On this day one year ago, I turned in the keys to my apartment and began the long drive back home to the East coast, effectively closing the Pacific Northwest chapter of my life. Following an exhausting year and almost-half, I said goodbye to some of the best real friends I'd made since college, a position working for an exciting, competitive industry, and a city I had finally learned to love; on paper, leaving didn't make sense. I felt like a failure, I was sad, scared, unsure, but knew somewhere in the intersection of logic and gut-sense that that difficult decision was the right one.

Theoretically, the job I had in Portland was interesting, or at the very least culturally relevant, I was being challenged personally and professionally, and it was ultimately the coolest job opportunity I had been given up to that point. Yet more often than not I found myself leaving work to go straight to happy hour to decompress, arriving home stressed, frustrated, frequently reduced to tears, and wondering why I continued to go back every day. Following a particularly stressful week, a co-worker (and frankly, one of the best human beings I've met- hi JenMoz!) passed on some wise, perfectly timed words from her father: you're too young to work a job that's just a job. Waking up knowing every day was going to be as stressful or worse than the day before was disheartening, but leaving a steady paycheck with no real plan in place other than finding some kind of utopian solution still seemed crazy.

After arriving back on my home-coast, I began to redefine what I wanted in life, in a city, in my job. Outlining what was worth my time and energy helped clarify what is really important, what doesn't matter, and what I really want. What is worth doing if money isn't a factor? What really interests me? As simple as these questions were, I found myself struggling to answer them without conditions. Months of interviews, hustling freelance work and turning down perfectly good job offers, I managed to stay relatively calm and continue to strengthen my resolve to refuse to compromise for what sometimes seemed like a delusional dream of finding something really worth my time.

As a 25 year old Millennial barely established in my profession, it often felt selfish and absurd to think I deserved a "dream job" without having decades of hard work under my belt, and I felt ashamed sharing my plan with the elders in my life who had put in the time to get where they were. I felt like I was living up to my generation's tendency to entitlement and laziness, however, I wasn't looking for a six-figure salary with unlimited vacation and endless perks. I desperately wanted an environment where I could continue to learn and grow as a person and as a designer. I wanted to be challenged, given more responsibility, to work with a great team of people, a job that allowed me time to travel. I wanted a job that combined my love for understanding and creating for the human experience when interacting with design. I wanted an opportunity to work really hard on something I genuinely cared about. It seemed like a lofty goal, but after six months of searching, I wasn't sure I would be so lucky or that I even deserved to find something that provided everything I wanted. That being said, giving up wasn't an option.

Six months into my new role, I still can't believe I get to live in the incredible, beautiful city I do (palm trees, pastel houses on the ocean and 80 degrees on Christmas!!!), at a company full of incredible, hard working, genuinely nice people with the opportunity to design on a global platform and travel the world to do so; I got every single thing I wanted, and I am so grateful for it daily. I still sometimes feel guilty for putting such large, specific requests (or even demands) into the universe, but I'm so happy and so thankful I trusted myself enough to accept nothing less than everything. I have always been a hard worker and I knew that it would someday pay off, I just had no idea it would be so soon. What I've learned? Ask for what you really want, you truly deserve happiness. And know you're always too young to work a job that's just a job.