It’s crazy to think about how much has changed over the past 2 years and how my goals in my career and life have done a drastic 180. Let’s do a quick a run down so that everyone can be on the same page.
In the beginning of 2021 I was laid off from my product development job in fashion while I was 9 weeks pregnant. I had been doing IVF for 4 years so we knew very early that I was indeed pregnant. After going through a tough pregnancy and delivery, our beautiful daughter was born. This was the most amazing and most stressful time for me in recent years. I was a new mom with a beautiful baby but I had to figure out what was next for me in my career. We had been able to survive for the length of my pregnancy and immediately after her birth on my husbands salary and our savings but I was going to have to go back to work. There was just no way around that.
This is where things took a rather strange turn for me, which seem so to actually be a thing for me and finding jobs. While looking at job postings in the fashion field, I was getting more and more depressed and angry. The few jobs that I could find were either in the city or wanting a ton of experience (with salaries that did not match what they wanted I might add). My previous fashion job had me working long hours and made me feel that if I wasn’t connect to my email and job at all time that I could loose a promotion or my job. The thought of going back to that same type of stress terrified me. I wanted to be a good role model for my daughter and thriving in a career seemed like something that I should do. But I didn’t want to sacrifice time and activities with my daughter for my career either. This is where things got tricky and complicated.
However, one day my mom sent me post for a job in the borough I grew up in and said, ‘I know it’s not what you were looking for but it might be worth a shot.’ And she was right, it was almost everything I wanted in a job. Good hours, good benefits, stability and it was close to out daycare (aka Grandma Daycare). However the biggest down fall for me was it wasn’t in fashion. In my head it was just a secretary position and what would people think of me if I took this step backwards in my career? What would my daughter think when she got older?
But even with the doubts yelling in my ear, I took the jump and sent in my resume. After a couple rounds of interviews, I was offered the position. With no other bites in anything I was applying too (not even rejection letters), I took the opportunity.
It’s been a huge change and a massive learning curve but after a year into it I can say I’m starting to settle in. But as I settled into my new career focus, I realized I was missing the joy and fun that the fashion world brought me. I missed the excitement of trying a new pattern out or drawing up a new design. Than, I also thought about my fashion blog, the one I started and loved but never had the time to devote to. Which led me to another realization, how do you do a fashion blog when your so far out of the fashion world?
I realized that question actually made me think really hard about what I was doing. I was happy with my choice to move my career away from the fashion world, but realized that I didn’t need to have it as my career to enjoy it. So I picked up my laptop and decided that was what I was going to write about, I was going to take that leap of faith and see where it took me (since it seemed to be working in other parts of my life). Of course fashion will always be in my heart and at my fingertips but writing about anything and everything is also part of who I am now. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense but we’ll figure out its meaning together. Just because I’m not in a fashion career based job anymore doesn’t mean I can’t write intelligently about fashion but it doesn’t mean that is the only thing I can write about either.
So basically this long winded post is me saying that I’m going to be blogging a lot more but it’s not going to be just fashion focused. I’m going to write about what interests me as a mom, a woman, a nerd and a fashionista, as well as just things that are happening in my life. Sometimes you just need to learn to go with the flow, and it’s something I’m working on.
If you made it this far in the post you deserve a cookie break, so go on and get yourself a snack while I figure out what craziness I’ll write about next.