Krapsakas

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This post is based on my personal thoughts on Krapsakas blog.
It’s not scientific or evidence-based, and it may be triggering for some.
Take what resonates, and leave everything that doesn’t.

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I felt like I was two people my entire life – one half of me felt rich, the other half didn’t.

“Uneducated slut”

I have written about this on the blog before – one of my parents’ family told me directly when I was a teenager that I would become a slut or an alcoholic outcast when I grew up.
Why? Because I didn’t choose high school and then university. I chose vocational school, which means a profession + high school.

From there, I worked my way up year after year. I either learned completely new specialties or improved myself.
With all this, I have acquired at least 4 specialties to date, but since some specialties are such that I could work in an even more specific one if I wanted, there are actually even more.

“You are too intelligent”

When I was 20, I worked in a grocery store for 2 weeks.
A prestigious store in the city, but it was only while working there that I found out who the real clientele of this store was – alcoholics and drug addicts.
It was only while working there that I realized I had been shopping in this store at times when people with a slightly worse life history were not moving around as much. At that time, working people went to the store – hence the misconception that the store only had a prestigious clientele.

Anyway, during those two weeks, customers tried to physically attack me across the counter (because I refused to sell alcohol to a completely drunk person – which was also forbidden by law), gypsies repeatedly promised to find me after work and beat me up (because they came to pay for their larger purchase in red cents during rush hour and I quickly read that they were 3 or 4 cents short of the final amount (not for a European – 0.01 €; 0.02 € and 0.05 € cents)).
In short, there were many more such adventures there.

At that time, the cashiers didn’t have a panic button that would have been at the cash register and could have been pressed quickly. There was a button! Only, it was on a key ring and always put away somewhere in front, so if you really needed it, you couldn’t find it.
There was also no contract signed with the security team stating that someone would come and check ASAP.
During those two weeks, I got things moving so much in the store that the cashiers finally got real panic buttons at the cash register and a contract was signed with a security company so that they would come and check ASAP if necessary. Before that, this store had existed for years without all that.

When I went to hand in my resignation letter to the store manager 2 weeks later, he said a sentence that stuck in my memory – “Agnes! You are a very intelligent person. You don’t belong here.“

Why was I so surprised by that? She didn’t say anything wrong. On the contrary, she was right.
What surprised me was that my contact with this person was actually quite minimal. We passed by here and there. But we didn’t have a lot of conversations.

An overly enthusiastic entrepreneur

In 2018, I created my first company. A year before that, I passionately stated that I would not create my own company in the near future.
But the inspiration was so great that even the lack of money did not stop me.
I worked for several months in such a way that I put aside as much money as possible. And my own company was created.

Oh, how many mistakes I made with this company.
Young, green, and full of excessive enthusiasm, which I did not know how to direct correctly at that time.
Plus, I let those closest to me influence me, and in a negative way. Which left such a big mark on me that I did not want to engage in business for years – the block was simply so big mentally ahead.
A lot of financial and internal company mistakes were also made.
I was very ashamed of all this!
I graduated from business administration and made such mistakes. So embarrassing!

“Auntie Agnes, are you going to the party?”

You may have heard a sentence like:
“Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card, and how you leave others feeling becomes your trademark.”

I really liked this sentence for years. I even had it written on the front cover of my notebook.
But it took a while for this sentence to sink in.

When I was little, my mother never left the house without her “face done up” aka more or less makeup on her face.
That is, to the store or to the city in such a way, wearing nice and polite clothes.
She was always (at least as far as I can remember) beautifully and politely dressed and well-groomed.
For those who haven’t heard yet, children don’t learn from their parents’ words, but from their actions.
Parents are role models with their actions.
In short, it stuck with me. When I go to the store, to deliver a package, to the city, or basically anywhere further than my home yard, I dress nicely and also “make up my face”.
To be honest, it’s hardwired into me by now that in the morning after brushing my teeth, I do at least a minimal amount of face and hair styling.
Not for someone else, but for myself.

A few weeks ago, I went to the playground with my friend’s kids. My friend had gone to an event and I was watching her kids. I got dressed like I would any other day – black tights, a skirt, a black turtleneck.
My friend’s child walked past me and asked with a surprised look: “Auntie Agnes! Are you going to a party?”.
I started laughing.
I said: “No. We’re going to the playground together! You know that.”
To which the child replied: “You’re dressed like you’re going to a party!”.

And then I remembered this saying that children learn from their parents’ behavior, not from their words. My visual role model was more of a well-dressed and properly dressed mother.
My friend, however, often loves walks around in sweatpants*. And to go to a party, she puts on a skirt or a dress.
So it’s no wonder that the child thinks I’m going to a party.

* The purpose of my story is not to criticize my friend’s clothing choice, but to provide a real-life example.

For those who are confused about how the above sentence relates to clothes – clothes are one of our ways of expressing ourselves, one of the parts of our business card.
It’s also an example of how sometimes our skills and talents don’t come from school or coursework, but from childhood experiences. They’re easy to forget or overlook, but they’re still skills and talents.

“I have nothing”

With all these experiences, I often felt like I had nothing.
Nothing to show for it.
I haven’t been to college, and I don’t have a successful business yet (emphasis on the word yet). There are only a bunch of experiences of failures and more or less okay things.

And then recently it dawned on me, at a completely random moment, that –
“But I am rich! And I’m rich in a way that no one can take away from me- I have my experiences, knowledge, skills, talents, and a beautiful character!“.

Thanks to the fact that I have dared to live life, gain experience, allow myself to make mistakes, and after falling, wipe my pants clean and move on – all this has created a very large base of experience and knowledge for me.

My ability and willingness to constantly gain experience, to ask questions of others who already have experience in the fields they are involved in, my curiosity, and thirst for discovery. All this has created for me a legacy of this base of experience and knowledge.

I have:
knowledge
talents
my voice
my character and backbone!

My wealth is not in cars, real estate, or bank accounts.
My first wealth is who I am as a person and what my baggage of experience and knowledge is.

In summit

I didn’t write this post to tell you how good and wonderful a person I am.
I want you to understand that YOU are rich too!
With your skills, your talents, your experiences.

And if your stubbornness or self-pity is so big that it’s hard to believe, then be so kind – take a piece of paper and a pen or a phone’s notes and write down all the professions, specialties, schools, and trainings that you have completed.
What knowledge do you have.
Write down all the failures and after them write what experience you got from them.
Write down the strengths of your character.
Write down all the talents that you have – because we all have our own talents.

And if you have nothing to write down on paper, then this is a place what shows you in a mirror that it is time to make changes in your life.

But if you had quite a few things to write down there, then I congratulate you, dear!
Look, how rich a person you really are!

With love,
Krapsakas Agnes

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