My Career Outside of Blogging

Hi friends! Today I want to talk a little about my life outside of my blog. A lot of people don’t know that blogging is a side hustle for me. Most bloggers have careers that either align or completely contrast with blogging and the content that we create. I love hearing the wide range of career paths that people have outside of the blogging community! In my job/ career, I get use a lot of my skills that I learned in Architecture school and continue to learn in my career for blogging – which helps me continue to grow my blog and content!

SO – my career? I am an Architectural Designer – soon to be Architect! I went to Iowa State University (GO STATE) for 5 years and graduated with my Bachelor of Architecture. My goal is to be fully licensed by 2020.

Photography: S. Wolfe Photography

The licensure process to become an Architect requires me to graduate with an accredited degree, log 5,600 hours of work in the architecture field and take six exams. I have completed my 5,600 hours (about 3 years) and I will be starting my 6 tests this year! I have horrible test anxiety, so while I could have started my tests right out of school, I have been putting them off. This year is the year that I have decided to face my fears, not only in my career, but life in general. So I am signing up for my first test SOON! Luckily Zack is also working towards his license so I have a study buddy by default! 🙂

In school, along with my architecture classes and studios, I took quite a few digital media and photography classes. Digital Media was actually my Minor! I have a strong passion for graphic design as well as photography and luckily I get to use both of my passions frequently in blogging as well as in my career. Being a blogger who has a heavy emphasis on fashion, I find myself in a funny position: I love photography – it is one of my passions that I practice in my free time, and I constantly need content for my blog – BUT I can’t take photos of myself! hahaha! Luckily I have been able to connect with some amazing photographers that are now some of my favorite ladies here in Seattle! Check them out:) Sarah Wolfe and Jenna Lynn!

My job allows me the opportunity to work on some really great projects. Within the projects, I get to work on the team that designs the buildings or spaces that we are working on, as well as help coordinate between the architecture and engineering teams. Some days my day to day is filled with seemingly endless designing, sketching, creating graphics in Illustrator and Photoshop, and even pinteresting for design ideas! (those are the best days:) Other days, it an be very technical. The technical side of my job is filled with drawing floor plans and details to show the contractor how the building will ultimately be constructed. I actually started my blog during a very technical / construction-heavy time in a 3 year project (1.5 years of design, 1.5 years of construction).

The technical times are filled with learning opportunities and can turn into puzzles that are fun to try to figure out. -“how would this be constructed in real life?”- While the learning opportunities are great and valuable, as a designer, I needed something that could keep my creativity flowing, even during the 1-2 years of detailing and construction – and that is where my blog came in! (This was one of several reasons my blog came to be – but I will expand on that in my 1 year post launching at the end of this month!)

My job can be very intense and consuming at times. I am doing my best to not let things like busy schedules or uncompleted to-do lists get to me this year. Normally, If I couldn’t get everything accomplished that I wanted to at work, I would panic and let it eat away at me. And same goes for my blog – if I work a long week and am unable to get a post up, I would be really tough on myself and I felt like I was letting myself down somehow. I have to keep reminding myself that I can only do what I am capable of. We set impossible goals for ourselves sometimes in life and in our careers, making endless to do lists, or telling ourselves we can do it all alone. In 2018 I want to be able to accept and love myself, even when I can’t meet my own deadlines or goals that I set. Even our failures are learning opportunities and stepping stones to our next goal.

Funny thing – Architecture was never on my radar growing up. I chose it as a Major/career as a sophomore at Iowa State so I could pursue a career with a lot of opportunity to create and design. However, this was after I decided I didn’t want to pursue the Pre-Med degree that I chose in high school. This was one of those times that I felt like a failure. I thought changing majors meant I wasn’t smart enough or dedicated enough. The truth was – my heart wasn’t in it, and it was always in design. It took me a long time (my whole freshman year) to accept that and decide to take the steps to pursue something that was going to make me happy and excited to work. I am so very fortunate that I get to make design my career. As I said above – sometimes the failures turn into beautiful things!

Because I work with design /web products quite frequently – I want to help those who are interested in design tools but maybe haven’t had the time or the opportunity to learn them on their own. Since I work with design programs every day such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom, I was thinking about doing some basic tutorials for the programs for anyone interested. I have actually had a lot of questions about the basics of these programs so I would love to share what I know. Please let me know in the comments below if this is something you would be interested in! <3

Thank you all so much for reading this long post about my career and thank you for reading each week! I can’t tell you all how much I love and appreciate your support.

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