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Blogging as a career has been in the back of my mind for a while now. In all my research of blogging, & I’ve done a lot over the past two years. One of the things that have been consistent is that everyone talks about finding your “why”. For a while, I thought that I could just go on without figuring out my why. So I set up my first blog with no direction and didn’t really have a reason why other than I felt lost in my administrative career. So I created www.savvytwentysomething.com and for six months I designed and redesigned it. Then I created some graphics on picmonkey.com.
Why my first blog failed
After a couple weeks, I had not launched and I still didn’t know why I even wanted to do this, I just knew that I did. It wasn’t enough and I got bored pretty quickly. So when I finally launched it, I made one post. One single post about trying to stay on track with weight watchers. I never posted again to that blog. Played around with the colors, edited photos, created several different logos that were not used, but never posted again.
I kept talking about it until one day my husband made a comment to me. When he made the comment, I had an ah-ha moment threw me into a tailspin. He said I think you just like designing it, not actually writing. Although I do enjoy writing, I really enjoy designing and creating graphics and illustrations. I had purchased the student version of Photoshop and was slowly teaching myself how to use it. I gradually moved from picmonkey, which is a great low-cost resource to start with, to using Photoshop for all of my designs.
What I’m doing to change it.
So after a couple months of tormenting myself about how to change my career, and several more arguments with myself about going to school. I was really worried about how long going back to school would take. Finally, I put together a plan and brought it to my husband. His advice and what he thought about me going back to school really weighed on me. So I sat him down and told him that I wanted to go back to school to get my bachelor’s degree in graphic design. & to my surprise, he was not only okay with it. Andrew was expecting it, and even welcomed the idea of getting my education. So after we talked about it, we agreed that I needed to go to a physical school in our city. We live in Jacksonville, FL so there are only a couple choices. I’ve made my mind up on the University of North Florida because they have a specific graphic design degree program which is what I want. The state college I obtained my AA from has a digital media degree program that I looked into. It doesn’t specialize and covers a lot of different things, some of which I am not interested in at all.
Going back to college
We made the decision that I would go back to school so I started looking into the program at UNF. During our discussion, we also decided I would wait to start back until the Spring semester in 2018. This was because the fall classes were starting in two weeks and we would have had to rush through the application process and pray I’d get in in time. Now, it’s the middle of September 2017 and I’m doing a tour next month to learn more. I’ve never been more excited about going back to school.
After I finished my AA, I transitioned into a business program. Since I had changed my mind several times, I had taken a lot of different electives. I enrolled in what I thought would be the fastest, easiest degree to get. Growing up, neither of my parents even went to college so I really wanted to complete it. But after only two classes, I dropped out because I absolutely hated it.
I had been working as a legal assistant for the past few years and I didn’t need the business degree to continue doing what I was doing. When I start school again in January, I’ll have been out of school for two years. I think this time did a lot of good for myself. I got to do some soul-searching and I finally had some time to focus on other things besides my current job and school. For a really long time, I was working all day then going to classes 2 to 3 nights a week. The time I did have on the weekends was spent on class work. I barely had enough time to keep up with grocery shopping and house cleaning. & forget even a sliver of a social life.
My Own Why for Blogging
When I go back to school this time, I have big G O A L S. Which do not include endless hours on my weekend doing class work. My why is that I want to be able to help support my family with a full-time income while I attend college on my own terms. I want to be able to work on my blog, and create a side hustle designing invitations. My biggest goal is that I want to earn half of my current salary from blogging by July 2018 so I can leave my job to go to school full-time. Since I finally had found my why, have actively been building and working on social media.
This journey will be a long one and I am not sure where it will lead. Saying that I would. I know for a fact that I can do this, and I want other people to know that they can do so as well. & I hope that through my blog, and everything I learn along the way that I can help others to live the life they want too. Eventually, I want to be able to teach others how to do the same thing.
In the meantime, I will use my blog to explore my creativity and share my projects. I really enjoy creating calming spaces in my home and plan to create a farmhouse interior. I also really enjoy designing invitations and hope to incorporate that into my work. My dream is to become a full-time graphic designer. Until next time.
