Some of what I’ll be sharing in next few weeks was written during a different season of my life. I’m choosing to honor it, not erase it.
It’s been over a year since I last picked up this blog and given everything that’s changed, it makes sense that this is where I’m coming back to.This was once a passion and a dream and I admit it was solidified by watching SATC and wanting to be a real life Carrie and here I am now.
This past year as I reached 30, I went through a transformative and pivotal change in my life. I did a 360 on my career, well, not a 360 because if I did, I would end up in the same spot.. Right? Let’s say more of a 180.I am no longer at what was my soul crushing corporate America bullshit of a role that I had for over 4 years. I was decaying there.
At first it started slowly, a numbness that crept with each devastating reoccurring day. Every day was the same routine and it was lonely. I felt a concrete slab pressing on my life and I was suffocating. While everyone around me seemed to see it, no one said anything. But that is the thing, you have to make that choice for yourself.
Instead of dealing with what was going on internally, I focused on the paycheck I received every two weeks and how it was never enough. I focused on how my partner (now ex partner, yes everyone, now ex! ) and I could never have enough to do anything, although we both had 9-5 jobs.
I tried to meet my metrics, and accepted “good feedback” that felt more of a jab at my personality. I was told I was meant to do so much more in life but was stepped on by a wrangler boot by the same person might I add. I had no real value and no real purpose.
The worst part is that I felt like I could not leave.
My professional life had not followed the planned trajectory that I had set for myself at the start of my college career, but that is almost always the case for many of us. So 4 years after college, I was not credentialed enough, I could not be at a starting role but I also could not be at a higher leading role.
By last year around the springtime I realized I was turning 30 and I was extremely unhappy with my life, no savings, no plan, no upward trajectories, no desires. Just a shell of a person I once knew and loved deeply.
Looking back now I can say that the universe did not lie when it said that 30 brings an air of change and either you hop on the adventure or you placate in life.
While all of this was happening, my romantic life — something I thought was stable, something I believed was my end game — was quietly unraveling.
More soon. I have a lot to say.
Tessa Black.