Last summer, I wrote about closing down my boutique public relations practice, changing careers, and going back to school. It was in the midst of a personal liberation from the perfectly curated box I spent almost a decade building my life within.
Since then, my great escape turned into a journey of rewriting my passions, purpose, and personal identity. While I kept most of this journey off my blog and away from social media, it’s a chapter I wish I’d shared more about. I was just too embarrassed to have my indecisiveness and self-doubt documented for everyone in my life to read.
I didn’t want to tell anyone that I had changed my mind and enrolled in a different education program instead. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d gone back to working a different job just to make ends meet. I didn’t want to admit that my sense of self had shattered, that I had to double back to survive, and that I couldn’t make it all happen according to my grand plan.
That last paragraph isn’t meant to vaguely sum up the past year. That sort of change would have to be another blog post entirely… and one that I hope to publish eventually as I make writing a consistent practice again.
Instead, the contrast between last year’s personal manifesto and this short scrawling is a simple truth we all need to remember: You are allowed to be a work in progress. And it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.
As a past PR girl and recovering perfectionist, the opinions of others have long influenced my life. Fuck, I turned what other people think into an entire decade-long career. It’s a mental construct that might take me years to completely untangle myself from. But little realizations like this one are inspiration to keep working at it.
TL;DR? It’s okay to be a work in progress. Just promise me that you’ll show up wholeheartedly through it all.
