I recently have been thinking a lot about my blog–who my audiences are, what my voice should be, and what’s the goal/purpose of this blog. I was lucky enough to speak with  Jessica Chang, who is the blogger behind Cubicle Chic. I met her at a networking event several months ago and we’ve been kept in touch since then. She is a working girl with a passionate heart for fashion. Her blog covers her 9-5 outfits, career tips, her life outside the office and many other inspirational topics. It’s so good to talk to someone who shares the same passion as me and I learned so much from our juicy conversation!

Share two quotes before I jump into the interview with Jessica!

“My heart is at peace knowing that what is meant for me will never miss me.” –Imam Al Shafi’l

“I’m going to promote myself exactly as I am, with all my weak points and strong ones. My weak points are that I’m self-conscious and often insecure, and my strong point is that I don’t feel any shame about it.” –Patty Smith

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-Why did you start your blog?

I am the blogger behind Cubicle Chic. I’ve been blogging since July 2015. My intention in starting this blog was sparked by my corporate marketing job for the last 5 years. My employer has a semi-conservative environment when it comes to employees’ dress code. This is my first job out of school and coming into this job, I didn’t have a lot of wardrobe ready for the office environment. During my first year, I was obviously shopping a lot. Over time, I developed the interest in perfecting my professional ensembles with the least amount of effort. I wanted to share these outfits and how I curated these outfits with my fellow corporate fashionistas!

-So your blog is for the career-oriented women?

Yes. In additional to fashion and style advice, I also talk a lot about career development and personal improvement on my blog. It’s something of a recent discovery of mine in terms of what people like to read. The “advice” I have for people is always based on just my honest opinions and experiences. Having gone through the last 5 years in corporate America, there are things that I wish I’d known earlier and those are the things I want to share with my readers.

-With so many bloggers in LA, how do you differentiate yourself from other bloggers?

I read a lot online about blogging how-to’s. One thing that is emphasized over and over again is having a voice when it comes to blogging. After a year of blogging, I think I have found my voice. My philosophy now is to always have substance behind what I say. There are a lot of blogs out there about outfits, fashion tips, and style trends. I see that space as being filled already. On my blog, I really just want to have a dialogue with my readers by sharing my thoughts and my experiences. I want to do it through content with substance behind. It’s not just about pretty images and pictures. Of course those are important too but they are complementary. This is the kind of voice I’ve worked on to create for my blog.

-What you just said, I totally agree. I also feel the same. The thing I am struggling right now is that people are blogging so fast. They update their content really quick. Some of them even update every day. It sometimes gives me pressure because English is not my native language, and I’m still trying to improve my writing. So that gives me a lot of pressure. I know you obviously are not suffering from that, but would you sometimes also feel pressured because other people are updating so fast so you need to keep up with the pace but at the same time keep the quality?

You will be surprised! I definitely feel the same pressure. The biggest pressure for me comes from Instagram. It is so fast-paced. It’s hard but I try to keep myself calibrated. I remind myself that my blogging journey is not just about pretty pictures, which is what Instagram is geared towards. For me, whenever I post something on Instagram, I try to keep the post meaningful in terms of the caption I provide with the image. This may not be the strategy for the mainstream bloggers, who have the readership to accept and embrace everything and anything they post. But that’s not what my situation. Another way to deal with blogging peer pressure is to realize that there are two types of bloggers. One is the type that tries to create a catalog via their blog – pictures after pictures, outfits after outfits. One example that comes to mind is @wendyslookbook. I’ve been a big fan of hers for many years. She has new, amazing outfits and amazing photos every single day. Obviously she is a full time blogger. When I first started my blog, I thought that would be me one day. I thought, I can’t do one outfit a day now, but I can start out by doing one or two outfits a month, So I did that for 8 months and realized unless I quit my job and blog full time, and somehow maintain the same income I have now, there’s no way I can achievemnthat one outfit a day status. So my goal right now is to create smart and useful outfits, and create the right type of content to go with each and every outfit. I think this helps me alleviate a lot of pressure in wanting to keep up with other bloggers on Instagram!

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