When I was finally offered my dream job, I realized I already had it.

I cried in a room full of strangers.

When I was in high school, my dream was to go to Columbia to study writing and become a magazine editor. I’d been the editor of my high school literary magazine and would go on to do the same in college… at Loyola in Maryland. I didn’t get into Columbia.

I never made it to NYC.

I never became a fancy, big city magazine editor.

It was heartbreaking.

It is still hard to watch 13 Going on 30, or just about any other early social or pre-social media movie in which women went into an office at a big publication and created the magic that I got in my mailbox as a teenager.

Not me.

After college, I DID land a job in publishing, but NOT in New York, and most certainly not in fashion or beauty. It was in medicine and pharma—quite unglamorous.

In my 20s, I bought a copy of a book that was along the lines of Starting a Magazine for Dummies and began to investigate how I could start a publication—by myself. I quickly realized that there was no feasible way to launch a print publication without funding and shelved the idea, accepting defeat, trying to digest the idea of spending the rest of my life working a mundane job in the suburbs.

I was shy, quiet, and introspective… also very naive. Surprisingly, this was the cocktail I needed to casually start multiple online publications. The Internet was an amazing place for budding young writers, as well as introverts—and I was BOTH!

Before I started Design Milk, there were many shelter magazines on the shelves—Domino, Metropolitan Home, Dwell, House Beautiful, etc. As I began my little blog, I’d flip through the pages of Domino and think, “This is what I want to do.” It was what I always wanted to do.

Many years later I received an email in which I was offered my dream job.

I declined.

That same year, I was invited to a gathering in which we would each share something we were immensely proud of ourselves for accomplishing. It was a joyous celebration. Being invited by a friend, I only knew a handful of the women present, but it seemed they all knew each other.

My turn came, and I began to tear up. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say until I got up there.

“I was offered my dream job. But I had to say no because I already created a dream job for myself. I didn't have time to wait around for someone to come to me, so I built it,” I choked out to this group of strangers.

I fucking did it!

I was running one of the biggest niche design publications in the U.S.

Was it NYC in the heyday of print mags? No. Was it glamorous? No.

Was it incredibly fulfilling and even more so because I did it myself and didn’t need anyone else’s permission or approval? Hell yeah!

I will never forget how I felt that night. I carry it with me everywhere.¹

Me!

1. If this was my dream job, then why did I sell the brand? I felt stagnant, and so did the brand. When you’re too stagnant, you get comfortable and things are easy, but you don’t grow. I was itching to grow and needed a forcing function, which is a topic for another day.