lisamoe

My kids are just as smart and kind and awesome as fuck.  Sometimes I look around and feel sorry for every other parent in the world because they don't have these kids.  That is all.

There's an exciting collaborative playwriting project going on in my town, for a handful of youth to work with an established playwright for one-on-one mentoring and also to develop a play together to be put on in February. It's put on by an established theatre company and the Arts and Humanities Council, so not some fly by night thing. Anyway, I saw a post about it on facebook, so I wrote an email to the guy in charge of it to ask how Jesse would apply and what he would have to do to qualify, and he wrote right back and said that Jesse was already enrolled, he was referred by his drama teacher at YST and they already have his writing samples. He said we'd hear from them soon about when they get started. I cannot tell you how thankful I am for the mentors this kid has, and how great it is that they're looking out for him and putting more opportunities in his way. I have always thought he was something special, but it's nice to have some outside confirmation!

I went and removed a bunch of abandoned journals and some people with whom I clearly do not have a connection. It's pretty superfluous, of course, because there are only a few people I interact with here anyway, but it seems neater this way.

Sometimes I kind of cry a little bit (in a good way!) at how freaking wonderful my kids are. I know I say it all the time, but one or the other of them does something to make me feel that way all the time, that's why. I cannot get over how much they are the best thing that ever happened to me.

Well, Dingo is out of Animal Farm, but soccer starts Tuesday. Fortunately soccer takes up much less time than a play. Jesse is in rehearsals for Twelfth Night, as Feste, and Variations on the Death of Trotsky, as Trotsky. He also wrote a one act play that will be performed in June as part of a juried play festival and has production meetings for that beginning this weekend. He and Dingo will probably try out for some of the other one acts too. All that in addition to their Saturday and Wednesday drama and improv classes pretty much means that's ALL WE DO. Drama is a giant time suck, let me tell you.

I was reading up on multi-level marketing today, after running into an MLM type thing on the periphery of things that happened last week. You know what that is, right? Direct selling, like Amway or Avon or other companies that sell directly through salespeople but also make the salespeople recruit more salespeople in order to actually make any money, through taking a piece of all the commissions of the people they recruit.

I sold Usborne Books for a while when I was younger, and I was pretty happy with that experience, but I hadn't gone into it with the idea of making a lot of money. I had small kids and I basically wanted to be able to order books for them at a dealer discount, which I did. That didn't sit well with my upline (supervisor/recruiter who gets part of your commission) because they really wanted me to recruit as much as to sell, so I didn't do it for long and I didn't even try to recruit, but I did it just long enough to amass a great collection of kids' books. If I had gone in expecting an actual liveable income, I would have been pretty disappointed. I was glad to pretty much break even after about 6 months, but I was never near to making any actual money.

Recently my niece got involved with an MLM company selling really overpriced knives. The company she worked for (well, you don't really work FOR them, you're an independent contractor) recruits inexperienced college kids who don't know any better, and they try to get them to buy overpriced sample kits and sell knives to their family and friends (for $1000s of dollars!) before they wise up and quit. Fortunately she got out before she got too involved and before it cost her too much money, just a few days of wasting gas and a sample kit that wasn't TOO bad. Her parents and I told her it was pretty much a scam and she didn't believe us, but when they started asking her to buy things and made her come to unpaid meetings and make unpaid "training" calls (remember, not an employee, a contractor) she wised up on her own.

I have seen others of my friends who are in really tight economic straits try to sell overpriced candles, makeup, pampered chef, etc, and invariably, it ends up costing them money up front that they don't have and none of them have made any significant profit with it, not even enough to be a second income, let alone a first. Sure, people do succeed, but it's not selling they usually succeed at, they get ahead because they're great at talking people into trying to sell it themselves, and you make way more money off having people under you and taking a cut of all their commissions than you do by selling it yourself. That's how pyramid schemes work. You can have a good time doing it, you might make a few dollars here and there, especially initially before you wear out the good will of your friends and family, and you can usually get a lot of product, but unless you're pushy and unscrupulous, you probably won't ever make much.

The bad part is that they tend to prey on people who are desperate for money, they tell them this is a job with their company, when it's really not, it's you opening your own business. Typically at a regular job you actually work for that employer, they pay unemployment insurance, there may be benefits, they pay you at least minimum wage for all the time you're working, and there is normally mileage reimbursement when you have to use your own car. This arrangement works great for MLM companies because they can "hire" every single person who applies and see who sticks around and there is absolutely no risk or outlay of money by them up front, unlike with a real employer. Even the people who don't stick around (and this is most of them, that's why they're *always* "hiring") might make them a little money on upfront fees, buying samples or selling to family and friends before they quit. If people could just try it and get out it wouldn't be so bad, but there is almost always upfront expense of the sort you don't have if you take a traditional job with a traditional company, which strains already strapped people even further.

Anyhow, in my stumbling about the internet, I came across this article http://www.financialindustryscam.com/mlm.htm that pretty well explains the whole history of multi-level and direct marketing, how it works, the economics thereof, why you have all the hassles of being an independent contractor PLUS all the hassles of being an employee, and why the vast majority of the people doing it don't make much, if any, money. You're probably not as wonky as I am, but if you are, it's interesting reading. If you're thinking about direct selling, I would read it all the way through so you know what you're getting into. There is a list of the worst companies toward the end, with specific complaints and info about each.

Last week I bought a nice black skirt for work in a size 14 (at Goodwill, $4!) I had just gotten rid of my last nice black work skirt because I haven't been able to wear it for a year, even with pinning it at the waist. It was a size 22 and it fit when I bought it, years ago.

I don't think I fit into everything that's a 14 now, but I think I am falling between a 14 and a 16 and that's nice. Some of my 16s are loose and I have to belt all my jeans now. A year or so ago I wouldn't have even looked at a 14.

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Don't hang around with me. That's a good start!