LaToya M. Davidson-Perez

Like a boa constrictor slowly wrapping itself around my neck, I have become enveloped by the thing that so many of us have accepted as our life-long companion, personal debt. In the wake of recent personal loss, the added stresses of consumer debt can truly be a further bane in one’s existence. Why is it so easy to throw caution to the wind, to put off until tomorrow what we should be dealing with today? And how can you stop beating yourself up over these mistakes?

I knew when I changed jobs that this was going to happen. I tried to put a more positive spin on it, the less money I had, the less that I had to keep up with. However, as we all often do, a change in income doesn’t always equal a change in our spending habits. We somehow convince ourselves that things will be just fine, that we don’t have to change the way we live or the things we purchase. And they are all just things, right? I know exactly where all of my money goes. I’m very meticulous in budgeting and ensuring that bills are paid. But I have fallen into the trap that so many of us do, I’m an emotional spender. When things get hard a bit of retail therapy or dining out is what gets me through a few moments of despair. Read the rest of this entry »

The day I’ve dreaded my entire life came this past weekend. At bliss in my slumber I awoken into the nightmare that is now my life. My mom called. At first I didn’t think much of it. For all I knew it was already mid-afternoon and I had slept the morning away. The phone rang with her distinctive ringtone. The sound that came from the phone made no sense at all. I immediately knew something was wrong. My mother sounded labored, delirious, upset. I knew that sound, I remembered it from almost 8 years prior when my Aunt Gloria and my Papa died. She sounded frantic and nonsensical. She kept repeating that she couldn’t find her car. My brain couldn’t understand why my mother sounded so bereaved because she couldn’t find her vehicle. But then the words came that I never wanted to hear, the words that pierced like a knife through the confusion, “Mommy is gone!”

A few days have now passed since learning of my grandmother’s passing. The very grandmother whom I’d just seen two months ago, the one who inspired several of my most recent articles. As recently as July I wrote of how I felt about what I considered to be the longest goodbye. Even then, however, I felt like I had more time. I dismissed the thoughts of time only moving forward than it standing still. Childish as it was, I felt as though if I were able to keep her in my mind as she was, then she would never truly be gone from me. And while that is certainly true, I’ve found that no matter how much sense I can make of it, there is still so much of it that is an incomprehensible haze. At times it’s a sense of calm and others, it’s a numbness of my soul. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’ve managed to be living under a rock the past several weeks, you’ve heard about or taken part in the Ice Bucket Challenge. For a brief moment in time all of social media as well as the news networks were a buzz with this viral campaign giant. If you somehow missed it, take this as me challenging you to take part. Bring awareness to something that you’re passionate about. Make a donation to charity.

In July and August of 2014 one could easily find themselves immersed not only in ice water, but also in watching video after video of people taking part the Ice Bucket Challenge. Most famously, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, aka. Lou Gehrig’s disease) Association’s Ice Bucket Challenge was on everyone’s lips and captured on so many camera phones. The premise was simple, when challenged you have 24 hours to film yourself dumping a bucket of ice water (preferably with ice cubes) over your head and daring someone else to do the same all in the name of charity. You would then post it on the social network of your choice. The caveat being that if you didn’t comply you had to make a monetary donation to charity or you could accept the challenge and make a donation while circumventing the water dousing altogether. Read the rest of this entry »

I find that I am often very tightly wound. Having OCD certainly doesn’t help, but being open to finding ways to cope does. For the past several days I’ve allowed life to really get to me. Everything was getting to me. The stress of it all had me extremely irritable and often times angry and distant. I find it so hard to relax.

I recently found myself lamenting to my brother about how sometimes it’d be great not having to be an adult. Childhood really is fleeting. When you think about it, in the grand scheme of life, it lasts but for a moment. Long gone are the days of having someone else to take care of our responsibilities for us. We were all so anxious to become adults. We couldn’t believe why our parents and others told us to enjoy our childhood. And before we knew it, the long march of adulthood was at our doorsteps.

I’m a details type of person. And because I am I agree with the idiom, the devil is in the details. I try to live a very structured life. I plan out my days in blocks of time and prefer for things to be regimented. Because of that, I find that I am not a fan of surprises or the lack of planning. It frustrates me when you have to tell someone something more than three times and I always feel as though the weight of the world is squarely on my shoulders. I can sometimes get so crippled by losing the rigidity that I like that I sometimes take it a bit too far and even become depressed that I can’t live up to an unrealistic ideal. I expect more from myself than others do of me and I can, at times, allow that to eat at me. From childhood I have tried to do the best and be the best and I think that there are times where I find that sometimes need to, as in the now famous Disney’s Frozen song, Let It Go. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting or even committing to a home business can be very challenging. You are guaranteed to go through almost constant highs and lows. I recently made the decision to make my side business my primary one. It meant forsaking all others and consciously deciding to commit my whole self to the process. Each day brings challenges and uncertainties. And until you get things really going, you have to sometimes put in some very long hours.

I do have a few working projects. I have two that I’m actively working on and another that will be starting within the next week or so. Elance has been a great place to set up a virtual workspace. That is where the bulk of my leads have come from. And while I’ve certainly been busy, it has not yet materialized into any real income. Like anything else that’s worth fighting for, you have to put in the time and dedication even when you feel like you’re not making any progress.

One of my projects that I’ve devoted the most time and energy to is also one that I have not yet been paid for and which I won’t be compensated for the full time and scope of what I’ve completed. However, it was something that I had to consciously decide to do. Sometimes you have to decide if the experience is worth more to you than what you’ll make monetarily. While I don’t always encourage doing this, it can be a good thing to do in moderation. You may find that working for free provides you with the chance to learn new skills that you’d previously only dreamed about learning or had been putting off learning all together. But as I said, you must know how to balance your desire to learn more with the reality of having bills to pay. Read the rest of this entry »