (sans two people and my parents, none of whom were local), and that I just wanted to sit on my porch and drink cheap merlot until I fell over.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like if I had made different choices before and after graduation: if being straight would make me more popular and less of a novelty at work (or even pretending, successfully anyways); if being skinny would get me a boyfriend; if being skinny would make me a better sales person; if I should even be a sales person … all these questions ran through my head constantly. I became noticeably unhappy at work, and even more so at home in my solitude.

Then it all culminated with a scare concerning testicular cancer (which I don’t have, as it turns out). All I remember is certain people at work were all of a sudden trying to be my friend, but I wasn’t about to let them feel sorry for me anymore than they already did.

Then in late March, it happened. I got laid off. I knew it was coming, the train was loud and I saw it from the distance (about 5 months in the distance to be exact). I was taught you don’t quit if you don’t have anything else, so I stayed; what else is a new grad to do in a down economy? However, the axe finally fell and within 7 days I was out of Louisiana. The only attachment I still have to my old life are a reference letter, a book of checks and a promise of a returned deposit signed by my apartment complex.

I had toyed with the idea of creative/project management freelancing for more than a year with my friend @claracobb. We went to school together, have a mad design synergy, plus I know the tech side and she is better at typography than I am. So since she is uber busy with her current job, I went out on a limb as soon as I got back to Houston and decided I was going to start my own business, sell it like it was hot, and buy a BMW by January 2010.

Upon arriving to Houston, I started going to the gym immediately, started eating right, and immediately set out to establish CCComm, the affectionate term for CCCommunications. I decided to find freelancers and find out how it was setup, and I hit the ground running. To date, I have signed my first client, and have several bids pending. I’m hoping June will amount to be a $4,000 month (take that Louisiana Unemployment).

However, details aside, I spent too much damned time feeling sorry for myself in Louisiana. I decided to restart, pull the plug and start over again. I have better things to do than feel sorry for myself. I have friends, live music, my cat, my parents and the best group of professionals who are supporting me, that I could EVER ask for.

So again, I say: if your life sucks, or you just got laid off (fired?): pull the plug. Pull it, seriously. Reboot the system and choose to be happy. Choose to be productive. I learned first-hand, it’s all about the choice; and that sometimes that choice is easy, and sometimes it’s harder than quitting crack (analogy based off stereotypes, I’ve never actually done crack). But anywho, make the choice: it’ll change your life … I know it changed mine.