Hi there! Nicole here, aka “The Anxious Shopper.” As many of my friends and family know I LOVE shopping and scoring a great deal. But what many of my friends and family don’t know is how I deal with anxiety in everyday life. So I decided to start a blog to talk about my life, both the seen and unseen. I hope you enjoy reading along as I share my thoughts.
There are so many aspects of who I am that I could share in my very first post. I’ve drafted this post a thousand times and asked many friends and family members to provide their input (always worried about others opinions, much?!) Where I landed was talking about the most impactful events of my adult life, that have lead me to this point, that have lead me to write this blog.
I first started college as a theater major. I loved it because I just got to act! Play! Express myself! But then the second semester hit and I didn’t get into any plays.
And I realized a. I cannot handle rejection and b. Was this what I wanted to do with my life?
I was SO worried about what my friends and family would think (also strangers lol).
I did not want to be seen as a failure. But I applied to the college in my hometown that was known for its teaching major. I’d always loved working with children, and felt I could make a great teacher.
I got in, graduated, and accepted a position at a middle school teaching 6th grade English & History in a well regarded school district.
After teaching middle school for 3 years, I found myself curious about what else was out there. What else could I be good at? I was good at teaching, but I was feeling the burnout, hard.
I didn’t want to find myself 5, 10, 20 years in the future. wondering, what if?
So I figured, what’s the harm in trying? Yeah, I’m leaving a really good school district, where I had just received tenure (job security). But I can always go back to teaching. That was my fallback phrase.
At first, every time I told people I was leaving teaching, I would get emotional. Not because I was sad about it, but because I was worried about what people would think. But everyone was SO supportive. Even my coworkers, teacher friends from college, my mom who is a teacher. Everyone said basically the same thing, “Do what makes you happy.” It was so relieving to have my friends and family be behind me 100%, because leading up until that point I was definitely stress shopping, hence “The Anxious Shopper.” And then I stress about money (especially when you’re on a teachers salary and thinking about quitting your job). So I save and budget, and then the cycle starts over again.
“Do what makes you happy.”
Then came the hardest part, what was I going to do next?!
My fiance is a recruiter at a top tech startup in SF, and after watching what he does I thought, “Oh I can do that!” I’m good with people, super organized, and enjoy helping others.
So I started applying to jobs as a recruiting coordinator. I interviewed at a few places but ended up finding a role through a connection, and they offered me the job before they met me (they were desperate to get some help with recruiting). It was an ed-tech start-up, and something about their mission drew me in, so I accepted!
I stayed there as an RC for about 6 months before a new opportunity fell into my lap, Executive Assistant to the CEO (& a few other top-level execs). I was terrified. This is a highly coveted role, and I had no experience. But they knew me well and felt I could handle it.
I’ve been in the role for 12 months now and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve learned SO much while in this role, and I have such a better work-life balance than I did when teaching.
You may have noticed I wrote about my fiancé earlier. The man whom I am promised to be wed. My betrothed.
The funny thing about that. Our wedding date was 04.04.2020.
Then this thing called a pandemic hit. So we had to postpone our wedding to October of 2020… and then again to October of 2021. By the time we get married, we will have been together for 5 1/2 years and engaged for about half that time.
So the pandemic not only threw the best day of our lives for a loop, but now we both work from home. We have had to learn how to grow as individuals as well as a couple… when we’re around each other all the time.
I could talk so much more about how hard working from home has been for me, but also how much it has helped me grow as an individual… so I think I may save that for another blog post.
I could go way into depth on so much more about my life. But I’m writing a blog, not a novel!
I feel like I’ve given you a good glimpse of who I am and how I got to this point accurately, so I hope you’ll follow along as I go into more depth about my life (plus some fun shopping posts too 😄)
xoxo,
The Anxious Shopper 😘
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