What I’d Be Doing if I Wasn’t Blogging
There were a lot of blogging events this week where I got the chance to meet up with girls for the first time. More often than not, we get on the topic of who still has a 9 to 5 and who took the blog full time. When asked, I explain that I freelance between my blog and other clients. What surprised me is the follow up question I got. “If you weren’t blogging, what would you be doing?”
To be completely honest, I have zero idea of what I would be doing if I wasn’t blogging full-time. I try not to live in the past any more than my water-sign self already does, haha. Things happen the way that they’re supposed to, I truly believe that. I think I am exactly where I am supposed to be at this moment. However, if this blog never existed or never became my full-time gig, I do have some ideas of where I would be:
I would still be in Chicago.
Saint Louis and I have a weird relationship. I don’t know fully how to explain it. It’s comfortability to a point of excess. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone specifically knows me as the girl I was in high school. She is someone I have left FAR behind and never want to revisit. I realize that this statement may lead you to believe I went to jail or got suspended or some other debauchery. I can assure you that high school me would have had a panic attack long before any wrongdoing would have occurred. Complete OPPOSITE side of the spectrum, folks. Anyways. Sure, I have friends from home that I keep in touch with, and they actually see me as 2019 me. They’ve witnessed the evolution. The thing I struggle with is running into people from my childhood who follow me and kinda know who I am now, buuuuut they remember all too well who I was before (let’s not forget my cringeworthy freshman year bio presentation on the wrong disease that still haunts me at 3 AM lol). It’s this awkward “I didn’t like HS me and neither did you… but do you like me now?” There was something freeing about going to college with only two people I knew, and something even more freeing about moving to Chicago when only a few of my close friends were. They were blank slates that I welcomed. I can imagine I would still want the opportunity to start over in a place where I myself set my narrative.
I would still leave my desk job.
Even if things didn’t go down the way they did, I would have left. My friends were all getting other offers. Toward the end, I disliked nearly everything about the job. If my family situation was different, would I have stayed longer? Probably a few months, but nothing more than that. Granted, I would have left for a different company instead of going out on my own.
I would have some sort of creative project on the side.
Corporate America is draining, even if you love your job. I think that if I had found another position I enjoyed, I would have wanted a creative “side hustle” that millennials love so dearly. If in this alternate timeline I did create my blog, I think I would have continued Sophisticaition as a hobby. If I didn’t, maybe I would have scaled up the Etsy shop I ran in college where I created paintings and personalized gifts for sorority girls into something neat. Maybe I’d be a stylist on the side. Maybe I would just have created a really cool aesthetic IG. Something to keep me from boredom!
I would still find a group of friends through my job.
Since all but one of my college friends live outside Chicago, I had to make a new friend group here. I did that with the help of blogging. Assuming the blog wasn’t my job and I didn’t have the networking opportunities to meet these girls, I can guess I would have met other people and found the same types of friendships that transcended “work friends” into “real friends.” It’s an important distinction. “Work friends” are great to complain with about the stupid new project on G Chat… “real friends” are there to come over with a bottle of wine on Saturday night when sh*t hits the fan.
I would still be single.
Someone asked me this week if I thought my job kept me from relationships. At first I kind of laughed it off, but upon further thought, I kindaaaaa think it does? Since this is my full-time gig, I put 90% of each waking day into my business in some way. I’ve developed super high standards for guys, because if they would be taking time away from my business, they’ve got to be potentially more “profitable”, or at least balance out my losses. At the same time… I think I would have developed the super high standards anyways, and I’d still be putting my career first, even if it was at a company owned by someone else. SO, while I do think my job reinforces my priorities, I don’t think it changes them entirely.
Of course, this is all purely hypothetical. Perhaps things would have been completely different… but we will never know. Now, moving forward! What WILL I be doing if I am not blogging? That is a question I have thought about a lot recently… and it’s for another time 🙂
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