Struggle to Find a Hobby Post-Grad 🎓

For someone who never had a hobby other than school and work.

Post graduation depression is real! I went through it. Now, one year later, I want to share my story.

After graduating, even with my full-time dream job in hand, I felt like I was dumped out into the world still trying to find my purpose. All this time I thought my purpose was to graduate with my dream job, but then what? There’s so much free time! I knew my purpose isn’t just to find a husband, start a family, work, pay bills, and die. Plus, I’m not ready for those first two anyways.

I was always that girl that went to work, school, home, work, school, home. I never had any hobbies other than DIY/crafting, but that wasn’t good enough to keep me busy with all this new free time. So I ventured out to find a hobby.

First, I thought immediately going back to get my MBA in Marketing (aka, my passion) was going to fill this void. Then I quickly realized I’m jumping the gun and doing it for the wrong reasons. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to go back for my masters at least 5 years after graduating with my bachelors, but not right now. Note that I’m a business major who graduated in 2017 with 2 years marketing experience already through internships. However, they recommend you gain as much professional experience first because then you can bring more value to the MBA program as it’s more hands on. So, I put a pause on this.

One to keep you in shape.

Second, I decided to pour this energy into the gym. I had never been to the gym before at the age of 23, NEVER IN MY LIFE. My body is naturally skinny with a good figure, it’s in my genes, so I never needed/wanted to go. In college, I used to always look at the people walking into the gym and say, “Nope, not me”. My roommates used to go early in the morning and I used to think they were crazy, like why? However, now I didn’t want it to ever catch up on me, so I signed up for LA Fitness. At the time, my job was offering to waive the $100 sign on fee, so I said why not! I started eating right by doing meal preps every week, learning more about my muscles and nutrition that I had never known before, and upper body, booty, and leg workouts. It wasn’t until then that I learned what the hype was about going to the gym! The adrenaline and exhilarating feeling you have during and after the gym is refreshingly amazing. I go 4 days a week, in the afternoons after work, and get out feeling ready to do anything! I’m not a morning person at all, but if I was a morning person, I’d go in the mornings to start my day with that feeling.

One to make you money.

Third, I felt like something was missing. Coming from a co-ed business fraternity through college, we ALWAYS HAD to network. I was always going to business networking events with professionals. But it was always served on a gold platter, I never had to go looking for events. So once graduating, this stopped, and it hit me HARD. I missed it. I felt like I lost my mojo, networking was one of the things I was good at. So, I teamed up with one of my female “brother” from the fraternity who also graduated and felt the same way, and we downloaded the “Meet Up” app. We went to one or two young professional networking events, only to find it wasn’t people of our same marketing interests, but people from all fields – from health to insurance to sales pitches. It still didn’t feel right. Until a few months later, I found out that the American Marketing Association has an Orlando Chapter. I didn’t know this, I thought organizations like this were only in college. So I quickly did my research, attended an event, and it was what I was looking for, but still felt like “just a club”. Then, a few days later I discovered Women in Digital, now TogetherDigital, a 1,700+ member association for women in digital marketing, advertising, and communication professions. This was the “sisterhood” in the real world to match my business fraternity’s “brotherhood” void I was missing. I immediately hopped on the board as the Social Media Chair and helped grow this chapter’s presence in Orlando. This organization completed 50% of that void simultaneously with my next venture below.

One to keep you creative.

I still didn’t feel satisfied. My Dad has always told me I should get into YouTube. But I always looked at him as if he was crazy like, “I don’t know what I’d talk about, I’m no beauty/makeup guru!” – but I was soooo wrong. I can’t believe that niche is all I thought that platform was good for, coming from someone who doesn’t watch anything on YouTube except music. But YouTube isn’t the only platform my Dad was right about, any platform to put myself out there! It’s like he’s always seen something more in me than a marketing guru. One day, I thought about how I’ve been traveling so much since my high school graduation, and I have so much GoPro footage that I’ve done absolutely NOTHING with. “THAT’S IT!”, I finally said. The light bulb switched on, and I knew my other passion, traveling, was what my niche would be. It’s always been there, I just never thought of it because I was so occupied and busy between school and work back then. But now? It’s like I’ve been planning this from so long ago, I just never knew until now, and that’s how travel/lifestyle blogging started. I used to be good at MySpace, people always came to me to spice up their profile. So, in comparison, I knew I’d be good at this. I just had to start somewhere, to get THERE.

I am finally satisfied with what I do with my time outside of work. Now, to just get to where I want to be blogging goal-wise: growth, travel brand collaboration, then monetizing. Here’s to the long road ahead as I now begin my journey.