How I Got Here: From Finance to Photography

Covid-19. A horror story for most. A blessing for me.

On March 13, 2020, I hopped on the blue line to get to 747 7th Ave, where the Barclays headquarters is located. It was a relatively normal morning. With Spotify blasting in my ears, I disembarked the subway car and, per usual, speed-walked past dozens of men and women in tailored suits to get to the stairway first. I’ve always been competitive. With Starbucks in hand, I flashed my ID badge to the security person and swiped into the elevator bank to get up to the fifth floor, where my group was located. Although I don’t specifically remember what happened that day, I know that I was drunk on the usual mixed cocktail of anxiety and helplessness, so burnt out from working an unsustainably stressful job that often left me in tears when I returned home at the end of the day. But now, I celebrate March 13, 2020. It was the last time I stepped foot in the Barclays office.

When the bank went fully remote, my life improved exponentially. I gained so much freedom – the freedom to use the bathroom or make lunch without asking permission, the freedom to turn to my boyfriend, who was working remotely in my apartment, to make jokes or express my feelings, and, most importantly, the freedom to interview for roles that would help me get the hell out of NYC. A few months after deciding I wanted to quit, I landed a corporate finance role in Arizona that would require me to move across the country. My boyfriend and I packed up our limited belongings in a 10’ U-Haul truck and made the multi-day drive to Phoenix in August 2020.

Soon after settling in, we decided to explore Arizona’s beautiful mountain ranges. Due to the heat, we would wake up before sunrise and hike with headlamps, usually reaching max elevation before sunrise. It was addicting. To experience something so different from what we were used to was eye opening in the best way possible. Time went by slowly, and I felt more in touch with my authentic self.

After several months in Arizona, my company was planning on re-instating mandatory in-office days, which didn’t fly for me. I started looking for fully remote jobs all over the country, eventually landing one with a Chicago-based tech company. Since my boyfriend was also fully remote, we decided to look for houses in Colorado, a state that we had always fantasized about.

Fast forward a few months and we were once again packing up a U-Haul to move to our new home in Denver, CO. We quickly fell in love with Colorado and all it had to offer. The weather, although still very hot in August, was a relief from the Arizona heat, and the hiking was challenging and diverse. Just a month into our stay, we decided to take a long weekend trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. Before the trip, I decided that it was time to invest in a camera so that I could better capture the scenery from our hikes and travels. Using Facebook Marketplace, I found a cheap Nikon D3300 and decided it would do the trick for my early days in photography. In RMNP, I was able to capture staggering peaks, wildlife and fall foliage in a quality that satisfied me far more than my iPhone shots. The image featured in this blog post is from that trip and is one of the first shots in my (hopefully) long career as a photographer.

I have Covid and March 13, 2020 to thank for getting to this point, and I cannot wait for what is to come.