When I first started blogging, I was at home with a baby, and I was bored.
That’s the big glamorous origin story.
I just wanted to write about what was going on in my life because, honestly, I didn’t have anyone other than my baby to talk to.
Which was totally cool.
Thank GOD she started talking early and understood the assignment, because I promise you I probably have at least three texts from her right now.
It’s funny to look at that beginning now, knowing what Totally The Bomb became. Because when someone asks about creating your own career, I think they’re expecting a much more impressive origin story than a woman at home who wanted to write.
But that really is where it started.
I had things to say
I wanted a place to talk about what was happening. And writing gave me one.
That’s such a simple thing that I almost feel like it needs a bigger explanation. A business plan. A dramatic turning point. Something where I can point to one specific moment and say, “See? This was the plan all along.”
Except I wasn’t thinking about a grand origin story while I was sitting there wanting to write. I was thinking about the fact that I wanted to write.
There’s something I really like about that now. It started with what I actually had: my own life, my own opinions, and the ability to put some words together.
And apparently I had enough opinions to keep going.
Then it became a job
At some point I got to tell a room full of kids that I’d invented my own job.
I still love the ridiculousness of saying that out loud. Invented my own job. Like that’s a perfectly normal answer when someone asks what you want to be when you grow up.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I wasn’t sitting at home trying to invent a job title. I was looking for somewhere to put the things I wanted to say.
The job came out of that.
And the baby who was there for those first days? She’s about to graduate from college now. She has opinions of her own, and my word is very much not the be-all and end-all anymore.
Which is exactly how I want it.
She’s not a carbon copy of me. She has her own life to figure out, and I get to be supportive while she does.
I think there’s a connection in there somewhere between giving someone else room to have a voice and figuring out how to use your own.
But mostly, I just keep coming back to how ordinary the beginning was.
I was home. I was bored. I wanted to write.
So I did.
