I wanted to make this post a little more personal, and go over the question we get asked all the time since we are kids. What do you want to do for a living? I have had decades to think about this question and it never gets any easier. It wasn’t until recently that I have been able to zone in more on what makes me happy and what I want to dedicate my time doing. Before we get into what I have decided to do, I am going to give you a brief history on how I came to this decision.
My first real step I had in determining a career path was my junior year of high school when I could sign up for a vocational program. For anyone who doesn’t know, a vocational program is when you learn technical skills for a job while you are still in high school. That way you can earn high school credits and when you graduate you can get a job in that field. The vocational program I chose was being an airplane mechanic. Spoiler alert, I did not stay on this path. It’s not that there was anything wrong with the program, but I just was not interested in it as I was learning more about it. I finished the program because I was getting high school credits for it, and I thought it’s always good to finish what you’ve started. However, since I decided that this career wasn’t right for me I had to make a new plan, so I enrolled in college.
I started off with a community college so I could be actively working towards a degree even if I wasn’t quite sure on what I wanted to do. After a year I switched over to a university, and my new career path was physical therapy. I thought it would be perfect because although I didn’t see myself as a jock growing up, I did play a lot of sports and helping athletes recover from injuries was something I thought I would enjoy. After taking a few biology classes I quickly realized that I did not have the same passion for it as the people I was taking the classes with. Any career in the medical field requires so much commitment and I didn’t want to start down that path unless I knew that was what I wanted to do. Looking back now, I am glad I chose another direction because I can’t see myself being happy in that field. So, when I decided that physical therapy wasn’t for me I switched to business. I chose business because there were a lot of different fields I could study and I thought there would be more options to pick from career wise.
I ended up sticking with business and I received a marketing major. I chose marketing because I wanted to be creative at whatever career I ended up with. After graduating I was in a bit of a rut on what to do. I finally got my degree and didn’t know what my next step would be. So, I just applied for jobs and hoped for the best. After some time, I found full time work with the total package benefits, a 401k, and paid vacation which was what I was working for. I always thought when I was going through school that I didn’t care about what I did if I made enough money to pay my bills and had some left over for fun, and with this job I did. Even though I had everything that I thought I wanted from a job I still was not happy. I was working around 70-80 hours a week, I had no free time to explore other passions, and to be honest there was a lot of things with the actual job that I didn’t like. The company was great, but what I was doing was not something I wanted to continue doing for the rest of my life. Now the question was where do I go from here?
Well the first thing I tried was to switch jobs within the company which turned out to not be an option. Maybe, one day I will expand more on the details, but to make a long story short, after a lot of discussion I decided to part ways with the company. It was a difficult decision to make, but I was putting all my time and energy into building a career I didn’t want. I loved the people I worked with, but I knew I had to focus my energy on something I loved, and could be passionate about. That is what led me to starting this blog.
I love content creation and seeing someone succeed from start to finish. I think that is why marketing interested me when I was deciding on a major in college. Turning an idea or product that someone puts their heart and soul into, and growing it into a career for them is exciting to me. That is why I love watching YouTubers and why I go to see my friends band perform at a local dive bar no matter how many times I have seen them. I want to support people with their passion and help them succeed. That is also why I want to create my own online brand to grow and to make into whatever I choose. I feel a whole new sense of freedom that I haven’t felt before, and even though I’m not making any money by doing this I know that one day I could. That is why I am focusing on starting my career in both marketing and content creation. Thank you to anyone who is reading this because you are helping me with the first steps of my journey.