New Beginnings

Hey guys! Welcome to my new blog and website. The focus of my blog is going to be on who I am, individuality and lifestyle which should in turn help you out with a few fun craft tips, advice and ideas on Living Like Lucy! 

I wanted to start a new blog to reflect the idea of ‘New Beginnings’ in life by starting to define myself, learn more about individuality, personal needs and interests in life which in turn I hope will give you the little push you need to claim your life as your own.

Over the last year I have spent a lot of time changing the way I live and developing who I am as a person. I have developed my social circles, completely changed my career and started to respect myself more as an individual. I know for a fact you’re probably sat at home now, or on the train, maybe even just about to pop into a meeting with a tiny thought at the back of your head ‘fifteen year old me would not have imaged I would be at this stage of my life things didn’t quite go as expected’. You might be in a fantastic sales job, married well with a delightful family or even found that you (like many friends I have) have fallen onto the successful career path younger you never even considered, But is that really success and do you feel as if you have your life under control?

After finishing my A levels in 2009, I found myself in a state of limbo, unsure what I wanted to do with my life having only ever thought about others or reading books, playing outside and quite frankly just being a teenager. After much deliberating I ended up at University studying Film, which, as a fifteen year old, wasn’t on the agenda but funnily enough turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. If you went to University, perhaps you found yourself doing a degree you didn’t enjoy or weren’t too sure about? That is completely normal and a lot of people swap in their first year, I just happened to be lucky and find something that suited me entirely.

I think most of us would admit we have made mistakes throughout life and one of mine was allowing my sensitivity to cloud my better judgement which in turn has led me to where I am today. I handed in my notice at the BBC where I had been working part-time whilst studying at Oxford Brookes and moved to West London to pursue a career in god knows what! A lot of people, probably even you, found you moved away from home with an idea in your head about what you wanted to achieve or do with your career just like I did. I interviewed at some of the world’s top media companies such as NBC Universal, The Telegraph, ITV, Sky, Google… it was quite endless and I found myself not enjoying the interviews so went back to the drawing board and decided to sit in a temporary field sales role for a few months. After finishing my role in field sales with Red Bull I found a job at a large technology company that at first, I thoroughly enjoyed! I was relatively senior and had a lot of responsibility but my heart was just not in it so resigned after a year and told myself I really needed to think of what made me happy and what I should do.

I know all the above will sound very common to you, as many people find themselves in this state of limbo after university unsure on what they want to do or finding that they cannot get a job in their degree subject. For me it was the former. I spent the summer working in a simple visitor experience role at a famous London Opera and it made me realise I wanted to work in the arts so guess what, I started to look for jobs at my favourite London museum the V&A and that is exactly where I am now.

My advice is, just because your friends look like they have their lives together, doesn’t mean they do. Often we rush into things and don’t speak to ourselves enough, spending 90% of our time looking through Instagram, Facebook or Twitter comparing ourselves to social-media-happiness-fakes which is just ridiculous. You should give yourself time and permission to claim your life. It doesn’t matter if you’re 25, 30 or 40 you can change your path and do what you want with it.

Something else to think about is, what exactly does living mean to you? Is it about having a home, family and a part-time job, it could be that you want to be the best of your profession and retire at 35 (that is possible), or maybe you just want to find that medium, something that makes you happy enough that you can have those nice holidays, a lovely house and send your children to the right school. Or scrapping all that, maybe you just want to travel the world and live off the odd job change you pick up here and there. I am not suggesting you should live for the future, but in some ways you should. Spend your days pushing yourself to succeed, be patient about progression and only surround yourself with people who enjoy living a true life.

Basically, think about your life, what does living really mean and is the current situation you’re in really making you happy.