Throughout grad school, I blogged under the name Living Well While Broke and Higher Ed, Lower Income. It was on Blogger. As I wrote my dissertation, my desire to write anything longer than a Facebook post plummeted. There was a 5 year gap in the blog.
After graduation, I left academia and realized that I would likely be writing less frequently. Blogging was something I had enjoyed, and I wanted to pick the habit back up. My earlier posts were still valuable, so I wanted to keep them while also writing about the new aspects of my life: shifting out of academia, moving away from poverty, unwinding some old financial scripts that live in my head. From a financial perspective, I am getting started in life at the same time that my young adult kids are getting started.
I spent time thinking about what my focus would be. At the time, fresh off the grad school track, my identity was deeply tied to being a sociologist. And why not!? As a new minted doctor, it was the first time I felt entitled to call myself a sociologist. Since I was not going into academia, I expected that I would really miss writing and talking about sociological concepts and I saw this as an outlet for that loss of voice.
However, it turns out that, so far I don’t really miss it. All through grad school, many of my classmates very much wanted to eat, sleep, and breathe research. That was never me. I find the subject fascinating, but I could close it down and walk away from it. In fact, this was a consistent site of impostor syndrome. If I don’t love it enough to want to think about it constantly, do I really belong here?
But now that I am through it, I get to define things how I want to. I get enough sociological engagement through my work and a few other outside projects. And I will occasionally dive into a sociological concept or article on this blog. However, the overall focus is going to be more about the things that I am truly engaged with: figuring out the adulthood thing from a Gen X perspective. All generations are welcome, of course! But so much of the “figuring it out” genre is geared towards younger folks with the assumption that those of us who are of a certain age have already figured it out. For those of us who haven’t, this is the place: Adulting for Grown Ups.
The focus of the blog will stay the same. The name will just be more reflective of that focus. Going forward, I will be writing more about home organizing, minimalism, and personal finance. I will also be doing a series of posts about the home decorating that I have done over the past year.
Many of these posts will be written from a “learn while doing” perspective. I am not an expert in any of these fields, not by a long shot. But I am trying to figure them out. And I know that I am not alone in trying to figure this stuff out. I do have expertise in diving into new and sometimes uncomfortable experiences and narrating them along the way.
So if you are also trying to figure it out, come along with me, and we will do it together. It is more fun that way! And if you have already figured it out, or have no interest in figuring it out, come along for the ride anyway and I will try to be entertaining and provide you with pictures of a very cute dog.
