WHO AM I?
I’m an inevitably creative nonconformist who's obsessed with business & loves the hustle. I make unorthodox creations by repurposing materials in defiance of what they were originally meant to be. I’m always reinventing something, either myself or the things around me. And I’m always undertaking a new first-time-ever project, making me a perpetual Rookie.
Freedom is my oxygen, imagination is my gas, & the status quo is the enemy. MacGuyvering is my only technique. In life & in art. It’s all figure-it-out-as-I-go here. Zero formalities. All rogue.
Why “rogue”? My path is one there's no pre-written map for. In 2016, I upended my life to disrupt my long-term rut, revive my lost callings, & get my life on track (more on that below). I’ve been instinctively cutting my own trail to the future I want ever since. Navigating this mysterious journey is tricky, because my exact end-goal is still foggy. But I do know it involves entrepreneurship & creativity, without a doubt, & it won’t be ordinary (& definitely not status-quo compliant). Every move I make is sourced from a mix of gut, curiosity, & spiritual guidance. And every inch of progress is fueled by my all-consuming drive to get closer to living this foggy future dream of mine.
WHAT AM I UP TO RIGHT NOW?
In October 2018, I left my home of 12 years (& the beach!) & moved to Birmingham, AL to exit my comfort zone, escape my waitressing career, and be at a hub of entrepreneurship, the thing I love most. I had no business idea in mind, so the goal was just to learn more about entrepreneurship firsthand. How? By working for someone who's doing what I will one day eventually do— build my own creative company or brand from the nitty-gritty ground up.
But, of course, there was a twist in my grand plans.
While job-hunting in the big city, I gave selling on Ebay a shot. And as the employment quest became more fruitless & frustrating, my desire to make online reselling work consumed me more & more. I later expanded into Amazon & found the place I really wanted to be. In the long struggle to get things going, I battled through months of heavy doubt & discouragement, blew through savings, and stubbornly refused to quit when it seemed like the only remotely sensible thing to do.
In the meantime, the couple waitressing jobs I got (as a very last resort) & all other employment-securing attempts were uncannily unsuccessful. So much so that I suspected a Higher force may have been guiding me away. My bank account demanded me get a job, any job, but everything else in me was screaming "No!" The internal friction was very conflicting. But I knew better than to let the "shoulds" overpower my gut. So I held on to a thinning thread of hope & kept hacking away at reselling.
And thank God I was so impractical! Because I finally found success with reselling in December 2019 on Amazon. Between the building financial pressure driving me to work harder & take more risks, & the magic of holiday spending, everything turned around. And I doubt I'd be able to say that if I'd "wisely" gotten a job & compromised on my conviction just to relieve financial pressure. So as of early 2020, I'm full steam ahead on Amazon, doing whatever it takes to keep making it work, and I'm ecstatic to say I'm officially retired from browsing job listings!
WHAT IS THIS WEBSITE FOR? (More on my Life change)
I created this website to document & share the transformational journey I began in Feb. 2016, when I got miserable enough to disrupt my 7-year rut, remodel my life, & redirect my trajectory. I’d been hitting repeat on my daily dead-end routine for years, perpetuating my recurring loop of bad habits & backwards priorities. The non-stop drinking & partying had completely drowned out my dream, calling, gifts, & I didn’t slow down enough to realize it until misery stepped in & forced me to. I took 10 days off work to diagnose, disassemble, demo, & start rebuilding my life. That’s when my breakthrough season began. And thankfully, nothing has been remotely the same since.
Since then, it’s been my mission to do whatever it took to get myself from stuck to started & headed towards the kind of future I really wanted. I had no idea how to at first, but bit by bit, with gritted teeth, & hellbent determination, I started finding my way.
I put myself under major mindset reconstruction, I reached out & a few kind souls presented opportunities, I found virtual heroes to help me through (Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk), & I got back in step with The Man Upstairs. There was nothing behind me that wouldn’t completely derail me if I turned back, so there was no other option but full steam ahead, figure it the hell out… And I did.
In the time since, I’ve totally rebuilt my life, created this website & blog (launched 11/1/16), done my first ever solo art exhibit (April 2017), started sharing my work on social media for the first time ever (Fall 2017), & begun my journey as a full-time online reseller (October 2018).
It’s been a purpose-driven era of self-work, dream-work, progress, & things I did really, really right for the first time in awhile. This journey has stretched me, challenged me, grown me up, made me a drastically better human being than I was before, expanded my heart, shrunk my ego, & shown me just how much I can do when priorities are on point & focus is dead-locked. My turnaround fills me with gratitude & makes me want one for other people in my former shoes. And that’s why I write. To pass along what I’ve learned myself & from others to help others help themselves disrupt their own rut, get from stuck to started, & reignite their own drowned-out dreams. If that sounds like you, then I wrote this for you.
Now is your time. It’s your turn.
Take it. GO ROGUE.
Thank so much for spending your time with my words & on my website.
*Follow me on Instagram for the most up to the minute twists in my journey & creative madness.
Check out my Manifesto next. It's what I believe in, my battle cry.
Take a look at my DISqualifications, & why I really have no business blogging.
Read about My Punky Roots & just how much I haven't changed since I was 5.