I can’t believe I’m writing this post! Firstly, I am so so grateful for all of your support. Interacting with you all is the highlight of my day! Thank you so much for following along on my little Instagram journey! It’s been so hard not to tell you guys, but a few weeks ago I turned in my letter of resignation and I’m now going to be blogging full-time!
How It All Began
I get a lot of questions asking how I started out and I guess to begin we’d have to go back two-ish years ago to when I first started blogging. The wild thing is, I started blogging so I could get free books! I never thought I’d actually be able to do it as a full-time career. One day, I was on Instagram and stumbled upon this space called Bookstagram, an online community of people who love books. I saw their photos and since I love reading, I thought I’d try it out. [Side note: When I started out, my photos were not good. I look back on them and wonder how I ever thought they were good, but I also look back and realize that doesn’t matter. I had to take the bad photos to practice so I could take what I think, are good ones!] So I started blogging about books and probably in June of last year started asking publishers if they would be willing to send me books to review and almost all of them said yes!
At that point, I was over the moon! Fast forward to September and I started taking lifestyle photos with my books (i.e. bedroom with books, shelf with books). Slowly I realized that people were also connecting to my lifestyle photos and enjoyed the design aspect as well so I started adding more of that in and had so much fun creating! In December, a company reached out to me to see if I would like to take photos with their products for compensation. Personally, I was kind of shocked someone would want to pay me to take photos for them. Anyways, a wild thought popped into my head and I somehow got it into my mind that maybe I could come up with DIYs and cute spaces for a living! Like WHAT A DREAM!
I started incorporating more home decor into my photos and would reach out to brands I loved to see if they wanted to work with me on projects I’d dreamed up. Keep in mind, I still had a full-time job so I’d rush home from work every day before the sun set so I could take photos, create new spaces, pick up home decor, and create new DIYS! After that I’d respond to emails and make sure my content was set for the next day. On the weekends, I worked 6-8 hours just to get things done, but it was so worth it! In 4 months, I was able to replace my current salary with blogging and this was only part-time!
My Parents’ Reaction
My whole life my parents have been incredibly supportive of me. My mom would always tell me that she just wanted me to be happy. In my culture, a lot of families push you to a stable career with a good salary so I’m super thankful for my mom’s open-mindedness. When I first told my parents I was thinking about quitting my 9 to 5 job, they were a little skeptical because blogging is so foreign to them, but what nearly brought me to tears is that they still supported me. They basically said that as long as I could make a salary to live off, they’d support my decision 100% even if it didn’t work out.
What Now?
So here I am, I’ve quit my job and am very excited about the next chapter in my life, but also crazy scared! A million different scenarios of failure have popped into my head, but I think that’s because there’s so much possibility and that’s the exciting part! I was talking to a friend and just telling her that I’m afraid of not making it and then feeling embarrassed. She told me that I should be proud of my decisions and unafraid of taking chances. That even if I do fail, I should be proud because I took a chance on something I believed in. Something else that has encouraged me is I know that no matter what happens, God is going to take care of me. I know that my self-worth is not measured by if I fail or succeed and that has been really freeing.
One thing a lot of people have asked me is, “So are you just going to hang out at home and take pictures?”. I think there’s a big misconception that since I’m working from home, I’ll have all this free time, but honestly I find that when I’m at home, I feel the need to constantly be working. Being your own boss can be tough because you are the one motivating yourself to get things done, however I am so excited about the creative opportunities and the ability to do a job where I get to pursue what I’m interested in.
I can’t even thank you guys enough for being a part of this. I am overwhelmed by just how kind your messages have been and cannot wait to have more time to come up with exciting new things for you guys!
