In 2015 I made one of the toughest decisions of my life. I left a really great job, a promising career, and a lot of people I loved for quite frankly all the wrong reasons; reasons I won’t go into depth here, but let me just say that leaving Inside Carolina and sports journalism has sincerely been one of my biggest regrets — a regret I’ve carried with me for almost three years now. I had a really good thing going in Chapel Hill covering UNC, but I also had a lot of impatience. I became restless and bitter watching people around me experience success I thought I too deserved. I mean I had given the industry almost four years of my life, when was it going to be my turn? It wasn’t fair and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. So I made a choice. I chose to move down to Atlanta and shift my career focus from sports journalism, to social media.

I don’t think I realized how difficult changing careers would be. You leave behind not just this whole world you got used to, but this whole group of people you got to know over the years. I was fortunate enough to meet and connect with so many amazing and talented people in the sports journalism industry during my short stint, and the thought that I would have to leave them behind too frankly never occurred to me. I tried my hardest to stay connected, to stay relevant, to just be part of the conversation. I did a few freelance stints here and there covering UGA for different publications, worked on-air part time for one of the Atlanta sports radio stations, and I even went back and hosted podcasts for Inside Carolina for about a year. I kept tweeting about UNC sports, the SEC, anything sports related I had an opinion on. I didn’t want to let it go, I just couldn’t.

It was different, though. With every day that passed, every basketball season that went by, every five star recruit that committed, I felt further and further away from that world. I found myself suddenly starting to feel like an outsider — because I was — and I struggled with that. To be honest, I still struggle with that. Sports journalism gave me some of the best years of my life, and I couldn’t let those years, those experiences go. I started getting tired of Twitter. I stopped watching football and basketball every weekend. I stopped enjoying sports all together — which I know sounds dramatic and petty but it was truly how I felt. The best way I can describe it is like going through a breakup. You get used to this person being around every day, knowing them in and out, getting comfortable with every aspect of them and then after 4 years it’s like — poof — they’re gone. That’s how I felt. That’s how I still feel sometimes and it wasn’t until very recently that I started to move on. I know, right? Worst breakup ever.

This past year I started working at a small advertising agency as the Senior Social Media Strategist (say that 3 times fast). Frankly I thought it would be just another job in social media — as most of my others have been. And for the most part, it started out the way. During my first few months however, the company went through some big changes and some growing pains and somehow — seriously, I’m still figuring out how — I found myself emerging as a leader. I had my boss take me into her office and tell me how impressed she was with me and how much of a future I had at the company (#humblebrag). And it felt … good. Nah real talk, it felt fucking great. I started to feel like I might genuinely be good at this social media thing, like I might have actually figured it out — my career path I mean. For the first time since my time at Inside Carolina, I felt like I was in the right place, doing the right thing, with the right people.

I’d be lying if I said I was completely over sports journalism. I mean, do you ever really get over your first love? And I’m starting to fall in love with sports in general again. That’s the one downside about spending so many years “behind the curtain” when it comes to sports — yeah it’s cool and you have all this access and you know what’s actually happening with a player or team, but at the same time it takes away most of the magic for you. I know it sounds really snobby and absurd but after covering so many different games, they just become … games. And maybe I’m saying that because I still feel stung by the world of sports journalism or maybe I truly believe it. Either way, some of the luster has faded for me and I think that’s probably a good thing. Plus the low pay and extremely high layoff rate in the industry doesn’t help. It’s tough out here man, I mean really tough. Trust me, I have enough colleagues that can vouch for that.

So what does that mean for me next? I’m not even going to pretend to know the answer to that. I want to keep learning and growing and frankly dominating the world of social media. I don’t completely want to close that door to sports journalism so maybe I’ll just leave it cracked. And who knows, maybe sometime in the future these two can come together and I can fall in love with something completely new all over again.