Latest / Side Note... / The Porch Swing Test: 3 Jobs, 100 Rejections, and Getting Sober Before 40

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The Porch Swing Test: 3 Jobs, 100 Rejections, and Getting Sober Before 40 · Side Note...

• Melissa: Welcome to Side Note with Melissa, where personal stories spark deeper connections, conversations, and questions. The fear of regret has been one of my biggest motivators through the years. Have you heard of the porch swing test or visualization? This is a visualization of your older self thinking back on your life. So imagine this: it's the end of the day, sunset, you've got a porch swing, and you're on that porch swing. Swaying back and forth. And the person next to you is somebody that you love dearly, that's known you your whole life. Maybe it's your sibling, maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your best friend. But the two of you are sitting on that porch swing and you're swaying back and forth and you're thinking about your life and you're reflecting. Now there's two ways that could go. You could either be thinking back and saying, I really wish I would have done that one thing. I regret not doing that or trying that. I don't know how it would have ended up, but I regret not trying. Or do you want to be saying, wow, I'm really happy about my life as imperfect as it was and is. I'm happy about the decisions and the risks and the things that I tried and I don't regret anything. So let's talk about some of the things that I did. Towards the end of my decade of my 30s, knowing that I was still thinking about how I can maximize my time. What do I want to be thinking and saying when I'm sitting on that porch swing? Welcome to Side Note. This is episode nine. And I'll tell you what, the other really big motivator for me is once you have gone through grief and death and loss. Once you get through the depression and you get to the stage of acceptance, then you sort of have this epiphany and it's part of the gift of grief. You are reminded very quickly that life is short and you are not guaranteed a certain amount of years. I mean, we're hoping we get to that pork swing when we're in our eighties or nineties, but we're not guaranteed that. And when you lose People in your life. In my case, my best friend in her 30s, and two months later, my dad. There is nothing that reminds you so quickly than death. I had that motivator going into my late 30s as well. But three main things happened. The first one was really around the jobs. Now, again, jobs, jobs, jobs. It was always about the jobs in Santa Barbara, not only not having them, unemployed, having more than one job, trying to make a living. So at that point in my late 30s, I was really starting to think about reinvention also. Now, have you ever had to reinvent yourself before where you thought you were on a certain path and it just didn't seem to be working out? Now, to recap what I shared in episode eight, remember I had been teaching aesthetics and I lost my job and I got skin cancer and I had surgery. And then I Had no money, no job, was healing. And I moved to Wyoming in the winter time to live with my mom. And it was during that time of healing and unemployment in the dead of winter, not leaving the house because it was freezing, that I wrote Cowboy Dad, which is now at the center of everything that I do. There I was. Then in Wyoming, the book is done. I'm thinking. What do I do now? Well, I knew at that point that I wanted to get back to Santa Barbara. And I was determined to do that because I didn't want to regret not going back to my paradise of this place that I had lived and loved, and I was gonna make it work. I would do anything to do that. I went back to Santa Barbara. I continued working with my editor on Cowboy Dad, refining that, but I had to find some jobs. The first thing that I did in this reinvention time of my late 30s is to go back to Santa Barbara City College again to get training and certification to become an ESL teacher, English as a second language. Right after that, I applied. For a teaching position at a private school in Santa Barbara called ELC, English Language Center. And it was a private school that catered to young adults from everywhere in the world, mostly Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, catering to young adults, usually right out of high school, to learn English. I got that job and I excelled at it because it was teaching and I Absolutely loved it. But guess what? It wasn't enough money. The hourly rate was quite low and not enough to make a living. And so I had to get another job. I started selling cupcakes at a place called Enjoy Cupcakes. Now, side note, remember when I moved to Santa Barbara, I said to myself, if I have to have This many jobs to make a living, the only requirement I'm gonna have for myself is that each job that I have has to bring some sort of happiness or joy and it has to contribute somehow to the overall picture. Now I really had to use this reframing, so to speak, working in a cupcake shop, selling cupcakes in my late 30s because there was some ego involved and some Pride involved. I mean, I had a master's degree and I was faculty at Santa Barbara City College and now I'm in my late thirties. I have to get a second job selling cupcakes. But here's the way that I looked at it. The owners of the cupcake place were well known in the community, Amber and Kevin. And they were serial entrepreneurs. They are serial entrepreneurs to this day, very successful in their business endeavors. And their cupcake business was Really booming. The public market had just been built in Santa Barbara and everybody was really interested in the public market. So I thought, well, this is a good chance to work for other entrepreneurs who are doing their own business. I get to be a part of this positive vibe buzz of the public market in Santa Barbara. So sure, I'm going to teach in the morning and the afternoons, and then I'm going to go sell cupcakes at the public market at night. And that's what I did. Well, I will tell you what, I've said this several times, I'll say it again. Living in Santa Barbara is so expensive and really hard to make a living there. Having those two jobs wasn't enough. So I got a job as a nanny, a third job as a nanny. Now there was a Saudi family at the English school, and two of the girls and the mom from Saudi Arabia. were students of mine. The mom also had younger boys. So she had four children altogether. The younger boys were too young for the school, but she hired me to be a nanny for them in the afternoons and also to teach them English. I went from teaching English at the school in the mornings and early afternoons, then I nannied the Saudi family and also taught the boys English. And then I went to the public market to sell cupcakes. And between those three jobs I was barely making it. I had a little studio that I was renting and barely paying my bills. Now, side note, it was kind of fun because the mom from Saudi Arabia, we became good friends. She was my age. Here she was, this woman, my age, late 30s. She had four children. I had no children. She was married. I was not married. It was at the time when Saudi had gotten a new king. He allowed women at that point to drive because before then, women were not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Another side note, I was getting to learn all this cool stuff about other cultures, in particular the Saudi culture. When I was first hired at the ELC, the English school, I had been Told and trained in a good way as far as training is concerned, that I needed to be cautious of how I communicated and was with the Saudi men because of the culture. But I'll tell you what, they were some of my favorite students. I was very respectful with the Saudi men. But I expected the same from them. And so I never felt uncomfortable. And I really enjoy teaching them. So anyway, back to the Saudi mom. I was learning all this stuff and she was sharing with me that the new king was allowing women to drive, but guess what? She didn't know how to drive. So she paid me to teach her how to drive. It was just this wonderful opportunity to not only understand a new culture, but get closer with his family. That was the other thing that I always kept in mind living in Santa Barbara and working these many jobs. The experiences that I was getting, while maybe not making a lot of money, were so valuable to me in life. And I knew that. I was reminded of that every single day. Just in the classroom alone, the English Learning Center School and teaching English, I loved it. And I even developed new curriculum. For a creative writing class for ESL students. So creative writing is fun to take at the college level for native English students. But this curriculum that I developed was specifically for ESL students. And so it's really fun because I could say to these students, okay, in your other classes that you take at this school and that I teach you, grammar and vocabulary rules are really important. And you have to stick with the rules, you have to memorize the exceptions. But when it comes to creative writing, we don't play by the rules. So it was this really fun, dynamic class where they would write poetry and short stories. And maybe it didn't make sense grammatically, but poetically and creatively, it was a beautiful, beautiful class. And to this day, I have a book. that we created with all of the different writings of short stories and poetry that we created. That was one of the first things that I was able to accomplish in my late 30s was this reinvention because higher ed jobs were not happening. I wasn't teaching at Santa Barbara City College in aesthetics. And so now I had this new certification in ESL teaching. I was nannying. I Also took on another boy. He was eight years old. His name was Tan. His parents owned a Thai restaurant next to the Cupcake Place. They hired me to be the nanny for Tan. At this time in my life, I was in my late 30s and I was thinking, wow, am I gonna be able to have kids? I don't know. But I was getting to teach young adults and nanny younger children, and I loved it. It was perfect. Timing for me. The second big thing that happened in my late 30s was Cowboy Dad. Now again, remember the goal was really to maximize this decade. I was well aware of my timing and that I was almost 40. And so I reinvented, created more jobs and opportunity. Cowboy Dad was now finished. The editor that I was working with, I called her my soulmate editor. I mean, she was the perfect fit for me. I will do a separate episode on the writing process and how I did that and how I met my editor because that's not an easy thing to do. And I definitely had divine intervention in that. Now, if you're somebody who's in the industry or you know people in the industry, then it's then it's easy. You know, you have an agent, you have an editor, you know somebody, but I was just a normal person. Barely making it in Santa Barbara from Colorado with one challenge after another and drinking too much and grieving and just trying to get through life. And so the way that I was able to get an editor to help me through Cowboy Dad was divine intervention. Cowboy Dad was done. We had edited through the book. It was beautiful. Now with Cowboy Dad, my editor had come from the quote unquote real publishing world. And she had said, you know, this is better than other books I've seen that have been published by one of the big publishing houses. So you need to write query letters and send them to the publishing houses and try to get an agent. I understood that perspective. I said, okay, I absolutely understand where you're coming from, but also I don't know anybody in the industry. I don't have an agent. I will write these query letters. I will get the book of all the contacts of all the publishing houses and agents and I will send out these emails and these query letters. But I'm gonna give it a year. And if I don't hear anything back after a year, I am not waiting on this. I wrote this book so that people could read this story and be impacted by this powerful story of addiction and loss and grief. I don't want it to be sitting on some publisher's desk for years and nobody ever see it. That's what happened. I sent out probably a hundred query letters. I got all rejections. So I decided to self-publish. But because of my contacts in Santa Barbara and working so hard and creating community, I had an amazing supportive community around me that I had built up in Santa Barbara since I was in my twenties. I had written a few little articles for the local papers and magazines. And so I contacted them about Cowboy Dad, scheduled a book signing with Chaucers. Remember, they had a book signing for me with the little college handbook and also with Chicken Soup for the Souls. It's a small town. They knew me. I was utilizing those contacts. The very reason that I moved to Santa Barbara, remember, go where the things are happening that you want to be a part of. Hey, Santa Barbara, this is where the authors are. This is where things are happening. And so I had done that the best that I could with the means that I had. Chaucer's, the local bookstore, a wonderful independent bookstore, scheduled my book signing with Cowboy Dad. They even said to me they couldn't believe it because, of course, they had several book signings with New York Times bestselling authors. And of course, people were going there to go to the book signings and need to author and all this. With my book signing at Chaucer's, there was a line going out the door. These were people that I knew that I'd been their teacher or their nanny or knew from the cupcake place. All those years almost came together right there in Chaucer's when I had my book signing. And it was it was amazing. Now keep in mind this whole time I was still doing a little bit of lavender on the side. You know, a couple of years before I had discovered the lavender fields and I'd learned about essential oils through aesthetics and learned a little bit here and there. So I was still dabbling in lavender a little bit. I never thought, I want to be a lavender farmer and I want to have my own business and this is, you know, what I'm gonna be doing. I had no idea that was ahead for me. And the years to come. But I was doing that a little bit on the side while I was trying to make a living. So here I was, almost 40, had the three jobs, loved my teaching, loved nannying the Saudis, and also Tan, the Thai boy, working with Cowboy Dad and trying to schedule book signings and just feeling really good about sharing. the story of my dad because keep in mind he had died when I was 34 and now I was almost forty and part of my healing was sharing his story. One of the things that my editor said to me was in these book signings, people are gonna ask you a lot of questions and you're gonna Do a great job in answering the personal questions about your dad and your family. But when it comes to clinical stuff about now, well, why did he have seizures and why did he die from withdrawals and that sort of thing? She said, You need to understand that clinically so that you can answer those questions. So she was the one that encouraged me to get some training in that. So guess what I did? I went back. To City College again and I got accredited and training in drug and alcohol counseling. Now, did I want to become a drug and alcohol counselor? No, not really. Although I got the training and the certification to do so. This was also the beginning of my healing journey regarding the drinking. That's the third thing that happened in my late 30s, almost 40. I started thinking to myself, okay, that. porch swing that I'm gonna be sitting in when I'm let's say a hundred, if I'm blessed. I wanna make it to that. And I know if I keep drinking, I know where that goes. I had just seen my dad die from it. I was motivated at that point. I knew that I had a problem. Now in my drug and alcohol counseling class that I took, Again, very much divine intervention. My professor was a man in recovery. And when he would talk in the classes, I just felt like my brain was so happy. I was hearing things and understanding things that I'd never understood before about addiction and the family dynamics of addiction and the family roles that each family member plays when one of the parents is an addict. This is what I needed to hear for so many years. And finally there was this professor that was talking about it and I was loving it. During this time in the class, we had to do presentations. And so I actually had to do a presentation on the role that I played in my family with my dad being the alcoholic. And that brought so much awareness to me. The other thing that the class required me to do and all the students is to see a counselor while we were in this. class. And so I did that. And for the first time I was able to talk to this counselor about my drinking problem. It was then encouraged that I go to AA. Now at that point, I had no experience with AA. My dad may have tried it before, but I knew of it. But there were no success stories of AA where my family was concerned. But I did know that I wanted to quit drinking. And I did know that if I didn't I would be in trouble and I wouldn't make it to that pork swing. So I decided to do outpatient rehab. And I knew at that point I was drinking enough and I'd just seen my dad die from the withdrawals. I knew that I wasn't at the level of addiction that he was at, but I knew that I still needed to slowly come off the alcohol. So that's what I did. through an outpatient program. Now I will tell you that was the beginning of my healing. And if you're in recovery, you know, but it was the little things like not waking up with a massive hangover, not wondering like, ⁓ my God, what did I do or say the night before? Or not having blackouts? Like, how did I drive from that town to back to Santa Barbara? And I don't even remember doing that. So I just felt so much relief that I didn't have to worry about those things. And I was feeling better overall. But I have to tell you, there was an incident three months I had been sober. Three months with no AA. I decided to go out with a group of friends to celebrate. Now again, no AA mentality. So I thought I've been sober for three months. I'm good. I'll have a glass of wine. So I had a glass of wine at the restaurant. Now I'll tell you, nothing bad happened. But I remember thinking to myself, if I wasn't with this group of people, I would drink a whole bottle of wine. I mean, I stopped myself, but I remember thinking, ⁓ man, this tastes good. This feels good. I really wish I could drink this whole bottle. But I had so much awareness around that. I thought, okay, what does this mean? This means that. I have to quit. I can never drink again. And I can't do that just on willpower. I need help. And so that's when I started thinking about AA. But here's what's so great with divine intervention and God and our higher power. Once I made that decision in my heart and my mind, this is where you get help. Because then at that point, I knew I wanted to to do that. I thought, I how can I do that? I I'm working three jobs. I'm teaching, I'm nannying, I'm selling cupcakes. I don't know when I'm gonna have time to go to meeting. And I'll tell you what, the meeting that I found was right next door to the building where I was working. I would literally finish my shift, go next door to the meeting for an hour and then go on to the next job. I didn't have to drive anywhere extra. I didn't have to wait for a certain time for the meeting to start, nothing. It was like Perfectly planned for my schedule. Then of course what happened was somebody said, You're gonna have to get a sponsor. Well, this is really common for people who are new in recovery. I thought, ⁓ no, I don't have to get a sponsor. I have quit drinking. I am too busy working three jobs. I already go to an eight A meeting. I'm good. I'm good. But I remained open. And somebody said in a meeting, they said, here's how you find a sponsor. Because I was very, I'm an introvert. I don't want to talk to somebody about that. I don't wanna, I don't wanna go have to go through all that. I don't wanna have to meet with somebody. I don't want them calling and checking in on me. I don't like that. I'm not a checker inner. I don't wanna do it. But here's what they said to me. They said, when you go to AA meetings, listen. Listen for somebody who's talking about their recovery and they have things that you want. Okay. So at a meeting, here's this woman. She gets up, she starts speaking. She's maybe 10 years older than me. She has a British accent. So she sounds very lovely and refined and educated. And I love listening to her talk. And she's talking in metaphor. Now, in my experience, only one type of person talks in metaphors, and that is writer. Writers talk in metaphors. And so sure enough, as she's sharing her story, this lovely woman with this lovely accent, so sophisticated and beautiful, talking about her addiction, says that she is a writer, a successful writer, a producer, a director. She's got books and she had been married and divorced and she'd met her new husband, the love of her life. And I thought, ⁓ that is what I want. I couldn't believe it. It was exactly the person. that I found that I wanted to be like. And so of course I introduced myself after the meeting. I said I'm looking for a sponsor. And so we ended up meeting and talking and she became my sponsor. She took me through the twelve steps of AA. This ⁓ was so critical in my healing. Now at this point, I had done therapy, and therapy is good for the most part. Some people have bad experiences, some people have good experiences. I had a little bit of both, but I was educated and aware enough to know that overall therapy's a good idea. And I had done that. And I had done grief groups. This was different. She took me through these 12 steps and it was not only the best therapy I had ever had, I had so many awakenings, many epiphanies. So much healing. It was also free. I wasn't paying $100 plus dollars an hour to meet with my sponsor. Then she said to me, I need you to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. I said, 90 meetings in 90 days. Are you crazy? That's what she told me to do, and that's what I did. And I'm telling you, it changed my life. And so there I was about to turn 40. I had looked back at my decade of 30s of loss. And grief with my best friend, my dad, jobs, cancer, moving to Wyoming. But I wrote Cowboy Dad. I had a book signing that was very successful. I reinvented myself with new jobs and new trainings, alcohol and drug counseling, English as a second language. I was nannying and learning about new cultures. I was still doing a little bit of lavender, really doing well. That was the light at the end of the tunnel of my decade of my thirties. I'm just wondering for you, what resonates with you? I mean, when you think about your porch swing moment, what does that look like for you? What do you want to be thinking about and reflecting on and really how do you want to feel when you're thinking back on your life? And are there any themes in your decade? Themes or patterns or things that you had to get through. Did you ever have to reinvent yourself when you thought you were on a certain path, but it just wasn't working out? What did you do? And what motivated you to continue to move through? That was the biggest thing that I had learned and built that muscle was to don't get stuck, to continue to move through. And that builds resiliency. And that was the gift. One of many gifts, but that was the main gift that I got in my thirties, was this resiliency. I got a few questions this week from my listeners, and the first one has to do with my last name, and I can see why it's a little bit confusing. So my last name is Broughton. That's my maiden name, Melissa Broughton. But when some of you were looking at my articles that I had written regarding Spa Hill's writing, and I had done an episode about that. You could see that my last name was Malot. And Malot was my married name. And I was not married when I wrote those spa health articles. But what happened was when I got divorced, I did not change my name back to my main name. And the reason I didn't do that at the time is because I felt like people only knew me as Malot in my adult life. And so I And I felt more connected to it, even though I'd gotten a divorce at that time. So I just kept it. And then as I got older, I felt less and less connected to that name. And also when my dad died, I definitely wanted to go by my maiden name again. But I never officially changed it. I remember looking into it and it was gonna cost like eight hundred dollars or something. And I definitely did not have that at that time. And so unofficially I just went back to using my main name and ⁓ never got it legally changed back. So to this day, my legal name is still my married name, believe it or not. Driver's license, passport, all of that. But as you can see, it is definitely not my name, my My real name is Melissa Broughton, that is my maiden birth name. And also, to be quite honest with you, I thought, you know, 10, 15 years ago, I thought, ⁓ well, it's no big deal. I'll just get remarried someday and then I'll change it, officially change it. But that did not happen. So I hope that clears up the confusion. Speaking of getting married. ⁓ that is the other question that I got from a couple of people actually, and they worded it differently, but one asked if I got remarried, and then another one asked if I ever want to get remarried. So, no, I never got remarried. I thought I would in my twenties and my thirties. but I never did. And the other question is, do I want to get remarried? And after my divorce, I think that was definitely on my mind as far as like, ⁓ yes, I do want to get remarried eventually. But life happens, certain things happen. Before you know it, five years goes by, ten years goes by, etc. And I never got remarried. Do I want to? I would say yes, I think so. I'm hesitating because I feel like the older I get, the more I kind of wonder about that. ⁓ it's kind of an interesting question to ponder and to talk about with people in my circle. So I'm not against it. I'm not going to be devastated if it doesn't happen, but I think there is definitely a part of me and my heart that still thinks that I would really love that. I'm leaning on God for that one. If He wants me to get married, I think I'll know it. And if not, then I'm okay with that. The other question that kind of comes along with that too, that one other person asked is. the question regarding kids. I never had kids. And the question was, did I want children? And I did a podcast, I was interviewed on a podcast about, I think it was 10, 12 years ago. And the interviewer was asking me these same questions about being married and remarried and ever and having kids. And the way that I answered it at that time and It still resonates now is if my future self had gone to my 17 year old self and said, Hey, by the way, I'm here to tell you that you're not going to get remarried and you're not going to have kids, I would have said, You got the wrong Melissa. Because when I was younger, 17, 18, 19, I thought for sure. I would of course be married to my high school sweetheart and I would definitely have children. It I just didn't think of it any other way. And so it didn't happen. Now, did I not want children? I I actually really did. but again, as the years went by in my thirties, I kept thinking, ⁓ well, there's still time. And then when I turned forty, I thought, you know, I it's probably not going to happen, like physiologically not going to happen. And I think I went through a little bit of a mourning time regarding that. But I have to say that there are some women that I know that, you know, just would be devastated if they couldn't have children, ⁓ or didn't have children. And you know, just because of what they wanted in life. For me, I think it surprises me still, I'm not like that. So I think I would have been a great mother. I I love children, I love kids, I'm good with kids, but I'm not devastated that I don't have them. ⁓ so did I think I would get remarried? Yes, I did. Do I want to get married? I think so, but I'm not sure. and did I want kids? Yes, at one point, but at this point I'm not super disappointed that it didn't happen. One I'll be honest with you, once in a while I do think about it, and it does make me sad, but I'm so blessed in my life in so many other ways, and I'm able to nurture and mother and take care in other ways. I hope that ⁓ answers the questions for this week. ⁓ keep them coming, send them to me in the comments or through Instagram or Facebook. Thank you so much for listening to Side Note with Melissa. If these stories resonated with you, please share this episode with a friend. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. And feel free to leave a comment. You can also follow and connect on my Instagrams, Side Note with Melissa. or June Bloom Lavender. And I hope my crazy convoluted stories made you laugh, smile, and even reflect on your own chapters. This podcast is brought to you by June Bloom Lavender, a lavender speakeasy in the Texas Hill Country. June Bloom specializes in handcrafted lavender gifts and a premium skincare line made with lavender harvested each summer by owner Melissa Broughton, that's me, in Santa Barbara County, California.