My latest post was April 22nd. Today’s May 29th, June 3rd. Has it really been a whole month and some change?

WTF.

To be honest with you, it doesn’t even feel like a month’s time has passed by. But I’ll tell you why I’ve been MIA for a while: I’ve finally achieved something I’ve wanted to do in my career which is to work at an ad agency. In between all the in-house marketing gigs I’ve had since 2020, I’ve secretly yearned to work at an ad or marketing agency.

I have kind of alluded to my new line of work in some of my earlier posts but in case you didn’t know: I was laid off my previous job back in January. And, to be honest, despite the crippling anxiety being unemployed gave me, it also gave me a huge amount of my time and peace back. I delved into content creating on TikTok and blog writing which gave me space to voice my thoughts and refine my expertise. Keeping this blog going was what kept me going while I was not working.

From February to March, I wrote some guides to help my readers become fantastic marketers but I primarily wrote them as reminder to myself while I waited. I ruminated on past career failures as well, because my last experience showed me the do’s and don’t of the the kind of marketing role I needed to be in in order to thrive.

This certainly isn’t a declaration of how easy or better my work is now – but it’s definitely been the most fulfilling thus far. Everyday is different: the work is more versatile, the deadlines are still tight and the marketing problems I get to solve are always evolving, but I don’t feel like it’s beyond my scope. I initially thought I would have a hard time getting accustomed to the faster pace but now that I’m nearly 3 months in, I’m slowly starting to find my groove.

At the start of 2023 I decided that my word of the year would be “Voice”. I felt like I was leaving a lot unsaid. I was not communicating my ideas, my wants or my needs in all areas of my life. I was feeling like a passenger of a car where I had little control over where my life was headed. I felt like I needed to develop my voice so that I would place myself in the driver’s seat. Voice, or communication rather, would be the tool I needed to break out of the cage. I’d always been so reserved, only letting my true emotions out when it felt safe to do so.

Of course, I applied this mindset to all parts of my life, but in the work world, I’ve been taking extra steps to speak more. As a new media buyer for my agency I knew communicating results, performance, strategies and projects would be fundamental to my success. This would be the realm of my life where I can chisel out the breaks in my voice and the lack of confidence in myself. Now I’m looking forward to client and internal calls and presentations because it’s an opportunity to speak up, mess up and learn.

Anyway, I can’t wait to report that I’ve finally conquered my fear of speaking or that I now have full confidence in myself. But for now, I’m enjoying the journey while I’m on my way there. It’s times like these where I remember the auspicious prompt of a University of Chicago personal statement I had to write back in 2008 based on this quote by Rainer Maria Rilke:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Could Rainer be alluding to manifestation, or the belief that focusing the mind on what you want could therefore, create it in your physical world? I interpret it that way now. Only time will tell what the future holds. For now, I’m building relationships, strengthening my skills and getting comfortable hearing the sound of my voice.

Stay tuned for a brand new post in the next few days!