Rookie Me Didn't Know Jack Sh*t

"You can't undo the version of yourself that existed when you were still figuring it out. All you can do is show up, do the work, and let your hands speak for themselves."

This week was a clusterf*ck and feels like a blur.

 Partly because this stupid head cold needs to leave my body immediately and has clearly overstayed its welcome. Partly because I had a full circle business moment that made me laugh out loud and say “Woah. That’s wild.” to absolutely nobody in my office.

But also because last weekend I drove thirteen hours of windshield time across the state to Oregon for a volleyball tournament — three Dutch Bros stops, one teenager completely ignoring me with AirPods in scrolling IG reels, and approximately nine hours of True Crime podcasts that I cannot stop listening to once I start. They make me feel more normal. I don’t want to examine that too closely.

 We got home, I still felt like garbage, and then the week just kept going anyway because that’s what weeks do.

 The blur weeks can be awesome — sometimes the clearest moments happen inside them. Two things happened this week that seemed completely unrelated, and then, somewhere around Thursday, I realized they were actually the exact same thing.

 The first one happened on a volleyball court in Salem.

 For two years Josey has played outside hitter. She’s tall, she’s athletic, and so everyone just assumed — that’s her position, that’s her box, stay in it. Nobody asked if there was more. When you’re tall you get handed a hitting position and everyone moves on and that’s just what you do.

 This weekend she stepped up to set for her team when they needed her. And after the match her coach pulled me aside.

 “Holy crap. She has good hands. How come nobody ever told me?”

 Because nobody knew. Because nobody asked.

 She’s 13. She might be setting for the 16’s team now.

 I watched her all weekend from the sideline running on Dayquil and proud mama energy, and I just kept thinking about how many people are walking around as outside hitters who are actually setters. How many times do we get put in a box so early and so confidently that we never even think to question it. How many times does someone just assume they know what you’re capable of based on what they’ve seen — or worse, what someone else told them.

Which is a perfect segue into the second thing that happened this week.

 A new client — a big one I’m genuinely excited about — mentioned on a call almost casually that he had some hesitation about working with me. That a colleague of his had worked with me once and wasn’t sure she got what she paid for.

 I had to laugh. Not in a bitter way. In a “you genuinely cannot make this up” way.

That experience was four years ago. When I was four months into my business. No designer. No real systems. No clue what I was doing yet. Just a girl with a Canva account and a whole lot of nerve trying to figure it out in real time.

 His boss’s actual feedback on my current work? I’m giving away too much. Pull it back.

 But four-year-old rookie Becca still managed to show up in the room anyway. Secondhand. Like a little ghost haunting a perfectly good discovery call.

 Here’s what I know about that: you can’t control what people heard about you before they met you. You can’t undo the version of yourself that existed when you were still figuring it out. All you can do is show up, do the work, and let your hands speak for themselves.

 Josey didn’t audition for setter. She stepped up when her team needed her and did the thing anyway.

 He hired me anyway.

 Sometimes the box people put you in says more about what they’ve seen than what you’re actually capable of. And sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is just quietly prove the box wrong.

 Proud mama bear over here. And maybe — just a little — proud of myself too.

On the book:

 It’s still happening. Slower than I’d like and probably faster than it feels. If you’re wondering whether it will ever actually publish — same honestly, same. But rushing it to hit an invisible deadline feels wrong. The truth is the revenue is finally catching up to the publishing costs so maybe the timing is actually right even when it doesn’t feel that way.

 I’m not a sloth. I’m just on sloth time. There’s a difference. Probably. Maybe.

 More soon.