Of Books, Blogs, and Creating Your Own Job
Every time I organize my house I find one of the little books I made as a child. It’s like an Easter egg hunt, only the eggs are tiny, misshapen booklets that were folded and stapled by a 6-year-old. In elementary school, I wanted to be an author-illustrator of children’s books. I loved reading stories by Jan Brett, like The Mitten or Trouble with Trolls. I spent my time creating little books and filling them with short stories and cute drawings. Then, in middle school I wrote short comic books and attempted to write a novel. Sadly, in high school I was swamped with schoolwork and unable to thoroughly explore my interest in storytelling, but I did pursue my love of art through every assignment that I could.
After graduating, I took a gap year and was able to finally figure out how I could turn my passion for storytelling and design into a job. When I was browsing some organizing blogs, I discovered the world of online business and blogging. I learned that I could tell stories by writing a blog, and that I could use my design skills to create digital products to help people organize their lives. Since this realization, I have been building my design skills and researching business so that I can start my own online business selling printable planners and journals.
Walla Walla, a small town in southeastern Washington, is surrounded by wheat fields and infested with wine tourists. While the downtown is lovely, the rest of the place needs a lot of work, and it is four hours away from any real city. I lived there for less than four months and never want to go back. My perception of the town may be colored by my negative experiences at the local private liberal arts college, Whitman College. I started at Whitman in the fall of 2016 with high hopes and an eagerness to learn. My good mood was quickly trashed as almost everything that could go wrong with my first semester of college did. Other than regular friendship problems, issues with the dining hall, and mold in the ceiling of my residence hall, the biggest disappointment was the college’s selection of majors.
My mother and I had visited Whitman at the end of our road trip in the summer of 2014. I loved the campus, the admissions people were very friendly, and I thought a small liberal arts college would be the right atmosphere for me. I applied that fall and was ecstatic to get my acceptance letter in the spring. After requesting to defer my enrollment so that I could take a gap year, I graduated high school and set off for Germany satisfied with my decision. Upon my return, my plan to major in German Studies was no longer exciting to me, so I decided to use my gap year to explore other options.
On an impulse, I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). During the rest of October, I plotted and prepped for November. I hadn’t written any fiction since the short story assignment back in 9th grade, but I was determined to hammer out 50,000 words in 30 days. After a lot of hard work and stress, I finished on November 30th with 50,206 words. My novel had numerous holes, but it did have a beginning, middle, and an end, so I felt successful. Winning NaNoWriMo was the catalyst that re-ignited my passion for storytelling. However, it also taught me that I didn’t want to write novels or books full-time.
In January 2016, I studied film — a different form of storytelling. The seventh Star Wars movie had just come out in December, and I decided to see it 14 times in theaters. This goal was due in part to my dad’s record of watching Star Wars (A New Hope) 13 times when it came out in 1977. I also just really liked the movie. Throughout January and into February, I saw The Force Awakens 18 times (I was 18-years-old at the time). I ended up practically studying the film: I took notes during a couple viewings and changed where I sat in the theater each time to get a different perspective. Star Wars ended up being a huge part of my gap year and another excellent experience that taught me more about myself and possible careers.
After completing my self-imposed mission, I took to began preparing for college. As a freshman, I had to live in the dorms and eat in the dining halls. I have a few dietary restrictions, so I knew I would need to be able to cook some of my meals. So I did what most people do today and googled “tips for cooking in dorms.” My research eventually brought me to “mom blogs” — mothers who write blogs about cooking, cleaning, organizing, and family life. Productivity and organization are a couple of my strong suits, and I devoured those blog posts one-by-one until I had none left. What I discovered was that these women were making money from their blogs. Some of them used ads or affiliate links, while others offered products on their websites or on Etsy. It was at this point that I began to think, wait — I like organization, I can design things, I like to write, and blogging is kind of like telling your story — why can’t I start a blog, too? Once this realization had struck me, I threw myself into learning about blogging and online business, frantic to get something going before I had to go off to college in just a few short months. I didn’t get a website up in time, but I did teach myself a lot that summer. Then, at the end of August, my parents and I packed our van up and drove five and a half hours to my new home in Walla Walla.
A week of 10-hour days for orientation left me no time to think, let alone work on my business. And then classes started and I was swamped with schoolwork again, just like in high school. I did manage to find some time to think about my major a few weeks into the semester. My first choice, now that I wasn’t so keen about German, was psychology. Within a few days of going to my Intro to Psychology class, I knew that was way too much science for me. Economics was fine for taking a couple courses, but not riveting enough to major in. And traditional fine arts or theater were just not my thing. As I soon found out, Whitman didn’t have much to offer for me. They had no business classes (not even finance!) and no art classes covering digital art or design. Everything else was either a science or in the humanities. The one possibility I could see was Film Studies. So I set up a meeting with the department head. We met on Halloween in his office, and I asked him a few questions about the major. We talked briefly about films, and I mentioned that I was a big fan of Star Wars. He immediately got a sour look on his face and made a comment about how The Empire Strikes Back was the only good movie out of the saga. I knew right then that this would not work. Whitman could not provide the education I was looking for. Being unable to find a suitable major was the last straw on top of a towering stack of other negatives.
During Thanksgiving Break, my parents and I visited Oregon State University. We had looked at the majors offered online and found one that seemed promising: Digital Communication Arts. After a wonderful meeting with a woman in admissions, we met with one of the College of Liberal Arts advisors. I left that meeting finally certain that I had found the right major and excited to transfer in the spring. I left Whitman at the end of December with no regrets and transferred to Linn-Benton Community College for Winter Term. With a couple of Baccalaureate Core requirements taken care of, I dual-enrolled at LBCC and OSU for the Spring Term as a Digital Communication Arts major. Now that I had finally settled on a college and major, I could resume working on my business.
Entrepreneurship is hard work, and you have to teach yourself a wide variety of skills, but after my difficult journey beginning college, I am continuing to take the steps necessary to start my business. In addition to resuming the research I did over the summer, I’m now taking online courses in the Adobe design software that is used for creating everything from website graphics to planners and books. I plan on finally setting up my blog this summer and hopefully opening an Etsy shop in the fall. Multiple courses in my major will help me gain more design, production, and media strategy skills that will help me expand and improve my business. During the summer, I can take on internships and attend business classes. I also have a wonderful resource in Orange Media at OSU. Working there and with the Academic Success Center will give me excellent opportunities to put my skills to use and gain practice working in the world of media and in helping students. The exciting thing about being an entrepreneur in today’s age of the Internet is that my possibilities are as open as my ability to learn and my job will be flexible as the world evolves.
Although I may not be the author-illustrator my younger self thought I would be, I am pursuing my passion for storytelling and design in a way that suits my goals and lifestyle. For a long time, I haven’t been as excited and as happy with my life as I am now. A long, twisty, bumpy road lies ahead of me, but I won’t be driving it alone or unprepared. Maybe I’ll even find some little books stashed in the bushes along the way.