I am making a goal to talk and share things about myself more in this blog. I love sharing advice and knowledge on starting and growing a side hustle with all of you but who the hell am I to be giving advice? If I don’t share who I am and where I’m coming from, how are you supposed to decide if you like me or you even care to listen?

Here are a few things you might not know about me:

Growing up I used to make my little sister play "school"

and I would develop curriculum to teach her... With binders and everything. Yup, been obsessed with learning since day one.

I rebel against rules that are just there for rules sake.

If someone tries to enforce or make me follow a rule that I think makes no sense and serves no purpose except to be controlling, I immediately become rebellious and confrontational about it. This is something I'm working on but I continue to struggle with senseless rules.

I treasure freedom and autonomy.

In any job I've ever had, the more freedom I have and the more autonomy I feel I have to do my work, the better I operate. This could go back to point #2. I don't like the feeling of someone babysitting or judging my every move, I work much better in an environment where I'm allowed to get my stuff done in the manner I think is best, I blame my entrepreneurial spirit.

I have come to really value my daily routine.

I've been traveling A LOT over the past couple of months and as a result, my normal daily routine has totally been thrown out the window. I am definitely not as happy, healthy, or effective when I can't follow a routine and I'm excited to get back into it after our last trip for a while next week.

I am a slow, but avid reader.

In middle school and high school, my best friend would sleep over my house and we would seriously not talk and just read for hours. While she was a very fast reader and could knock out 250 pages in a couple of hours, I actually read SLOWER the more i enjoy a book or article I'm reading. But, that hasn't stopped me from continuing to read and set new yearly reading goals for myself on Goodreads.

I've been 30 since I was 3.

According to my mom, when I was growing up I always enjoyed the company of adults more than kids and from a young age, I felt comfortable holding conversations with anyone older than me. She also says she never doubted that I would fly the coop and escape to NYC as soon as possible, which I promptly did as soon as I was done with grad school.

I wanted to be a book editor at Random House publishing growing up.

My aunt has worked at Random House my entire life and growing up, we used to visit her office in the Summers and walk out with arm loads of books. A career where all I had to do was read books every day? That was the dream. My undergrad degree is actually geared towards publishing and I had an internship at RH before graduating (thank you nepotism). While I still love to read, getting into the publishing world is very competitive and it didn't work out for me, but I still love all the free books I get from my aunt every year!

I often work 7 days a week.

Working full-time and running multiple side hustles is no joke and I typically work most evenings during the week, sometimes while I'm at the gym (on the stationary bike because I'm a multitasker like that), and at least for a few hours each day on the weekend. Lately when we're not traveling, I try to dedicate an entire day on the weekend working on my side hustles which is definitely when I see the most progress on important projects. I do want to try to get a better work-life balance but for now, the hustle continues!

I grew up with golden retrievers and I force everyone around me to love them.

We always had golden retrievers growing up. My sister and I joke (kind of) that my mom loves the dogs more than she loves us. So when it came time to move in together, I basically forced my husband to get a golden. He had grown up with Shitzus and didn't fully understand what the hype was all about until we got our dog, Harley. Now he's fully indoctrinated and we send each other pictures of cute Goldens almost every day. I'd say I won that battle.

I have shiny object syndrome.

I often find myself working on a project, then getting a flash of inspiration for something else and immediately wanting to start it. If I have more than a fleeting thought about traveling someplace, I drop everything and spend the next 4 hours doing research. If I think of a new side hustle project, I get excited and start pursuing that while leaving all my other half finished projects by the wayside. This is something I'm working on through quarterly and monthly goals and planning. I can still work on that new project, but maybe not until next month.

One of my biggest regrets is not studying abroad in college.

I worked a lot all through college, like sometimes 40 hours or more per week, I didn't really have to and I wish I had pulled back to a more reasonable 15 hours a week for someone who is away at college so that I had more time to enjoy other things. One of those things that I sacrificed for work was studying abroad. I didn't want to spend the money to study abroad and I didn't really think to ask my family for help (even though they probably would have said yes and helped make it happen). Not studying abroad is still one of my biggest regrets, I seriously love traveling and I wish I had gotten started earlier. I can tell you that my kids are going to be strongly encouraged to study abroad when they're in college and in their early adulthood.

My guilty pleasure is bad tv.

I think we're really living in the golden age of television and I actually enjoy binge watching TV shows more than watching a movie. But my true love is bad tv, give me Cajun Justice, Alaskan Bush People, and the classic, Jersey Shore any day. I don't know what it is but really bad, low production quality reality TV shows just make me happy inside.There you have it, me in a little nutshell! I could always go on but it's kind of weird talking about yourself so I will spare you.

Now it's your turn! What is a fact people might not know about you?