The Re-brand

One of my first classes as a graduate students is "New Media/Social Media Tools" and one of our first projects has been creating a social media "plan" and developing a personal "brand." Brand is basically communications-speak for reputation, and in communications, it's okay to care about reputations.

Creating and examining your personal brand is hard work. Our teacher has asked us to create a social media presence that is a self-portrait, and for someone who just puts whatever on the internet (like myself) it's hard to narrow down what I want my own brand to be.

Personally, I think "brand" is a funny way to describe what we're doing. Growing up around cattle, I associate brand with permanent ownership, but in communications, it can be fluid, it can be changed.

Over the past several months, unintentionally, I've been changing my brand by changing myself. I used to be so concerned with the should's in my life. Should I get straigh A's, should I go to grad school, I should do this career, I shouldn't do that career. Blah blah blah. To quote Sex and the City, I was should-ing all over myself.

So while all of this very painful personal transformation was occurring, this very palpable brand-change was occurring. I was shifting from someone who just wrote about awesome things, to someone who wrote about real things, painful things, deep things. I started sharing my thoughts, and not all of them were pretty. But they were real, and that was the most important thing.

But I think one of the biggest changes, has been in my career-life. This may sound silly, but as an academically gifted person, I feel an extreme moral obligation to do something with those gifts... like cure cancer, or do the next moon landing, or stop world hunger, or something huge. I still feel that...

After what happened to my brother, I was seriously considering going back to Vanderbilt so I could be a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. There is a huge need for mental health providers. (For example, I went to my school's counseling center to get some help sifting through all of this, and there was a three week waiting period before I could even get in for a consultation.) So, I called Ty and told him I was thinking about it, and he told me he would support me no matter what--like the amazing husband he is.

An hour later, I'm on my computer, and I get this message from Meghann. She was a senior when I was in eighth grade, and even though I always thought she was/is a wonderful person who's doing amazing things, we've always just been acquaintances. But anyway, I get this message from Meghann, and she says she was compelled to message me. She goes on to write this fantastic message about how she enjoys my writing, and how she thinks my style is similar to John Greene's.

(Sidenote: When I worked in data entry, I had to listen to Ted Talks to get me through the day. I had inspiration post-it notes all over my cubicle, and one of them said "John Greene's first job was as a typist.")

She also sent me a link to an article about choosing "should" or "must." Her message and the article brought me to tears. The article had a quote in it by Ralph Waldo Emerson (who my grandpa was named after).

I messaged her back and told her how much her message meant to me, and she told me to keep writing, and keep the faith.

Keep writing and keep the faith.

Isn't God's timing just perfect?

Only an hour after I suggested to Ty that I go back to nursing and give up on my communications degree, I get this message from a long-lost friend who felt "compelled" to reach out to me, telling me to keep writing.

I think this post veered a tiny bit off topic, but I promise I'm making a point (or two or three or four).
1) I'm pursing my writing, and that's why you're reading all of these blogs/posts/tweets/pics about my writing. I'm trying to give this a real shot as a career.
2) I'm being honest. I've made a promise to myself to talk about the things that people don't talk about. The ugly things. The things that aren't good enough to make the Facebook timeline. In short, the things that we need to talk about.
3) Words are powerful. Meghann's message very possibly changed the course of my life, and I am so grateful to her for that.
4) This is my brand... for now.