A few weeks ago we asked the question: what does it mean to be an adult? Is it when you’re married? (Check.) When you can pay your bills on time? (Check.) When you have kids? (Not yet.) When your bedroom is clean? (Ugh, never.) For me, the major adulting milestones came this year with my job.
It feels kind of meta to be talking about my career on APW. You guys have heard me yammer on endlessly about my marriage, from sex to money right down to what we’re having for dinner. But the reality is, I spend more of my time working on the content you read here every day than I do just about anything else in my life. (Michael tells me I need to get a hobby? I’m not familiar with the term.)
If I could pinpoint why this year felt like the year I adulted harder than I’ve ever adulted before, I think it’s because for the first time, I really feel like a boss. And the hardest part of being a boss, to quote Nicki Minaj, is that you gotta be a beast. I don’t mean that in the ’80s power suit kind of way where the only way to get ahead is to act like Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl. But more that being a boss means you have to abandon the idea that your job is to make everyone happy (which is hard work for a people pleaser like yours truly). For me, being a boss feels a whole lot less like the glittery Fifth Harmony song I expected it to be, and more like the constant realization that my accountability is doubled and people are actually paying attention to what I say. But like Helena and Laurent said earlier this month when we interviewed them about what it’s really like working with your partner, “You have to push yourself just further than you feel okay with…. When you make it through one of those difficult times, you get somewhere… you get to extraordinary.”
That couldn’t be more true of my experience this year. It was some of the hardest learning I’ve done, but what surprised me was that I suddenly went from feeling like I had a job I really enjoyed, to having something that looks and feels like a career path. And it totally caught me off guard. I always thought that “I’m a woman with a career” feeling would come with some pomp and circumstance. Or at least a job that requires wearing something other than Target’s latest trends. Instead, it just occurred to me one day as Najva and I were training that I’d earned my title.
In our partnership with Squarespace this year, we’ve talked a lot about what it means to be an entrepreneur. But we haven’t taken a lot of time to talk about what it means to go from a job to a career (whether that’s working for yourself or someone else). So I wanted to take today to have a broader conversation about our careers: where we’re at, where we’re going, where we want to be.
Let’s talk about you, APW. What does everyone here do for a living? What do you want to be doing with your career right now and in the future? Let’s talk dollar dollar bills, y’all.
Related: If you’re thinking of transitioning careers, here’s how to build a portfolio site, plus common mistakes to avoid when building your first website. Added bonus: my new favorite (very spoiler-y) Grey’s Anatomy clip, on being a woman in the workplace. “This is what a feminist looks like.” Yas, Bailey, queen.
This post was sponsored by Squarespace. If you’re looking to take the next step in your career, Squarespace provides the creative tools that make it easy to put yourself out there (yes, even if you’ve never made a website before and have no idea where to start.) In conjunction with the APW + Squarespace small business scholarship and our #PinkEntrepreneurship series, Squarespace is offering APWers a 10% discount on yearly subscriptions when you use the code APW15 at checkout. Click here to get your website started today with a free 14-day trial from Squarespace.
