To blog or not to blog... - That Pencil Skirt

My current dilemma

I ended up taking a four month break from Instagram. I didn’t make some bold proclamation saying I was going to quit. I was not particularly frustrated with it. I was simply busy. Jason and I closed on a new apartment that we are (still) rennovating, I had an 8 month old, and a new job (I’ll get to that later) and just felt stretched. Instagram, with TPS by association – seemed like the easiest thing in my life to drop.

Looking back, living without Instagram for a few months was actually very liberating! If anyone hasn’t tried it, even for a day, do it! It’s like a sugar addiction. The first day you cut sugar from your diet, it feels unbearable. If you’re anything like me, dropping the cookie after lunch is just brutal. Ask any of my colleagues, I never miss the after lunch cookie! After a few days, it gets a lot easier. After a month, you don’t think about sugar at all. After two months, when you taste something sweet it’s nauseating. It wasn’t until I “quit” Instagram, that I noticed things that bothered me.

With Instagram, there is a constant pressure to wear something new, do something new, and say something new. Especially for a blogger. Content creation is a skill, and one that I don’t want to put down because I appreciate how hard it is. The most successful bloggers are ones who are able to make their blog synonymous with their every day lives. It makes that additional Instagram story easy. There is a reason why most serious bloggers quit their day jobs – because it’s hard to create engaging content from sitting at your desk. A photo with a group of girls dressed in crop tops at Cha Cha Matcha is a lot more interesting for a follower to see than a girl sitting in her office at 4PM on a Friday waiting to go home for the weekend.

The reality of trying to run a blog from a day job that isn’t conducive for a blog is less content, lower rankings on the Instagram algorithm and overall a less successful blog. The business person in me felt that it just wasn’t worth the time because I would never be able to keep up with the full time bloggers. However, after an extensive job search, I finally found a job where I hopefully won’t have to choose one or the other. I found a firm that is embraces social media and empowers entrepreneurs to grow and YES, IT’S STILL IN FINANCE! No, I probably still won’t be able to “compete” with the girls who blog full time, but if I am helping even just a handful of other working women, it’s all worth it!

The blogging industry is competitive. I’ve met some absolutely incredible and kind women. And I’ve also met some people who are not at all what they appear to be. There was one blogger in particular who told a photographer she would have to choose between shooting my photos or hers because we target the same audience. I reached out to her to collaborate and she had an assistant reach out to me to tell me that she is too busy to take on additional meetings (we started the same year and had the same amount of followers!) Business is competitive. Financial services is competitive. Competitive doesn’t have to be catty, though. Competitive should be doing the best you can possibly do, knowing when you go to sleep that you put 100% effort into your day. That’s why I decided to take a new job so I can hand over heart try my best at work, TPS, and most importantly being a mom! I’ve decided that comparing myself to full time bloggers is irrelevant and not the right measure for success for me. Success for me is staying true to who I am. Success for me is having a real impact on just one person. And success for me is trying my best to do it all. Any other momma out there knows how hard just getting through your daily check list is!

My new job

Anyone who has been following me for a while, knows that I left J.P. Morgan after spending my whole carreer there to become and executive recruiter for hedge funds. One thing that was always a red flag to me was when people were “job hoppy!” I was so nervous to leave and try something new in fear that I would be too much a “job hopper.” However, after a year of recruiting, I was really missing something from my carreer and I realized I would never get it from recruiting.

The older you get, you gain more clarity on the things that matter most. Having a baby gave me even more perspective. Being challenged at work is really important to me. I had a tough time leaving Scarlett every day for something that felt very transactional. I deeply missed the fast paced nature of wealth management where I was constantly building real relationships with interesting people. I missed the markets. I missed getting to know families and offering impactful advice. When I was 25 years old, I sat across the table from a hedge fund manager worth hundreds of millions of dollars and was able to offer advice on something he didn’t otherwise know. It felt really cool to have a skill and a trait that could help people who were way more successful than me.

Through an extensive search across the wealth management industry, I chose to join Bernstein, a more boutique, but still seriously institutional, asset manager who takes a different approach to managing money from my former stomping ground. I would love to share more in another post – but I am excited to say that there will be a lot more content coming soon! Bernstein is a place that embraces me for being different and bridging this weird gap between finance and fashion and appreciates my unique interests.