“Marian told me that she thought you were a robot.”

These are the words that my business buddy confessed to me after her friend hired me to design a landing page for her copywriting business. After emailing back and forth a few times with Marian, we hopped on the phone to dig into the details of her project. She said that I seemed like a completed different person when she heard my actual voice than I did over email. That’s when she told my friend that she had thought that I might be a robot. And not the cool kind. The kind that might be an automated bot and you don’t want to give your credit card number or any personal info to. It wasn’t until we got on the phone that I became a real person to her with a funny and quirky personality -- which is why we ended up getting along so well and her project was a huge success!

This is how I came to the realization that I’ve been stuck in a professional rut...I’m literally being TOO professional. I’ve somehow trained myself to come off as so professional that I have all the personality of a block of cheese. And for someone who preaches about letting your personality shine through in your business -- I’m not practicing it myself.

It’s that time of year. No, not the most wonderful time of the year. The time of year when my schedule starts slowing down and I start reflecting because we’re going into the new year.

Someone explain to me how 2000 can be 20 years ago? But also, the 80’s were 20 years ago? Actually, that does make sense because I literally do not feel like the same person I did 10 years ago. I thought about doing some sort of reflection post about the last decade, but it ended up being more of a letter to my younger self and I’m okay with that. Read below for the 10 things I’d tell my 10-years younger self + some fun throwback pics.

At the end of every calendar year one of my favorite things to do is page back through the months and weeks of last year’s planner (yes I have a physical, paper planner and I’d be lost without it!). It's almost like going back through old journals from high school. Trying to decipher my shorthand and what the heck I was thinking at the time. So as I'm sitting here with last year's planner open looking at all my handwritten to-do lists and meeting notes from the past year, I’m reflecting and I thought I'd take this time to jot it all down and share it with all y'all. I was inspired by one of my favorite newsletterers, Paul Jarvis (who faithfully delivers his every Sunday to my inbox) to do a state-of-the-union-style recap — so here we go!