01. I hit the button

After years in the corporate world, I felt it was time to hit the button. This is how my journey of starting over professionally begins — and what I learned along the way.

I've been thinking about reactivating my blog mode for a while now. Back in 2008, in the days of Flickr, Fotolog and Wordpress, I had my visual side on the first one and my stories told in a very spontaneous way on the third.

A couple of years after that, right when I stepped into the corporate world, I shut it all down: closed the shutters, put a padlock on it and swallowed the key.

Today, having reached the other shore — I wrapped up my corporate chapter a few months ago —, I felt the need to go back to my roots, to the urge to tell stories, to share and to connect again.

Just like you see me in the photo, I felt that red button on my back got pushed and triggered a change for the better and for good: it showed me how to start over professionally.

Like an Instagram algorithm, once that little door is open, signals start showing up that fuel that inner fire, key people start crossing your path, related content starts appearing and a picture becomes clearer every day.

With a handful of ideas brewing, lots of — how do I even define this — caution, excitement, drive, uncertainty, I trust that the best first step is to start somewhere, and then find direction where my intuition already told me it is.

I'm sharing this journey because I'm the same person I've always been, but I've learned a ton. The most valuable thing: keeping the original version, with a few good tweaks.

The takeaway: listen to your inner voice, keep it present and pay attention to it — especially when it never shuts up.

J.