The age-old question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” is asked from the moment you walk into school at age 5 until you graduate from college.  We’re traditionally expected to say a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or scientist. If you break from the mold and share an untraditional answer, you’re usually met with a face of disappointment, confusion, or my favorite, the question of how you will make money. What they don’t tell you is when you actually get into those cookie-cutter “dream” jobs, they’re far from what you expected them to be. Yes, you could be saving lives or changing the world one law at a time, but in between, you can find yourself doing the most dreadful and exhausting work that sucks the dream out of what you expected it to be.

This truth hit me once I climbed ladder after ladder of what society expects us to climb. Go to school, get your degree, land that big and shiny job. Each milestone ticked one by one off of the list, only to be met by disappointment because another ladder was waiting for me to climb. 

“When are you getting married?” “Are you going to buy a house soon?” “When are you getting a promotion?” “Are you saving for your 401k?”

This vicious cycle woke me up to realize that we are all expected to fit the traditional bullshit standards society has made up for us. We’re literally given more love as children for these achievements, sending us into adulthood seeking the same validation.

So what’s the secret? It’s 2022, you can literally be whatever you want to be.

Artists, Youtubers, musicians, tiktokers, and bloggers are not what you are taught to aspire to be. If you break the mold and follow your passions, that’s where true happiness (and success) are found. Don’t get me wrong, some of us truly have the dream of becoming a doctor or lawyer, or even climbing to the top of the corporate ladder. But, I have not met someone who is passionate about being stuck inside from 9-5 filling out spreadsheets and sitting down for 8 hours out of the day glued to a computer screen. Job after job, I was met by mundane tasks, gloomy cubicles, never-ending powerpoints. My passion is marketing – how did those fall into that career path? Well. That’s corporate America for you. And this is the part of the “dream” that they don’t tell you about when you’re climbing society’s ladders.

So, that leads me to The Page Avenue. Throughout countless hours of working in marketing (over 12,000 hours to be exact), I’ve learned what I love and what I would rather chew on glass than do. Less of the soul-sucking work and more of the creative liberty to build what I love. I’m a firm believer of pros and cons lists and after adding more and more to those lists that’s when it clicked… I LOVE blogging, I’m a sucker for taking *aesthetically* pleasing pics, and am the self-proclaimed pop culture queen on top of all of the latest trends. I’ve desperately been seeking a creative escape from corporate America and have been deprived of all of the fun things that I love about marketing. So, that finally brings me to building this creative outlet to do more of what sets my soul on fire.

To all of those dreamers out there who are scared of breaking societal standards, this one is for you. Chase that dream girl. Even if it scares you. It’s never too late to do the things you wish you had done by now. If I would’ve began a blog when I started writing them professionally in college, I could be a full-time blogger by now. So here I am, writing my first blog, taking the leap, and pursuing my passions. It’s scary – and I already love it.

So – what do you actually want to be when you grow up?