Abby (62:33)
I've been working on that. Okay, well, yours just ended on a nice bow. This is where we've actually found myself in my hardest era yet. And I actually mean this. Like, truthfully, this was my hardest season by far. This one's called Waves of Change. Lost our jobs during the pandemic, which. Why are we lost our jobs? We were like no big deal. Like, we'll just figure it out. And so at this point, I had started nannying a lot. Matt had started, started. He's like, you know what? I know how to edit videos. We had our camera from our wedding. He's like, I noticed Abbie watching YouTube videos. Like, I feel like we could do this. And so six months into him. No, no, no. A year almost into him, making nine months into Matt posting on social media is when the pandemic happened. Six months into the pandemic, then is when we were like, this could actually be like a career option for us. Which was really unexpected out of the blue and never something I had truly considered before. So I didn't really take it seriously for a while. But, like, Matt really saw the vision for it. He was, like, very passionate for it. He's a dreamer and he's a doer. So he was like, making it happen. Me, I was still going to class and like, nannying. And then by the end of me, I graduated a semester early. And at that point we were kind of like, okay, we could either dive in head first for this and see what comes of it. We'll never have another time in our life where our life feels so, like, flexible, or we could just completely abandon this. And I was like, it would be a shame to just not ride this out and see where it will take us. And so we commit to doing that. And then we were like, okay, well, heck, we can really live anywhere to do this. So we're like, let's do the craziest place ever. Like, let's move to Hawaii. We'd always dreamed of, like, you know, who doesn't have, like, island dreams? Going somewhere really far. When you've been grown up in this small town in the Midwest, you're like, go far. And so find ourselves in Hawaii. Don't know anybody upon moving there. And this was also my first time where I had never had community. Like, I had all growing up, had so much community. College took my community with me and then built some more there. It was like, amazing. And then all of a sudden it was just me and my husband. And it kind of burst this bubble in my mind. Like, I was like, okay, well, no matter what, I'll have him and he can be everything for me. And then I was like, this was actually never how it was designed to be. He was never supposed to be everything for me. And then I was like, okay, well, for the first time in my life, I found it really, really difficult to make friends and keep friends and to, like, have a community that I could lean on and then I could be a part of and contribute to. So I would not say I was clinically depressed, but if I had talked to a doctor, maybe I would have been. Like, I was really struggling by, like, six months into this season. Like, I think the transition of, like, doing having a career on social media mixed with, like, just, like, the new pressures and everything that that came with, plus feeling so isolated, plus feeling like, the juxtaposition of, like, my life online versus, like, what my reality was. Like, Matt and I were still, like, having an amazing time, but then, like, at the end of the day, there was just this, like, low lying, like, sinking feeling in me. Like, I was just, like, so lost at this point in my life. And it was really a hard time. It's hard for me to even say that because it's like I still recognize I had it so good and things were good, but, like, just like, in my spirit, my soul, I was, like, so lost, so questioning everything. Just feeling like, like, my purpose was so confused. Like, I was like, where? What is the purpose? Purpose? What is. What am I doing? Like, just felt really, really, really lost. I, like, told Matt I was like, I just think I can't live here anymore. And it's not about the place that we were in. It just had everything to do with, like, so many things going on with my personal life at that point. That was the waves of change. We were in Hawaii for a year, and that was just a really, really hard year. And it was also mixed with the fact that, like, my husband was, like, living his best life. Like, he was so thrilled and to be there and, like, loved everything about it and, like, had such. And he was on a high of life at this point. And so it felt like for a while I was like, I got to just, like, keep doing it because I can't, like, bring him down. And then I also don't want to be selfish. Like, we got married to, like, make decisions together, and, like, I got to see this through. And then by the year, like, when our lease was up, I was like, we can't. I can't anymore. Like, we're going back. We were going back, and I felt so selfish. And I honestly, to this day still feel, like, a little bit of guilt because it's like, I knew, like, he loved it so much, but he was so selfless and was like, yeah, like, you're not thriving here. Like, we all go somewhere else. So that's the waves of change era. Like, that just the dogs of position of, like, living in paradise and feeling, like, terrible.
