I can’t believe it’s been 2 years since I followed my heart and started this blog. What a journey it has been!
In honor of the 2-year blogiversary of Dinks on a Bus, please enjoy this short post today with some reflections.
In addition to the blog turning 2 this month, I realized (thanks to the Facebook memory feature) that it’s also been 10 whole years since I defended my dissertation and was officially awarded my PhD in Neuroscience. Somehow, that milestone feels like it happened both yesterday and wayyy more than 10 years ago.
If you know my story, you know that at that point in my life, I was still squarely on the hamster wheel, chasing someone else’s version of success.
On the one hand, getting my PhD was an incredible high. All that hard work I’d been doing had finally paid off. All the late-night study sessions, the long days in the lab running experiments, the hours and hours I spent at the computer typing up what I had done and what it meant, were finally behind me.
But thinking back, I was also incredibly sad during this time. Although the next step in my career journey was going to be a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University, which on paper looked and felt incredibly special and exciting, inside my body was trying to convince me that this was not my path.
My anxiety was at its peak. I was moving to a city I didn’t want to move to (let’s be honest, I really didn’t want to move to any city, because I am in fact NOT a city person). I was leaving behind my family and a boyfriend whom I loved dearly and thought was the one I would marry. It wasn’t an excited nervousness I was feeling about an opportunity I knew was scary but was something I wanted. No, I didn’t want it. I felt my whole body resisting, fighting against going. My spirit was taking a hit.
And yet, I went anyway. I was doing all this because “going” was my only option, or so I thought at the time. I had applied to a smattering of both jobs and postdoctoral fellowships, and this was the “only” opportunity that hadn’t turned me down. I didn’t know what else I would do, and at the same time this had been everything I was working for. In reality, I could have figured something else out. But I felt like I had to go, that I owed it to myself to go.
I ended up just as I had assumed, miserable in Atlanta. This period was some of the most depressed I’d ever been. I hated doing research but felt I had to in order to land a teaching job. I missed my friends, my family, and my boyfriend.
But then the light came back on when I landed the job of my dreams as a professor back in Vermont. I was going home! Back to my family and my boyfriend, who I would move in with and marry! And I’d be working in my dream job!
Well, you can maybe guess how this next part goes. How things didn’t work out with the boyfriend. All the problems we were having and red flags I was ignoring didn’t magically go away just because I now had my dream job.
And then, 2 years later, I was baffled as I started to realize that this job was nowhere near the dream job I had envisioned. Although I loved teaching, the day-to-day was incredibly stressful, and the “office politics” I realized were still a thing in academia were getting to me. I was still anxious, still burned out, still not listening to my body telling me that this was not my path.
It wasn’t until years later, after I’d stepped off the hamster wheel, left that job, took a pay cut to work from home, was working less than I ever had before, and discovered slow FI that I realized there was so much more to life than what I’d been doing all this time. I’d been so obsessed with work and climbing the success later that I didn’t even know who I really was inside. When I started to learn and discover that I had so many passions outside of work, this is when my slow FI journey really began. This journey led to me deidentifying myself with work, to finding work that paid well but that also worked for me and was on my terms, and to a loving marriage with a partner who didn’t care that I wasn’t a professor or chasing the typical American dream.
However, looking back, I’m still grateful that I went through all the experiences I did, because they led me to where I am today. To focusing more on who I am as a person, what sparks joy and lights me up, than on what I get paid to do.
And 2 years ago, I decided to take a chance on one of those passions that lit me up outside of work. I had been following the FI space for some time, and I had always dreamed of starting my own blog. As I devoured others’ content, I dreamed about finding my own niche, sharing my own story. I knew exactly what I would name my blog. But at the time that’s all it was, a daydream that I never actually planned to make reality.
But then, during my goal-setting session for the start of 2022, I challenged myself to live into my writing dream a little bit. I set a goal around starting to write, just for myself, for no one else. I challenged myself to write something every day, even if it was just a sentence in my journal.
After 2 months of holding fast to that goal, I realized I had about 10 or so blog posts, and 20+ more or so ideas for additional content.
I’ve written about the creativity whispers before. I believe the body tells us everything we need to know, if we’d just listen. And what I was hearing and feeling at that time was that I needed to start my blog.
At this point in my life, I was getting pretty good at listening to the creativity whispers, and I decided to go for it. I took some time off from work in February, where my main goal was setting up the blog: getting all the admin stuff worked out, buying my domain and hosting platform, choosing and setting up my theme, etc.
Then, in mid-March 2022, I posted my first piece.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
This whole time, the blog has been my creative outlet, with the hope (but not a requirement) that it would reach countless others. Many of you know it’s never been my intention to focus on growth with this blog. I’ve never wanted to make this into a business. I just want to write and connect with others with whom my journey resonates. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. I no longer worry about how many likes or followers I have, or whether I have more traffic this week than I did last week. I just put my thoughts out there and trust the universe. Because this is something I would do whether I had anyone reading, regardless of whether I ever make a single dollar, because I love it that much.
This is also why, although I kept to a fairly strict schedule of posting every Friday for the first year, I have slowed down a bit. As much as I want to share my voice, because this is a passion project of mine, it also gets juggled with other passions and just my life in general. Since I hit my goal of Flamingo FI, I’ve been thinking about what that means for work. I’m also starting a new experiment that I’ll share more about soon, but that will take up a lot of my time in the short term.
But for now, I love this blog too much to go anywhere, even if it means you won’t find me posting a ton or on a rigorous schedule.
I’m so grateful for all of you who’ve been on this journey with me for the last 2 years. Your comments and emails make me confident that I was right when I listened to my body urging me to get started back during that goal-setting session.
And I’ve had my own small and wonderful blogging wins since 2022. Last year, I was nominated for a Plutus Award for Best New Personal Finance Content – Written Content. I’ve connected with all of you, and with The Fioneers, who were an inspiration as I started my blogging journey. I’ve done a slow FI interview, a YouTube Live, and I’ll be a speaker at their slow FI retreat in New Hampshire in October (here’s the link if you want to come join us!).
Reflecting on this 2-year blogiversary and 10-year PhDiversary has made me realize how far I’ve come, and how proud of where I am and who I am today. I have made leaps and bounds when it comes to rejecting society’s version of success, and I’m squarely on my own path now. I’ve found my people along the way, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for being on this journey with me.
Where are you on your journey these days? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you!