Pulling Curls Podcast Season Two Introduction — PCP 051

Today’s an into to why I am who I am touching on why I became a mom, a nurse, how I got organized, and become a blogger/podcaster.

In this episode I am talking all about how I got to where we are here at season 2. Can’t wait to see you through the rest of the episode!

Other links that might interest you:

• More About Me!
• My Season 1 Intro Epsiode
• Nursing school (the school that shall not be named)
• My cleaning schedule
• Blogging for Income

Producer: Drew Erickson

Check out all my podcasts:

Transcipt:

Hilary Erickson 0:00
Hey guys, welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Welcome to season two. I can’t believe we’re on episode 51, you guys. Season Two! This is so crazy. So, today I wanted to do like a little intro episode case you guys forgot who I was. So let’s untangle it.

Welcome to the Pulling Curls Podcast. I’m Hilary, your curly headed host on the podcast where we untangle everything from pregnancy, parenting and home routines. I want you to know that there are no right answers for every family and I find that simplifying my priorities is almost always the answer. It’s tangled just like my hair.

Hey guys, before we get started, leave me a review. Leave me a review, please leave me a review.

Okay, I just kind of wanted to intro a little bit about who I am. I don’t know if you guys know I grew up in Utah, we lived in the Bay Area for 10 years, and now we live in Phoenix. But I wanted to dive a little bit deeper than that.

So I’m a mom. But I wanted to talk about kind of like the background story behind all these things. I honestly never really want to have kids. I worked for a pediatrician, right after we got married I got that job. We got married when I was 21, side note. And I mean, I liked engaging with kids. I’ve always loved engaging with kids, but they’re annoying to me. And I still don’t love having kids over for playdates. There’s particular ones that I tolerate better than others.

But I don’t know maybe you guys are somewhat similar, but having huge amounts of kids at my house has never ever appealed to me. I had lots of nieces and nephews, just they were fun in small spurts. But I always knew that I was going to be a mom. I don’t know if you guys know but I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I grew up knowing that I was going to be a mom.

So my husband was headed toward graduation and I just felt like maybe it was the time to get started. I had been graduated for a couple years before my husband graduated. Those of you that don’t know my husband graduated in music education, and we both went to BYU. We tried- we had a baby. It was hard. That transition was really rough for me. I did not have what you would quote an easy baby. He had reflux and ear infections and didn’t want to sleep and I was very used to running 12 hour shifts and then having days fully off, you know how it goes. It was a rough transition. That’s how I became a mom unless you want to hear the birds and the bees. I have a whole episode on that too.

Okay, becoming a nurse. I bet a lot of you have wondered, how did she become a nurse. So I really liked science classes in high school. I was okay at math. But science was really interesting to me. And I took anatomy my junior year. So I was about 16. And our teacher was an LPN. She worked at the hospitals on the weekends, and I just thought that was so cool, Mrs. Abbott and I remember sitting there one day and just being like, guess what I’m going to be I’m going to go to nursing school and at the time, I knew I was probably going to be with you because My dad worked there. And I knew that that school was like ridiculously hard to get into the nursing school not so much BYU, although it was hard to get into.

So I, I just was like, I guess that’s what I’m going to do. And it’s going to be really hard. And I also knew that a lot of girls at my high school wanted to major in nursing and then don’t end up majoring in nursing because it’s hard to get into the programs difficult. The academics of it are difficult, but I decided that that’s what I wanted to do.

So I did get rejected one time, and I spent a semester retaking my B minus in microbiology, so I know I only got a B plus the second time, just clearly not my spiritual gift. But I got in and I had a rough go of it. I am not super academically strong. And I had a teacher pulled me aside and say that I would probably never make it because my papers were far too casual, which is interesting, because we don’t talk to patients the same way we should write a paper and so I would write my paper kind of how I would talk to a patient really helping them to understand what’s going on, which is how I talk to patients now, but she thought that I was a piece of work that was never gonna make it.

Side note, that was her last semester teaching so I don’t know if she had other things going on. But there were a lot of tears. And I have to say that the day I graduated from nursing school was probably the happiest day of my life. Yes, happier than marriage or babies because it was just done. There was no like stuff after it. Yeah, I had to take the NCLEX but that was like two months later, but nursing school was not a favorite. So glad to have it done. If you’re in nursing school, big fat fist bump to you right now.

Okay, so how did I become so organized? My blog is a lot about systems and organization. And I have to say I switched to labor and delivery in the year after my first baby was born. So in 2001, I had worked part time up until that at some hospitals and geriatrics and we moved to California and we needed more income. So I picked up an actual job. They actually moved us to California and it was rough. I had not been used to working full time my husband was working more hours at the high school he had been teaching at a junior high my baby was still as on easy as he was before that and I was just floundering. I just didn’t feel awkward. agonized over on top of things or ready to go at all. And I was thinking of sitting on my couch one day, I remember thinking, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

And then I was thinking, What did my mom Do you know what don’t said I seen being done. And she had a cleaning schedule, which I had always thought was super dumb and lame. And I just had stuff kind of all over the place, nothing had a home. And so I just then made the choice that I was going to start a cleaning schedule that would work for us, our apartment was pretty small.

We lived in a tiny duplex. So it really wasn’t that hard to keep clean if I was on a schedule, and the schedule made it so that when I got home from work or whatever, I could just relax. I didn’t have to think about what I would needed to clean at that point. Because I knew today’s Tuesday it’s bathroom date bathrooms are done. Now I’m done.

And that was so nice for me because prior to then my brain was just so cluttered thinking I need to clean this whole house every single day and you just don’t if you really plot out how often your family dirties a specific room and just clean it that often then you’re good.

Yeah, you might have some little mess up masses to clean up and things like that, but it really helped nursing was extremely stressful when I started and having the things in my household. organized. And that cleaning schedule really helped because I couldn’t be super stressed at work and super stressed at home and super stressed as a parent. So it really helped and I am a big believer in it. I’m a big believer of simplifying and buying less stuff because it just makes life simpler. So that’s how they became a little bit organized. I’m not saying that I’m a genius here. I’m just saying I do stuff.

Okay, so how did I become a blogger? Back in 2005, my middle one was one at that point. And Blogger was big, and I was big into scrapbooking and a lot of the scrapbookers were starting blogs just to kind of make memories for their family.

And so I started doing that everyone’s while I would give some tips for families and stuff like that, but a lot It was just like kind of a journal of my family and how tired I was parenting alone and those kind of things, a lot of complaining, not gonna not gonna sugarcoat that one and I slowly just kind of evolved into giving more tips and complaining less and hopefully the complaints are off of my blog.

At this point. There’s probably still a few I mean, I still complain about things don’t get me wrong, but I’ve always loved writing when I was in junior high. I had a career class which side note and Osman came to speak at Hello, growing up in Utah, and I wrote that I wanted to become a writer then and my parents were like, you will never make any money writing a big loser.

So I kind of put that to the side. But even when I graduated from nursing school, they are graduating classes really small nursing school, so you got to stand up there and they said, what you want to be when you grow up like what unit you want to work in, but Mike said I want to write for er, oh, man, I love tr. But that’s a podcast for another day.

So it’s just been really nice to be able to combine the two things that I really like I love being a nurse, but I also love writing I love conveying feelings or words and stuff like that. And so blogging has been awesome in about 2014 I kicked up my blog through using Pinterest. If you guys have any interest in any of that at all, I’ll link to my blogging for income series that I started way back then just showing how I increased my income and stuff like that and took blogging to the next level.

It is possible it is not as easy as it was in 2015. I will say 2014 but it is still doable to grow a blog and make some money online. So if you like writing and if you also like digital design, and I really love both of those things, and so it is kind of a dream come true and it just really fits the things that I love, especially.

Okay, finally, how did I become a podcaster? The penultimate of my lifetime journey is being a podcaster. Just kidding. I had been super reluctant to start a podcast, some friends to talk about it. Some friends had asked me to do one with them. I was just like, No, and I have to say I was probably really overwhelmed. I was creating courses and stuff like that. And last summer, so summer 2019, I went to a conference and I was surrounded by positive friends. And I love my friends, when I go to conferences.

They’re just so many good ideas and stuff like that. And they were saying maybe podcasting is a good idea for you, Heather, you’re pretty funny. And you have a lot to say a lot of different topics. And I was like, oh, maybe I kind of talked with my husband about it. I went to a class on podcasting. And I came out and I was like, so I’m starting a podcast husband, and he was willing to be the producer. My husband produces the podcasts. It’s handy because he did music education, so he has some knowledge of recording and that kind of stuff. And so we started a podcast. I gave myself like a month and a half I think to think up guests. Maybe it was more like two months, guests… come up with the title. I really wanted to do something around entangled, but it makes sense to use a social media that I already have for my blog.

So the pulling curls podcast pregnancy and parenting untangled was born podcasting as a slow burn. I was like, I didn’t have 1000 downloads in that first month. No, you’re not, you’re not gonna have 1000 downloads. It’s a different medium. So people are coming to my blog expecting to read sometimes they don’t want to listen, but I’m slowly really growing this podcast and it’s really fun.

I love talking to people. That’s why I love being a nurse. And so it’s just been a fun way to do it. So what I was thinking when I was thinking about all these different things is I have always just known that that’s what I was supposed to do. When I was sitting in high school anatomy class.

I just knew that I should be a nurse. And when I met my husband, I just knew I should marry him. And when I started podcasts, I just knew that’s what I should do. And I don’t flounder I don’t normally make decisions really very well. Even at the grocery store. I vacillate quite a bit but it reminds me that when I have big choices to make It’s always really clear for me, and I’m grateful for that.

And I do believe that God has a plan for each of us and he’s made my plan really clear on the big things but like which brand of black beans is really a conundrum for me I have to say so I think God has a plan for each of us. I am a bit churchy. But I also believe that everyone kind of does their own thing. So that’s cool, too.

That’s Season Two intro! I can’t wait to have you guys with us. We have so many cool things planned. I have great guests, and great ideas and great podcasts. And let’s just keep on tangling it just like I do every time I shower. Thanks so much for joining us today. I hope we help smooth out a few of the snarls in your life.

We drop an episode every Monday and we always appreciate it when you guys share and review. Until next time, we hope you have a tangle free day!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai