First Blog Post First Anniversary

It’s my first blog post first anniversary! In honor of my first blog post first anniversary, I thought it would be fun to share why I started in the first place!

So, I actually started Styledjen on Instagram at the end of July 2017 and didn’t have my website ready until November 2017. I finally wrote that first post and published it on November 12 (see that post here).

Back in 2017…

It’s funny, because I had always followed blogs for fashion inspiration and loved the personalities behind them. I wasn’t really into Instagram so I would just follow these girls through their website and posts. I think I never made one of my own because for a while I was moving every year for work and was super busy with starting my Engineering career. The idea of adding anything to that already crazy schedule seemed enormous.

After moving around each year, I finally moved from Asheville to Atlanta in August 2015 to be with my fiance (now husband) after doing long distance. After getting settled in Atlanta and rejoicing about ending long distance, I began wedding planning – which kept me super busy. We got married in April 2017 and after the wedding I finally felt settled for the first time in years. No more moving for work (jk lol I live in Tampa now), and no more wedding planning. Life was good, until I realized how bored I was once I didn’t have wedding planning to occupy my time outside of work.

So What is My Passion?

I was in a New Product Development engineering role during this time and was extremely bored with my job. This scenario of being bored at work and longing for something more had me thinking about “what is my passion?” …. I desperately wanted to find a hobby that could feed my soul so that I could be more fulfilled with life. This led me down a complete rabbit hole of figuring out what I loved to do. Some good advice I found online was “what do people ask you for advice on?” or “what do you do in your free time?”.

I felt like my hobbies were shallow and didn’t think I could do anything with them. My favorite hobbies were (and still are) shopping and bargain hunting, wine drinking, cooking and eating. I felt really shallow as I sat there listing out these things I am passionate about. But, a hobby is a hobby. Who am I to try and change what my interests are for something deemed more meaningful by society?

Great Things Happen When You Are Bored at Work!

I was doing a Hackathon at work (if you haven’t heard of Hackathon, it’s a a period of time where computer coders get together to work on a project…usually an all day event or several days). During the hackathon, I was acting as a project manager for my team because I have not written code in years and am not efficient. I was super bored watching my team work frivolously on coding and started seriously thinking about where my life was at and where I wanted to be. The idea of a blog hit me like a ton of bricks. I still remember that revelation during the Hackathon… I was bored to tears and browsing my favorite blogs online. That’s when I was like OMG I need to create a blog!

During the event I started to think about names and settled with Styledjen, thinking I would find something better and eventually change it. I created an Instagram page that very day and put it on private mode because I was horrified someone would find out about it. I kept it a secret from most people I knew for months actually, I was so embarrassed of what people would think that knew me. The first time someone I knew found my page and followed me I had a legit panic attack. I sort of laugh now because I could care less who finds my blog, but I do remember that intense fear of being judged.

The Learning Curve

What has made my blog a reality is that I love learning new things and when I start a project I give it 5000%. I am a go-getter, never-quitter kind of gal. Once the idea of a blog came into my head, it couldn’t be stopped. I spent the next few months googling a crap ton and learning A LOT. I am really happy with my decision to start the Instagram first, because that in itself is a process. There is a whole work flow of shooting, editing, posting, responding to comments etc that I had to learn. I also started learning about digital marketing and using Instagram as a tool. Once I had my head on straight with Instagram, I started diving into the website portion and learning more about using a camera (we bought a Sony A6000 which I still love to pieces).

More Than Just a Project

It has taken a year of constant improvement to get to a place where I am content with my blog and proud of it. I can say 100% confidently that it was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. It’s like having a child, where you can’t imagine life before it and wouldn’t want to imagine life without it. I can’t imagine living a life without doing something I am totally passionate about. Prior to starting my blog, I don’t know how I lived life without having a passion. I never want to return to that place. I never thought I could find such fulfillment from something and that fulfillment brings me so much joy.

That is not to say it is easy, it is also the hardest thing I have ever done. I do miss having down time to sleep, watch tv, cook, hang out with friends or just relax. I am super thankful that my husband has picked up grocery shopping, cooking, laundry and cleaning so that I can maintain this platform that has grown to a point that I can barely handle. To be honest, I am not sure what is next and if I can keep growing this platform with my engineering career. I definitely need to make some changes in order to do that because I am heading down the path of burnout with having a full time job on top of this. Burnout does not mean quitting though. Burnout will just force me to make adjustments to my schedule and is honestly probably needed for the next phase of my internal growth.

One of My First Photoshoots!

Anyways, if you are still here reading, woah! That was long! I hope that helps you understand me a little better and I thank you sincerely so much for following along! I thought it would be cute to post one of my first outfit shoot ever below in honor of my first blog post anniversary! These photos have been sitting on my camera and I just downloaded them yesterday. They aren’t as terrible as I was envisioning, but it’s awesome to see how far I have come a year later!

Sizing reference: I am 5’4″ and typically XS in tops and 25 in bottoms.