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i’ve decided that, for the next few months, i’d like to be painfully ordinary.

i want to wake up, go on my little walks, make myself a good breakfast, spend time with people i love, and have absolutely nothing interesting to report by the end of the day. no elaborate plans, no impressive accomplishments, no perfectly curated experiences that make my life look particularly exciting from the outside. just me, minding my business, finding an unreasonable amount of joy in the most mundane things. 😂

which is funny, considering how much of my life i’ve spent trying to be anything but ordinary.

i got the life i wanted. then i started wanting my life back.

i started creating content when i was really young, long before i knew that sharing my life on the internet could become a legitimate career. i grew up alongside social media, and somewhere between filming youtube videos for fun and eventually making a living from my personality, interests, and experiences, i found myself living a life that younger me would’ve been absolutely beside herself about. i worked with brands i once saved up to purchase from, traveled, attended events, received invitations, and found myself in rooms i never would’ve imagined being in. i’ve had experiences and opportunities that i’m incredibly grateful for.

i’ve always thought the goal would be to keep going. to keep growing, getting better opportunities, expanding my reach, and eventually building something even bigger. because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you find success, right? you keep going until you’re even more successful?

but somewhere along the way, i started asking myself a question that i couldn’t quite shake: what happens when you love the life you’ve built, but you’re no longer interested in doing everything it takes to maintain it?

because that’s where i’ve found myself. i created a lifestyle that i absolutely loved, but what was required of me to maintain it no longer felt worth it. there wasn’t one terrible partnership, one particularly bad experience, or some dramatic falling-out with the industry. it was more like a slow accumulation of realizations. little things that started bothering me. questions i couldn’t unask. desires that no longer felt like mine.

and eventually, i had to admit that maybe the life i wanted at 22 wasn’t necessarily the life i wanted to spend my thirties maintaining.

the exhausting business of being somebody

there’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with making a career out of being yourself. because where does the work end? when your personality is part of your business, your lifestyle is part of your brand, and your everyday experiences are potential material, the line between living your life and producing it can become incredibly blurry.

a beautiful restaurant? content. a new outfit? content. a trip? definitely content. a random thought in the shower? let me grab my phone before i forget. 😂

and don’t get me wrong, i genuinely love documenting my life. i’ve always been a storyteller, and i don’t think that’s ever going to change. but there’s a difference between sharing something because you feel inspired to and feeling like you should be documenting something because your livelihood depends on remaining visible. eventually, you internalize those expectations. you start thinking about what you should be doing, where you should be going, what you should be sharing, and whether you’re doing enough to remain relevant.

relevant to who? for what?

i think one of the more subtle ways this has affected me is in how i’ve learned to assign meaning to my own experiences. somewhere along the way, i started subconsciously measuring the significance of certain moments by how well i could translate them into something other people would understand. when you’ve spent years telling stories about your life, you start looking for the story in everything. the lesson. the takeaway. the perfect way to articulate what happened so someone else can see what you saw or feel what you felt.

and when you can’t quite find the words, or you share something that felt incredibly significant to you and it doesn’t resonate the way you hoped, it’s almost like the experience loses a little bit of its magic.

which is actually kind of insane when i think about it. because why should the significance of something that happened to me depend on how well i can explain it to somebody who wasn’t even there?

i’m trying to unlearn the idea that an experience has to be translated, understood, or received by someone else in order to be significant.

some things are going to happen in my life that i won’t have the language for until years later. some experiences won’t have a particularly interesting storyline, a profound lesson, or a satisfying conclusion. and that doesn’t make them any less worthy of having.

maybe not everything meaningful is meant to become a story. maybe some things are simply meant to become part of who we are.

my spiritual journey made things a little inconvenient

i think a huge part of why i’ve arrived at this point has to do with my spiritual journey. which is interesting because, in many ways, the same career that i’m now questioning created the conditions for so much of that journey to unfold.

being a content creator gave me the freedom to explore my interests, travel, meet different people, and spend time learning about things i might not have otherwise encountered. and somewhere along the way, that curiosity turned inward. i started asking bigger questions about myself, my purpose, my relationships, my desires, and the things i’d been conditioned to believe would make me happy.

i think that’s one of the less-discussed consequences of a spiritual awakening. people talk a lot about becoming more aligned, discovering your purpose, and learning to trust yourself, but not enough about how inconvenient that process can be when you start seeing through things that used to motivate you.

because once you begin questioning why you want certain things, it’s hard to go back to wanting them in quite the same way. you start recognizing the difference between a genuine desire and something you’ve been conditioned to pursue. between what actually fulfills you and what makes you feel accomplished. between the things that nourish your spirit and the things that simply make you look successful.

that’s been one of the more uncomfortable realizations for me when it comes to the influencer industry.

i’ve watched this space evolve tremendously since i first started creating content. what once felt like a place where people could share their interests, personalities, creativity, and perspectives has increasingly become an industry built around optimization. engagement, growth, conversion, and whatever the algorithm happens to be rewarding this week. and listen, i understand why. social media has become a legitimate business for so many people, myself included.

but i do think something gets lost when the primary goal of sharing your life becomes figuring out how to make it perform. when every interest becomes a niche, every experience becomes an opportunity, and every aspect of your personality becomes something that can be packaged, marketed, and monetized.

not because i think i’m above any of it. i’ve benefited from it. i’ve participated in it. i’ve made a living from it. but because i can feel how much my relationship with success, visibility, and creativity has changed.

it’s difficult to spend years learning how to live more authentically and then continue organizing your life around being marketable.

i’m allowed to appreciate what an industry gave me while acknowledging that i no longer see myself in what it’s becoming. and maybe, instead of trying to figure out how to fit myself into a space that no longer feels like mine, i need to give myself permission to create a path that actually does.

because that’s another thing about the spiritual journey that nobody really prepares you for. sometimes it doesn’t lead you toward a clearer version of the life you already have. sometimes it makes you question the entire thing.

including the dream life you spent years building.

my dream life needs a sabbatical

i’ve reached a point where i don’t necessarily want a completely different life. i just want a little distance from the expectations i’ve attached to the one i’ve already built. because somewhere along the way, even the things i genuinely loved started to feel like things i needed to maintain, improve, or turn into something bigger.

every new level of success seemed to come with another project, another business idea, another launch, another version of myself i was supposed to become. i’ve tried different businesses, explored different creative directions, and poured myself into ideas that i genuinely believed in. and while i know trial and error is part of entrepreneurship, i think there’s something to be said about the emotional exhaustion of constantly trying to make something work.

especially when you’re already making a living doing something that requires so much of your personal life.

i’ve spent so much of my adulthood working toward things. always building, always becoming, always trying to figure out what comes next. and there’s a part of me that genuinely enjoys that process. but i’m also beginning to understand that there’s a difference between being inspired by possibility and feeling obligated to constantly pursue it.

sometimes i can just like something. sometimes i can explore an idea without needing to build a business around it. sometimes i can learn something new without immediately wondering how i might monetize what i’ve learned. and sometimes i can have a season of my life that doesn’t produce anything particularly impressive.

imagine that….

i don’t want to lose my ambition. i just want to stop letting it consume every available part of my life. because what happens when you’re so focused on creating an extraordinary life that you forget to appreciate the ordinary one happening in the meantime?

maybe my dream life just needs a sabbatical. a little time away from the pressure to keep making it bigger, better, and more impressive. some space to figure out which parts of it i actually miss when i’m no longer obligated to maintain them, and which parts i’ve simply been holding onto because i worked so hard to build them.

because there’s a difference between no longer loving something and no longer loving the way you’re experiencing it.

and i think i’m still figuring out which one is true for me.

the extraordinary is hanging pretty low these days

lately, i’ve been thinking a lot about the low-hanging fruit of life. the things that are so readily available to us that we sometimes overlook them while searching for something bigger, better, or more impressive.

a really good morning walk. having time to make breakfast without rushing. being able to sit outside and feel the weather change. laughing with someone you love until your stomach hurts. finding a new favorite place in a city you’ve lived in your entire life. having an ordinary tuesday that feels so good you almost wish you could bottle it up.

none of these things are particularly impressive on paper. they don’t come with a fancy invitation, an impressive title, or a particularly interesting story to tell. but they’re the kinds of things that make a life feel rich from the inside. and i think that’s what i’m craving. not a life that looks extraordinary from a distance, but one that feels extraordinary while i’m actually living it.

i want to become someone who can find so much pleasure in the seemingly mundane that i don’t constantly need something exciting to happen in order to feel excited about being alive. someone who can make a ritual out of something as simple as going to the grocery store, taking a long walk, or making a cup of tea. i want to romanticize my life without needing to produce a romance for an audience.

and honestly, i think my spiritual journey has made me appreciate this even more. because the more i’ve explored my relationship with the divine, the more i’ve come to believe that life itself is constantly communicating with us. through our experiences, our relationships, our bodies, our emotions, and the little synchronicities we might otherwise overlook.

but it’s difficult to be in conversation with your life when you’re constantly trying to turn it into something else. when you’re so concerned with what an experience could become that you barely give yourself time to understand what it’s trying to show you.

maybe the extraordinary isn’t always something we have to chase. maybe sometimes it’s something we learn to recognize in what’s already here.

and perhaps the most spiritual thing i can do right now is stop trying to make every experience mean something and simply allow myself to experience it.

what happens when nobody’s watching?

as i prepare to move back home and begin this next chapter, i feel like i’m being given an opportunity to explore that question in a very literal way. i’m stepping away from so many of the things that once defined my adulthood. the city i built a life in. the version of my career i spent years cultivating. the idea that i always need to be moving toward something bigger, more visible, more impressive.

and of course, because i’m me, i can’t help but notice the astrology of it all. i’m currently navigating my saturn return in aries, which, in my equal house chart, is unfolding through my fourth house of home, family, and foundations. meanwhile, saturn is opposing the libra placements concentrated in my tenth house of career, visibility, and public identity.

so there’s something almost comically literal about this season asking me to step away from the public-facing life i’ve spent years building and return home to reconsider what i’m building it all on. and with my natal north node in virgo in the tenth house, i don’t necessarily interpret this as abandoning my public path altogether. if anything, i wonder whether i’m being asked to develop a healthier relationship with it.

maybe the work right now isn’t to become less ambitious, but to build a private life that can actually support the public one i might want to step into later.

because what’s the point of building an extraordinary life if you don’t have an ordinary one you enjoy living?

i think there’s something especially meaningful about returning to the place where so much of my life began. before the career. before the audience. before i had all these ideas about what success was supposed to look like. not because i’m trying to go backward, but because i want to see what becomes possible when i stop putting so much pressure on moving forward.

i want to give myself the opportunity to be a beginner again. to develop new routines, discover new interests, change my mind, be a little boring, and have days where absolutely nothing noteworthy happens.

and while there’s something intimidating about not knowing exactly what comes next, i’m trying to become more comfortable with the idea that not knowing isn’t necessarily a problem i need to solve as quickly as possible.

maybe it’s simply a part of the experience i’m meant to have right now.

i still want to create. i just don’t want to perform.

i think this is an important distinction. i’m not retiring from the internet or declaring that i’ll never share my life again. i still love storytelling. i still love beauty, writing, documenting my experiences, and connecting with people through the things i’m learning. and i genuinely love the community i’ve built over the years. but i do want to change my relationship with how i show up.

for the first time in a long time, i want to post without having a content strategy attached to everything. without constantly thinking about how to reach more people, gain more followers, increase my views, or figure out what the algorithm wants from me this week.

because when you’ve made a living from social media for so long, it’s easy to forget that you can actually just... use it. 😂

you can post a picture because you like the picture. share a thought because you had a thought. document something because you want to remember it. and that’s enough.

and i think another really exciting part of releasing the pressure to be a full-time content creator is that i no longer have to curate my online presence around being appealing to brands. which, when you’ve spent years making a living through brand partnerships, is a pretty significant shift. because even when you’re creating content you genuinely enjoy, there’s often this underlying awareness of how your feed looks to potential partners. whether you’re maintaining a certain aesthetic, posting enough of the right things, or positioning yourself for the next opportunity.

and while there’s nothing wrong with that, i’ve realized how much space those considerations were taking up in my creative process. especially as someone whose career has been so deeply rooted in beauty, lifestyle, and self-care. i still love all of those things, but they’re not the entirety of who i am.

i have thoughts about spirituality, relationships, identity, creativity, the human experience, and all the strange little things that come with being alive. and for a long time, i think there were parts of myself that didn’t always feel like they belonged within the version of me i’d built online. not because i was necessarily hiding them, but because they didn’t always fit into the bigger picture of what i was trying to build professionally.

and now, i don’t really care if they do.

i’m no longer interested in curating my life to attract brands. i’m interested in sharing my life in a way that attracts the people who need my voice.

people who might find something meaningful in the questions i’m asking, the experiences i’m navigating, or the perspectives i’m developing. people who connect with me beyond what products i’m using, what i’m wearing, or what my latest routine looks like.

and i think that’s what makes this next chapter feel so exciting. because instead of asking myself, what kind of content will attract the opportunities i want? i get to ask, what do i actually want to talk about?

that’s part of what excites me about writing more intentionally. it allows me to share my inner world without feeling like i have to constantly put my outer world on display. i can still be in conversation with people, share what i’m learning, and create things that resonate without giving everyone a front-row seat to every experience.

and maybe, in releasing the pressure to constantly grow an audience, i’ll create the space to develop a deeper relationship with the one i already have.

i want to create from the life i’m living, not constantly feel like i have to create a life worth documenting.

the temporary pleasure of being unremarkable

i should probably clarify something. i don’t necessarily want to be ordinary forever!

i still have big dreams. i still want to travel, create beautiful things, build something meaningful, and experience a life that surprises me. but i think i’ve reached a point where i want whatever comes next to emerge from a version of myself that isn’t constantly trying to prove she’s worthy of it.

and maybe that requires a season of being ordinary. a little space between who i’ve been and whoever i’m becoming. a period of time where i’m not particularly concerned with being impressive, staying relevant, or figuring out how to make the next big thing happen.

because if there’s one thing i’ve learned from all the different versions of myself i’ve explored over the years, it’s that you can’t always think your way into the life you’re meant to live. sometimes you have to actually live your way into it. you have to try things, experience things, get bored, change your mind, and discover interests you didn’t know you had.

and sometimes you have to stop trying so hard to become somebody long enough to hear what the person you already are has been trying to tell you.

i don’t want to turn this season into another self-improvement project with a perfectly curated transformation waiting at the end. because that would kind of defeat the whole purpose, wouldn’t it? i want to give myself permission to be ordinary without making extraordinariness the immediate reward for doing so.

maybe i need to let myself be ordinary long enough to discover what extraordinary actually means to me.

i’m still going to have bills, obligations, goals, and moments when i feel uncertain about what i’m doing. i’m still going to have days when my ambition gets the best of me and i start wondering whether i should be doing more.

but maybe the difference is that i won’t immediately treat those feelings as instructions.

maybe i can have a quiet day without assuming i’m falling behind. maybe i can experience a little boredom without immediately filling it with another project.

and maybe, for a little while, that can be enough.

a life that doesn’t need to be witnessed to be worthwhile

maybe this is what success is starting to look like for me. not necessarily having the most impressive life in the room, but having a life i genuinely enjoy returning to when i leave the room. a life where my relationships feel nourishing, my body feels cared for, my mind stays curious, and my days have enough space in them for me to actually notice what’s happening.

i don’t regret the things i’ve pursued or the life i’ve built. but i also don’t believe i have to keep wanting something simply because i once worked really hard to get it. sometimes you get exactly what you asked for and discover that your relationship with it has changed. sometimes the dream evolves. and sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stop chasing the next version of yourself long enough to appreciate the person you’ve already become.

i’ve spent so much of my adulthood trying to make something of myself. and now, i think i just want to experience what it’s like to be myself.

i’ll probably still travel. still create. still have big ideas and occasionally do things that surprise even me. but i don’t want those experiences to be the only things that make my life feel worth celebrating. i want to find just as much joy in the days between them.

so yes, i’m looking forward to being painfully ordinary. to having ordinary mornings, ordinary routines, ordinary conversations, and ordinary little pleasures that make me feel ridiculously lucky to be here. to finding inspiration in the life i’m actually living instead of constantly feeling like i need to create a more interesting one.

and maybe one day, i’ll look up and realize i’ve built something extraordinary again. something that feels even more aligned, more meaningful, and more authentically mine than anything i’ve created before. but for now, i’m not in a rush to find out what that looks like.

i don’t need to know exactly what this sabbatical is going to produce. i don’t need to turn it into another project, another transformation, or another chapter of my life that has to make sense to everybody watching.

i got the life i wanted. and now, i think i’d like some time to actually live it.

i still have big dreams.

but tomorrow morning, i’d really just like to enjoy my breakfast.

and for once, i think i’ll let that be enough.

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