I’m on the 2016-17 MAMBI Design Team!

<<Insert the happiest of happy dances here.>>

Out of more than 450 applicants, I was one of 20 girls chosen by the MAMBI team for this year’s Design Team*. It’s a huge honor, that I still haven’t fully processed yet.

To make this incredibly amazing news even better, the 19 other girls on this year’s Design Team are some of my favorite creatives on Instagram. It’s a mix of planner friends, and planner heroes (who will hopefully soon be friends, too!)

Want to hear a crazy story?! 

Way back in January, when I was making my 2016 vision board with all of my goals for this year, I wrote that I wanted to be on the MAMBI Design Team. I was so inspired by the 2015-16 Design Team, and I thought it would be cooler than anything in the world to work with such a creative group of women.

It was a big, scary goal that I only mentioned to a handful of people.

That goal prompted me to create my @katietheplanner Instagram account and later this blog. I pushed myself to try new things and to improve my crafting skills. I worked on my photography skills, and I got outside of my comfort zone.  A lot of my free time went to planning.

After, nine months of Instagramming about my planner almost daily, I submitted my application not thinking I would actually be selected. There are so many creative, insanely talented girls in the planner community. I thought I might be in the top 50 or so applications — an honorable mention of sorts that I’d never know about — not one of the girls actually selected.

And I was completely OK with that. I’ve had so much fun planning, blogging and Instagramming this year that when I clicked “submit” on my application, I was truly OK with spending another year improving my crafting skills.

So, when I opened my email Wednesday morning to an email from MAMBI’s social media manager Amanda, I was … well … speechless. Other than the regular happy dances I keep breaking into and the smile that hasn’t left my face, I still don’t really have words for how excited I am. I kind of feel like I just won Miss America.

Other than telling you how truly, unbelievably excited I am, there’s a point to this blog post.

Set goals, planner friends. Set big scary goals that you’re too scared to share on Facebook. Take them one day at a time. Figure out what small steps you can take to make them happen, and start stepping. Because nine months ago, I had a brand new Instagram and a goal that seemed completely, ridiculously insane.

If you wanted to be on this year’s Design Team and didn’t make it — don’t give up; start trying for next year! If you think your dream job is to crazy because there’s too much competition, or you don’t have the right skill set — make a list of ways you could become a better applicant and start working.

Whatever your dream is, don’t give up!

Maybe you won’t reach your big, scary goal, but you’ll have learned all these cool things and had these awesome experiences along the way. Or maybe, just maybe you will reach your goal, and you’ll spend a week happy dancing. Either way, you’re going to win and you’re going to have a blast with the process.

*So what is the Design Team? The MAMBI design team is a group of creative brand ambassadors who promote MAMBI on their own social media accounts. They get early access to products to create fun and inspiring projects for the MAMBI blog and social media accounts. Head over to the Me and My Big Ideas blog to meet the rest of the amazing team.