Would it never cease?

I tried to twist my body in a way that my dangling bucket bag would swish past the scanner, praying my work ID was somewhere close to the side. I wiggled like this a little longer, juggling a Lululemon bag containing my lunch, a hot coffee and my laptop precariously before finally hearing the hushed click that informed me the door was now open. Hoisting my laptop onto the coffee-carrying arm, I pulled open the heavy door into Arabella’s offices. Even though I'd been there for two months, I still marveled every morning at the whimsical, quirky space filled wall-to-wall with clothing samples.

Navigating my way to my desk, I deposited my bounty and started up my mac, plugging my laptop into the side. While it booted up, I headed into the kitchen to put away my lunch.

“Morning Danielle,” our Director of Creative Concepts greeted me as she strode past.

“Hi Gwen!” I chirped. No matter how early I got in, she still managed to beat me to the office. I was beginning to think she and her seven-month pregnant belly slept here.

I stashed my boring salad in the fridge, gazing longingly at all of the other lunches that would be eaten later today. I spied pad thai, leftover lasagna and some sort of stir fry situation. I could feel my stomach glaring at me for my most recent diet. But hey, when you’re pursuing a new guy, you’ve gotta look your best.

Slipping back to my desk, I was greeted with 15 new emails in the short time since I checked on my phone at 6:30 a.m. As Platform had continued to drown throughout the end of winter and early spring, I had finally accepted it was time to get serious about finding a new job. As much as I had loved working there, the nightmares about being laid off and unable to pay rent began to crepe in. The idea of having to go about finding another job and most likely accepting one I didn’t even want for the sake of an income had scared me straight into a full-on job hunt. Which is how I had ended up as a Community Manager at Arabella. I was excited when they finally made me an offer, after enduring four rounds of grueling, tiresome interviews.

Going from a fashion magazine to a fashion brand seemed like a swift transition at the time—but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The first few weeks had been tough trying to erase all of my training in producing fresh content hourly and replace it with something new. At a brand, I learned, you created content months in advance, only worrying about your own label. I no longer had to write pieces on who Kendall Jenner was most recently spotted with—instead, I was crafting stories where writing style actually mattered and the focus was purely on the brand’s esthetic—fashion, style advice, decorating tips and everything in between. It was a whole new ballgame—but I was loving it. It didn’t hurt that Arabella’s social following was more than two million larger than Platforms, either.

“Morning!” Emma, my coworker and closest Arabella confidant, said as she swished past me looking effortlessly fabulous as usual. She was wearing high waisted flared jeans, wooden wedges and a split-back white tee. Her brunette bob had that I-woke-up-like-this ruffle and her Marc Jacobs sunglasses were perched on top of her head. For the first few weeks, I had hated her. I was intimidated by her style, experience in fashion and ease at completing every task thrown her way. But as time wore on and I forged my own path and role within our department, I realized that Em wasn’t the intimidating human I had built her up to be. Shortly, she had started turning to me for tips and we began to learn from each other, always keeping one another in the loop about projects, ideas and stories. In short, I absolutely adored her.

“Hey!” I said, returning my gaze to Hootsuite to sift through all of last night’s incoming mentions on Twitter. “Have you looked at Twitter? We got like, fifty tweets about how we’re allegedly racist for selling this tunic,” I said, swiveling my screen so she could see the image. “It’s literally not even ours.”

Em rolled her eyes, “It’s always something,” she said, draping her bag over the back of her chair.

By 9 o’clock, I had finished catching up on all overnight social media and was heading over to the couches for our standing morning meeting. Our office space was open and airy, and conference rooms were few and far between. Instead, Arabella chose to set up intimate spaces where people could gather and share ideas, usually decorated with casual hanging plants, trees and paper mache bumble bees. It sounds weird, but it worked.

“Okay Danielle, let’s keep this under five minutes I have to touch base with the dev team at 9:15,” our director said to me by way of greeting. I nodded as everyone pulled up that day’s scheduled messaging on various computers and iPads, and talked through them one by one, outlining which needed creatives, which posts needed to be sponsored and at what time I planned each to go live. I’d never been micromanaged like this at Platform, but here we shared every social post in advance save for the of-the-moment engagement that happened all day long. It made sense, considering brands like us were constantly on the homepage of Buzzfeed for some social faux pas or another.

“Let’s swap the timing of the third and fourth Instagrams, and make the second more of an engagement angle,” Gwen said, before nodding sharply. “Everything else looks good.” With that, the meeting was over. Just one minute longer than she had requested.

The rest of the morning went by in a flash, as days often did at this job. I was trying to finish up a post about how to take your denim from summer to fall when out of the corner of my eye, I saw my phone light up. I quickly glanced at it while still typing away. I saw that it was his name that was lighting up my screen with a text message, and I immediately scolded my stomach for having butterflies.

Would it never cease?

**Hey guys, so SO psyched to be back! I have a couple posts queued up so you'll be hearing from Dani every Wednesday, until I can up it back to 2x/week. As for the blog redesign, that'll be popping up shortly! xoxo