Today is the eight-year anniversary of the A Lady in London blog! It’s hard to believe it’s been so long since I quit my hedge fund job in San Francisco to move to London to see where life took me. If someone told me back then that I would be a professional blogger two years later, I wouldn’t have believed it. But it’s been a great adventure, and today I want to share some thoughts on how I got here.
In the weeks leading up to this milestone, I’ve thought a lot about taking risks in my personal and professional life. I’ve never seen myself as a big risk taker; I was a diligent student, earned a spot at a top university, and started my career as an analyst in the rather conservative financial services sector.
But the real highlights of my life have been the times when I’ve taken big risks. In retrospect I often forget they were risks—that tends to happen when things turn out well—but they were, and they were important ones.
The first real risk I took was when I was 18. I was accepted to university, but on the strange condition that I start a semester late. I was devastated to not be able to go to college when all my friends did, and considered turning down my place at Brown to go somewhere else (gap years aren’t a thing in the U.S.).
But then I realized that having a few extra months before starting university didn’t have to be the curse I thought it was. In fact, it was a great opportunity for me to do something I never would have done otherwise: go to language school in France.
I had always wanted to learn French, and I saw it as a perfect opportunity to do so. But when it came time to go, I was terrified. Leaving the only home I’d ever lived in to move to a foreign country where I didn’t speak a single word of the language (ok, I knew bonjour) was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. But by the end of the second day in Nice I found a few friends that were interested in traveling in Europe on the weekends, and I quickly discovered my love of travel.
The next big risk I took was leaving my job in San Francisco to move to London. It was less scary this time, as I had planned for the move both personally and financially over the course of the previous year. Still, it was a big jump, and not everything went as smoothly as I hoped in the first year. But that move was when I started the A Lady in London blog, and if I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t be writing this right now.
The third risk was quitting my full-time job to run the blog as a business. It was early 2010, and making a living from blogging was still very new. I wrote about the experience on the six-year anniversary of the blog (you can read the story here), but it goes without saying that it all turned out well in the end.
Thinking back on it, those three risks turned out to be the best decisions I’ve ever made. Discovering my love of travel led to my studying abroad at university, which is when I started my first blog. It also led to my moving to London, which is when I started this one. My life and work have resulted from quitting my job to run the blog full-time, and I feel so lucky that I’ve found something I love to do and have had the courage to turn it into a career.
Taking risks isn’t easy, and they don’t always turn out the way I think they’re going to. But even through the scary times and the self-doubting times I’ve held onto the idea that it’s better to take risks and see where they lead than maintain the status quo and never know. The thought that I could have missed out on the chance to live in London and travel the world as a professional blogger just because I was afraid to take a risk is even scarier than taking the risk in the first place.
So now it’s your turn. I often get emails and messages from readers saying they wish they could leave a job or move to a foreign country, but don’t have the courage to do it. I want to use the opportunity of the eight-year anniversary of the A Lady in London blog to encourage you to take that big risk you’ve been waiting to take. Be calculated. Be prepared. But go ahead and take it. You never know where it will lead, and that’s the most exciting part.
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