Before What Is Casual

I graduated high school in 2014. Yea...that's how long I've been in college but that's another post for once I finish. I did everything that you're "supposed" to do. I got good grades and accepted into great universities. I only wanted to go to out-of-state schools because I was going to leave and have this amazing, television college experience. Psych! I changed my mind a couple months before move-in day.

It seemed like everyone and everything was passing me by. I was still working my old high school job at a bakery and doing jobs of no value to me, like waitressing and retail. My parents were still on me about school so I enrolled at the community college with a major in biology. I was still going to be an OB/GYN at this point. Shambles. I am terrible at math! If it's not money then I don't understand.

I met great people along the way who helped guide me towards my love, which was fashion. Ya girl could shop and put a fit together so I had to find where I fit into that industry. I tried designing and after failed projects and wasted fabrics I knew designing was not it. Friends suggested Youtube but Youtube just seemed like a hot mess to me. So many creators with similar content and it was so open to personal life....no thanks. Obviously, I picked a blog. I'd kept journals since I was 10 so writing was fine and I didn't have the pressure of being on video.

Putting my blog together was the most stressful thing! I'd spent 2 whole paychecks getting everything together so if it didn't work, I was blog-less and broke. Then I had no idea how I wanted to present myself or what to call it. So many bloggers I'd seen were using their birth name and I felt that was so unoriginal. I wanted a brand; something bigger than me!

So I'm sitting in Algebra looking up potential names when my friend, Grace, text me about a party. She told me to dress casual. Like clockwork I said, "what is casual?" . Y'ALL!!!!! THAT WAS IT! I found my blog name! I searched domains and nobody had it. I searched instagram and nobody had that username. It was a sign and it was mine!

That was 2016 and What Is Casual was online by November 2017.