Week One Me Had to Exist Before Week Ten Me Could 

Ten weeks doesn’t sound like a particularly long time. It’s two and a half months, a small part of a year. But when I look back at the person who walked through the door during my first week at I’M MORE and compare her to the person I am now, it somehow feels much longer. 

Week-one me didn’t walk through the door knowing how to do everything I’m doing now. I had very little actual workplace experience, I was trying to understand what was expected of me, and everything around me was new. New people, new responsibilities, new software, new conversations and an entirely new routine. There were things I’m doing now that I couldn’t have imagined myself comfortably doing then. 

The strange thing is, I didn’t really notice the change happening. 

There wasn’t one morning where I walked into work and suddenly felt more experienced. There wasn’t a particular day where everything clicked and I thought, I’ve got this now. It happened gradually. One task became something I knew how to do. One conversation became easier. Something that made me nervous the first time became normal by the fifth. Before I knew it, things that once required so much thought had simply become part of my day. 

That’s why I’ve started thinking about the difference between week-one Macey and week-ten Macey. 

In ten weeks, I’ve learnt how to create and optimise articles, produce social media content and reels, contribute ideas, work on websites, be involved in recruitment and even find myself on the other side of an interview. I’ve sat in conversations about businesses, events, marketing and future plans that I wouldn’t have understood in the same way ten weeks ago. More importantly, I’ve become much more comfortable having my own opinion within those conversations rather than assuming everyone else must know better than me. 

But not all of that growth can be written down as a new skill. 

Some of the biggest changes have happened within me. I’ve become more comfortable communicating with people. I’ve learnt that I can be trusted with responsibilities and actually deliver what is expected of me. I’ve made mistakes and discovered that making one doesn’t mean I’ve failed. I’ve been pushed outside of my comfort zone, sometimes willingly and sometimes before I’ve even had enough time to overthink it, and I’ve repeatedly discovered that I’m capable of more than I initially give myself credit for. 

I’ve also realised how much the environment around you can influence what you start expecting from yourself. When you’re surrounded by people who have ideas, want to create things and actually act on those ideas, some of that drive starts rubbing off on you. That doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly become Bradley or that I want to work exactly like anybody else. I’m still myself and I still have my own way of doing things. But being around people who believe something can be created and then watching them actually create it has made me question some of the limits I’d quietly placed on myself. 

A positive workplace can’t magically give somebody confidence or experience overnight. What it can do is give them somewhere to develop those things. It can give someone responsibility before they’re completely confident in themselves, allow them to ask questions without feeling stupid for asking them and recognise what they could become rather than only looking at what they can already do. 

Recently, I’ve had the strange experience of watching someone else enter their own week one. Their journey is theirs, so I’m not going to tell their story for them. But seeing somebody else at the beginning made me stop and think about my own. 

It reminded me that the person people see working at I’M MORE today isn’t exactly the same person who first walked through that door ten weeks ago. And she shouldn’t be. She has ten weeks of experiences that week-one Macey simply didn’t have yet. 

I think that’s particularly important for someone my age who is looking at job descriptions while trying to find their opportunity. It’s very easy to read everything an employer wants and immediately start comparing it against what you can do today. You see something you’ve never done before and think, I don’t know how to do that, so maybe this isn’t for me. 

But sometimes we’re judging our week-one ability against the person we could eventually become. 

There are things I can do today that I couldn’t do when I started. Not because I was secretly experienced all along, but because somebody gave me somewhere to gain that experience. I had to be allowed to be new. I had to ask questions. I had to get things wrong. I had to learn. Most importantly, I had to show up on that first week without knowing what week ten would look like. 

I’m proud of week-ten me. I’m proud of what I’ve learnt, what I’ve created and how much more confident I’ve become. But looking back, I think I should be just as proud of week-one me. 

She didn’t have ten weeks of experience behind her. She couldn’t do everything I can do now, and she had absolutely no idea what she’d eventually be capable of. 

She just walked through the door and started. 

And without her, week-ten me wouldn’t exist. 

“I’m still learning, still growing, and still proving that where you start doesn’t decide where you’ll finish.” 

— Macey Hutchins