To my former self: Choose your friends wisely. Invest in those friendships. Build a support system for yourself. Because no matter how strong you think you are solo, you’re even stronger when you have helping hands to fall back on.
The older I get the more importance I place on building meaningful friendships vs. friends to go out drinking with on the weekends. Bonus points for ones that I can do both with though! I’ve found this to be even more important now that my blog has turned into a business, and as I’m trying my hand at the self-employed life.
I can’t stress the importance of having friends that support your decisions to stay home, work late, and focus on work enough. Because you’re going to need those same exact friends to tell you to put down your phone for a bit, or to ask you to grab a drink one night in between bits of work. Friends that understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and support you in the journey from point A to point B make all the difference in the world. There the ones that will simultaneously push you to be better, while reminding you that you’ll never be good enough.
I also can’t stress enough how easy it is to get tunnel vision and focus solely on what’s ahead of you, and I can promise that if you do that the invitations for real life interaction will begin to dwindle, you’ll spend more time working from home than any human should, and you’ll find yourself ordering take out and watching movies every weekend instead of spending time with friends. Trust me when I say that, because it’s exactly where I found myself after several months of being on the road back to back.
I’ve been burnt by enough friendships/burnt enough bridges in Louisville that I’ve honestly developed a bit of anxiety when it comes to attending local events, or going out on the weekends. Which, if you’re from here, should explain my absence the last couple of months as well as fewer and fewer local Instagram photos. I never imagined that self employed life would be quite so lonely, but one thing I have learned over the last two years is that it doesn’t have to be lonely. You just have to surround yourself with people that will not get jealous of what you’re doing or want to be involved due to ulterior motives.
If you surround yourself with fellow movers and shakers there will no time for jealousy or petty squabbles because you will all be too busy moving and grooving. You’ll also be too busy helping raise your friends to your level to worry about who’s doing better than who, because at the end of the day water seeks its own level.
All of the above is why my squad goals look a lot like today’s photo, and why yours should to. The ladies pictured above push me to be a better person, help me be the best version of myself, and make me want to excel in all areas of life. Which is why I’m happy to say that we’re the team behind bringing Connecting Things to Louisville. If you’re not sure what Connecting Things is all about then there’s no time like the present to learn. But in short, “Connecting Things is an event series that promotes the ideas, collaborations and knowledge that make us creatives and doers great.”