...candice lost and found...

Some days all I do is yell. I yell and I yell and I yell. Sometimes the right thing to do is probably just to politely ask my children to do what I want them to do, but because reality has made yelling a habit it comes out as me yelling. I hate yelling. It makes me unnerved. It's not how I believe results are produced in business, how could it produce results in four year olds? Newsflash...it doesn't. Yet, at home it's so hard to find a balance that doesn't include yelling. So tonight when my daughter asked what letter an exclaimation point was as she was looking at a book, I had to explain that it meant that the person was yelling, exclaiming, what they were saying. In this particular book, a mother was telling a child, David, "No peeking!" David is always getting yelled at in his book series. I bought them in hopes of teaching my children right from wrong without me having to yell, David's mother could do that! It has not worked out that way. In fa...

The best boss I ever had was named Nikki. She was probably in her late 20s, early 30s and I was only 19. Nikki thanked me and every employee when we left for the night, which always baffled me because I had been paid to go to work and to complete certain tasks, hadn't I? She always evaluated my work with a keen eye and provided guidance, while still letting me expand my creativity and use my own talents to the best of my ability. When she promoted me, it was always to areas of the business that I was able to continue to grow, learn and develop. And, for me, the most significant thing she did was show compassion and empathy for me as a human being and my life outside of the walls of work. Don't get me wrong, if I came in hung over she expressed little sympathy for my headache, previous nights make-up and pale green complexion. But the day she watched me struggle with a sorted romantic relationship full of complexities, she sat me down and told me I was worth more than what h...

It's been awhile. To see that the girls weren't even one when I last posted amazes me. It feels like a century ago, a lifetime passed. They will be five in less than a month. Our world has surely changed since then. The hard has changed and our capacity to handle it, too. I still feel blessed beyond compare, but I also feel burnt out by this whole working mom and wife thing. It's definitely difficult and despite what people say, it's impossible to "have it all", at least not in the way it's proposed. After years of focusing solely on work and my family, I feel like I'm at a crossroads. I have never been good at taking care of myself, I don't have a hobby besides helping other people, and I don't really ever relax or sit still. I'm just not very good at it. So, for 2017, I have made self care a priority. It actually started mid-December and I'm still doing pretty well with it. My venture into self care has included a variety of lifes...