Have you ever downloaded an app to your phone and thought to yourself that it could change your life? Me neither. But funnily enough, that’s what happened to me when I joined Instagram. Little did I know that when installing that silly little picture app on my phone I would set into motion a path that would lead me to the desk I sit at now of a company in midtown Manhattan called Andover Fabrics.
It’s sort of funny to think about, isn’t it? How did you get to where you are? I think about this sort of thing all the time. Connecting the dots of all the seemingly innocuous little events in my life, waiting patiently for them to culminate to something greater.
A dot for posting your first fabric picture on Instagram. Another dot for seeing that quilters are starting to take notice of your work. Another for a company sending you a box of fabric to play with. Another for your work hanging in a booth at Quilt Market and yet another for that quilt being on the cover of a magazine. That leads to a dot where the fabric company invites you to work at Quilt Market. Then you get to add another dot for meeting all these amazing designers whose fabric you have worked with for years.
And then there is a really, really big dot. A red one, shiny and perfectly round with this lowercase A in it. This dot is for when Andover Fabrics invites you to work for them.
Three years of dots have led me to the desk I share with my new boss and friend Daryl Cohen. In the other room my team is discussing shipments and fabric lines. Outside the window of my 15th floor office I can faintly hear the sounds of Manhattan bustling beneath me.
It’s all a bit surreal to me still. I keep having these moments where I’m organizing fabric and I say to myself, “You’re getting paid to do this.” I feel lucky, but I also know I have worked very hard to get to where I am. There really isn’t a company or people I would rather be working for. I found my dream job, you guys!
So the next time you are wondering if you should download that app, just do it. You never know just what could happen when you do.