On this day 10 years ago, I gave my notice to quit teaching after six years in a public school setting in an urban environment. It is kind of crazy to think that I have been on this entrepreneurial journey for a full decade now, and it seems like even though there were highs, lows and certainly twists, that this is something to celebrate! I call this day in My 10th Quittaversary, and want to celebrate with a couple of gifts for you!

I will never stop loving education, learning, and teaching, but the environment I was in was extremely challenging, and caused a ton of stress and even health problems for me. For this reason and many others, I pray for teachers every day! It is such an important job, and harder than most people realize. Although, the pandemic and parents doing more for their children’s education via zoom maybe made it a little bit more apparent! (For fun insight on my life as a teacher, check out my videos with Buzzfeed!).

Additionally, I was moonlighting as a makeup artist and model, and wanted to see what it would be like to truly give those career paths a shot. Finally, as you may have heard in the various podcast interviews that I have done, there was some political stuff going on in my home state that took away some of my job security. All of these things together made it a perfect combination for me to take a big leap and quit my day job as they say to see what I would do it as a model and makeup artist.

It is really interesting to look back over the last decade and where these paths of taking me, living in three different cities in California, a ton of incredible gigs and even some random side part time jobs in between. I would say now that I am going through a little bit of a transition, but I am no less excited to see where this journey takes me!

To celebrate, I made both of my books free on Amazon today. So if you want to learn how to do your own makeup, or if you are putting some goals in big changes of your own and would like some guidance, the books are free until midnight! You can check them out here! If you feel compelled to leave reviews or ratings on Amazon or Goodreads, I would really appreciate it, but it is certainly not a requirement!

If you’re not an Amazon/kindle person, or would like to support me in a financial way as an entrepreneur,  (or you’re seeing this and it’s too late) you can buy the books right here on my site at this link!

Finally, it is a little ironic, but I was recently quoted in an article on hercampus.com about bold moves. You can check that out right here!

I think I might celebrate with a Spritz (Campari? Aperol?) tonight, and cuddles with my baby, husband, and dog! But I am open to celebration suggestions if you have any, so please comment if you do!

And stay tuned for the next plot twist!

Cheers to 10 more years,

Mandie