Losing Labels & Embracing Me [Pink Chai 3.0]

a year of yes[A few of my favourite reads on healing from this year]

This year has been about self-discovery for me. For various reasons including growing kids, marriage burnout, and work stress I’ve been forced to dig deep and really figure myself out. What makes me sad, what makes me happy, and why have I been feeling so unfulfilled lately?

I haven’t figured everything out yet, but I have zeroed in one thing that is causing me unnecessary stress in my life; labels. Maybe it has to do with my marketing background, but I have a tendency to label myself and my work projects by genre, niche, or interest, and then I feel like deviating from that label would be lazy, poor business practice, or the easy way out. 

For example, I originally started out as a daily outfit blogger and when that was my label I shared nothing else on the blog [even though I wanted to]. It was a big decision and struggle for me to rebrand myself from Pink Chai Style to Pink Chai Living. Once I made the decision to be a South Asian lifestyle blogger I pushed myself to write and create only in those categories. Even when I made the best enchilada sauce ever I didn’t share it because it didn’t have a desi twist. I do similar things at work; I push my teammates into well meaning boxes labeled; accounting, photography,  social media etc, and miss opportunities to help them grow creatively. I worry so much about giving our business the wrong label [social media, digital marketing, ethnic outreach?] that we don’t even have a website for our almost 5 year old company!
a year of yes

But I’m officially over labels. I’m a multi-dimensional person with multiple interests. I’m always going to be the girl looking for the next cool or interesting project, and I’m always going to be inspired to write about different things. So I’m giving myself permission to ditch the labels and just do me from now on. That means writing about whatever the heck I feel like, and taking on whatever project excites me in the moment. No more explanations for my ever changing portfolio and resume.

You may have noticed that I’ve changed things up on the blog a little too. I streamlined the template and took out some excess in an effort to make the page look more like my personal digital diary and less like a space to sell myself [or convince others to like me – another thing I’m working on].the happiness project
It’s strange to write a post like this, because my blog is just a little blip in the Internet world. It’s likely most people wouldn’t even notice if I stopped writing all together or change directions, but this post isn’t really for all of you, it’s for me. It’s about time I find my way back to myself – the self I was before I added all the labels.

So I guess this is the third iteration of the Pink Chai blog. From fashion to South Asian lifestyle, and now; just a girl with a blog and some stories to tell. Pink Chai Living 3.0 is going to be my new happy place. 

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