Subscribe now

Hmm, so this is fascinating. I was spring cleaning my drafts, and stumbled across this post that I fully wrote just about a year ago and had neglected to free into the world. I don’t know why I did that, but it’s still a perfectly good post that I figured I may as well publish and maybe do something different with. I’ll use this as a space to have a conversation with, and you all can just come along for the ride lol.

When I originally wrote this post, I was in a very challenging time of my life. My husband was preparing for a beyond huge career change, and we were drowning financially because of it. The world felt like it was constantly closing in on us, and somehow I managed to find a pocket of joy to cling on to that somehow made me extremely anxious to hold. It felt dangerous, like a threat to achieving anything good ever again. It wasn’t a big deal though, I just wasn’t well-versed in consistent positive notions happening in my life. This post became a meditation of that, of co-existing with the good feels as I reason with being an achiever without the extremist motivation of life-bad-must-work-hard-so-it-become-good.

Please, enjoy.

I have come to the realization that the gifts of ease and convenience that the modern era provides us has seriously damaged my determination. To get some feel-good dopamine, you no longer have to fight hard to earn a good moment, now you can literally just search for something that’ll make you feel good, and your wish is easily granted.

I am about six years post-undergrad, and I can feel laziness seeping in as I’m now old enough and resourceful enough to make my small, dopamine-induced wishes a reality. I genuinely can remember when I had to work so hard for the dopamine rush granted from getting all A’s during a semester, or from getting a banger summer internship opportunity. But now, funnily enough, as the judgmental glare of the institution of education has left my orbit and I’m now in the regular degular real world, I have come to realize that the stakes are much, much lower.

Maybe I bought into the systems and institutions too much, but growing up I really thought that good times would be so hard to come by. I really believed that I’d constantly have to earn and work so hard to enjoy a nice chat, a yummy meal, or even a great experience (I also blame all of these beliefs on two decades of hard times, but more on that trauma a different day). Now I know the truth: good times exist everywhere, all the time. And boy, have I been indulging in all of it.

I keep my calendar stacked with events to explore, my DMs filled with new, joyful connections, my attention kept with constant content and entertainment. I have become a dopamine fiend, a total dopamine goblin, and I’m here to chow down on everything that feels good as hell.

The issue with this is that now that I’m experiencing the good-feels of life, I have become oh so very indulgent, which is very new to me! I’m not used to having the opportunity to indulge, and so I have never had to learn how to pace myself or have boundaries in this area. If I want it, I buy it. If I want to experience it, I do it! The problem is that as a creative who sets her own schedule and does her own thing, it does lead to me getting less and less done as I solely fixate on what feels good.

In order to make space for achieving my goals, finetuning my habits, and just getting some goddamn work done, I have begun to practice delayed gratification, and man is it a powerful tool.

I decided to create a habit tracker bingo board. It’s a monthly 5x4 bingo board that both contains routine habits and goals that I wish to nail that month and mundane tasks that I would like to check off my list (like doing laundry or scheduling that doctor’s appointment). Each standard bingo that I achieve (so left-right/up-down, no diagonals for a 5x4) gives me one point, and each point contributes to a reward tree that I’ve built out.

Of course, it would be impossible to be perfect, so I’ve also added some “free passes” to allow myself some grace as I work hard to complete my board. If I read two books in a month, for instance, I get to check a box off my list even if I haven’t achieved it yet. If I complete a T shape on the board (5 across at the top, 4 going down the middle) then I get another free pass. This way, I don’t have to sweat the small stuff and I still get my delicious dopamine hit for having worked hard.

As we enter the second half of the year, I hope to work harder to be more dedicated to myself and my goals. I’m not used to having so much feel-good stimuli around me, so I hope to use my goals and achievements as a base where I can ground myself and come back to reality (yes, I know that’s very Virgo of me, sue me!). These days, I can get very swept away in what’s going on around me — honestly it’s to the point where I can’t even remember what it’s like to do everything in life all alone — and I hope to have a much smoother second half of 2025 as I have taken a real look at myself and begin to sink deeper into giving myself exactly what I need to be happy.

Now that I have this context of how delayed gratification works, it makes me realize why positive reinforcement for habit building didn’t work for me growing up: it’s hard to positively reinforce with something that you don’t know if you’ll be able to grant yourself. However, now that I know how to make life feel good at every step of the way, I love leaning into positive reinforcement and delayed gratification to achieve all of the good things that I’m hoping to get out of this life of mine.

Here I am, just a year shy from when I originally wrote this post. I think it’s so fascinating to speak to your past self in such a manner. I was asking and posing some serious questions and needs here; how do I coexist with happiness and productivity? Does delayed gratification actually work to achieve things whilst in this state? Can I conform to the rules and laws of “joy” and just become a person who enjoys living life and enjoys having nice things?

And most importantly, did that second half of 2025 clear up for me?

Well, to my past self, you end up figuring it all out. Delayed gratification works, but you aren’t so regimented with it like you thought you’d have to be. You find that flowing comes easier to you than you originally anticipated, and it leads you to a restful, but still chaotic end to 2025. You forced a lot of doors shut, so that way new, better doors could open. And, yes, you’re still indulging to the max. You get a better stride by the time 2026 rolls around, and despite the continued chaos of Q1 as you fight for your health needs, you’re still in a great position.

You don’t have to suffer just to find the will to achieve things. Now, is it hard? Most definitely. But, maybe it will one day become a language that you’re much better versed in, have some hope and optimism there. Your greatest works are still on the way, and yes, they will be birthed from a life well-lived, not from one that you keep having to suffer through.

Keep writing, keep savoring, and keep creating.

Love, me. To, me.

Subscribe now

You know what’s worse than working incredibly hard for something? Working incredibly hard for something, and then coming to the realization that the thing you’ve been working so hard for will never come to fruition. Yes, this is about helping someone out, fine, you caught me. But I think the most mind bending part about it all is the reminiscing on the time spent on workshopping, helping, and attempting to mold someone into not just a better form—but a better form that they claimed to have wanted. Hell, even trying to lay breadcrumbs so that they could follow me into the holy lands of growth and expansion, just to come to the realization that you can’t actually help people into change. They must help themselves.

I feel too old to be realizing this, but then I remember that I’m only 28 years young, barely on the move into her first Saturn Retrograde (Saturn in Aries baby), and that it’s actually a great time to be coming across this realization, so that way I don’t carry it into my 30s.

I donno, I think I just thought that I could carry all of my love ones with me, or grab them by their hands and drag them to where they claim they want to go, but I’ve come to learn that the things that we say are sometimes not the things we actually mean (both in positive and negative regards). Sometimes, we want incredible things that we are genuinely not willing to put in the work to achieve, and sometimes, we’re mean to ourselves when in reality, we meant to express our needs so that we can feel more loved and held, so that way we can fill in the gaps of the void that makes us express ourselves negatively.

It makes me sad, but it’s okay. I think that is just truly life. Que sera, sera.

Subscribe now

After absorbing this lesson into my brain and then into my body, I took some time to think about what I would do with the extra energy, time, and mental space that I had suddenly acquired by no longer extending myself in this way. From there, I decided that the only rational thing to do next would be to use all of that newfound energy on myself. Just blast my being, my goals, my desires, everything with all of this energy that I’ve been reserving for everyone else’s growth and change. Pour all of the advice, the love, the determination, the optimism, the bad-bitch-energy, the everything into myself.

What happened next, or rather over the next couple months (I have been working on this part of myself since around… October of 2025? With it reaching a true zenith of being so forreal with myself around December 2025?) was that I really began to get into a deep flow state with myself. All of a sudden I could hear my thoughts and my desires louder in my mind, thus giving me a much better compass to follow in my day to day life. I found my conversations in therapy changing as I began to finally put the spotlight on myself and my innermost issues, versus how other people’s issues kept affecting me. I began to wean myself off of several individuals who definitely weren’t the best for me energetically (and also because they were toxic af lmao), and even found it easier to wean off of doomscrolling and being excessively tapped into the news. It just suddenly became easier to live my life as an individual, rather than my life as the person who kept getting affected by other people’s mess and messes.

I definitely still have the issue of wanting to give sooooo fucking much even to people who don’t really give much back to me, but at least I’m working on one part of the equation: the part where I am such an insanely active participant in other people’s journeys. I know, it probably sounds terrible to say, but idk man. I be so obsessed with helping others because I know what it’s like to literally suffer (yay trauma!), and that makes me project that desire to not suffer onto others when in reality, no one asked! So then I end up in this mental headspace where I’m not realizing why no one is reciprocating to ease my suffering, but again, the reality is that no one asked to begin with, so of course no one is coming to my aid.

In a way, I entered them into a contract that they never agreed to.

I think the most reassuring part of all of this though, is that my closest and dearest girlfriends have [digitally] looked me in the face and have said girl… stop… lol… Which, in a way was very reassuring to me. Being told by my own friends that even they wanted me to stop tending to them so aggressively was a relief that I’ve never experienced in my entire life. I’m just so used to people taking from me or having the expectation that I’m just here existing to be taken from, that I donno… it has definitely been a breath of fresh air to be told to chill out with that impulse, but at the same time it’s a very scary undertaking to finally be living a life that is fully my own, but tbh the alternative hasn’t been the most effective so it’s time to be a lil afraid and live this life of my own lmao.

Per usual, I’m workin’ on it, and I’ll deploy more rambles when the time comes!

Welcome to field notes, my casual blogging platform within my Substack Messy Dialectic. If you are looking for refined essays and discourse, check here for the latest posts. If you love rambling, brain dumps, and chit-chats about life experiences, then continue reading on.

Subscribe now

If you read the post immediately before this one, then you’ll have read my various grievances about posting on social media as a creative as well as how it feels to view those who post on social media now that I’ve had experience with having a personal brand. Honestly, looking back on that post, it’s definitely giving “old woman yells at clouds”, but it turns out that it was exactly what I needed to further understand my relationship to social media and how I might want to use it in order to further my “brand” and also to create more opportunities in my life.

It’s always said that the sooner you know what you want to do, the sooner you can begin working on that thing, but as I get older I’m realizing that it’s even more powerful to know precisely what you don’t want to do. That way you can narrow things down further and further until you’re left with the only option(s) that you’re willing to take on, until you find yourself eventually culling those down too until you’ve created your own a la carte life, built entirely from a list of likes and dislikes.

Spending the majority of my 2025 putting myself out there in this new and foreign way (via building a personal brand on Instagram utilizing all the tips and tricks and “growth hacks” that I see posted everywhere) has taught me quite a lot about what I don’t like, but it has also made me think even deeper and further about the fig tree analogy. If you aren’t familiar, I’ll post an excerpt below:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

A few paragraphs down, the book notes this:

"I don't know what I ate, but I felt immensely better after the first mouthful. It occurred to me that my vision of the fig tree and all the fat figs that withered and fell to earth might well have arisen from the profound void of an empty stomach."

And then, six pages afterwards, it notes this:

"The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket."

Subscribe now

The author of the article explains the meaning in much deeper context, and as someone who hasn’t read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar yet, I highly recommend reading what the writer has to say about the deeper meanings of the novel that are commonly missed by those who are just posting the fig analogy quote without its entire context.

But when I think about 2025, I do see myself as this character who yearns to consume all the fruits of the fig tree. I’ve been grappling with the realization that I can only do what I can do, and part of that does mean letting go of what I can not longer do, or even more importantly, what I no longer want to do. In addition, aging has made me realize that doing everything simply because you can (aka freewill) is not all its cracked up to be. It is all much more exhausting than simply choosing one, or maybe two things at most, and simply working towards being proficient at those things.

While being on the cusp of a small financial boon, I feel grateful of course, but I also feel this frustration striking me. Now, I think, oh, well since I have more resources, then maybe I could revisit this or that. But when I think of returning to, say, my skincare business that I put on hiatus due to the COVID economy wrecking havoc on my costs of ingredients and materials, I get this immensely conflicted feeling.

This fig that was once so full and rich for the taking has fallen and rotted and, well, has been rotted out for the past two-ish years. But now I see it growing once more, and I see the opportunity forming for me to take it (funnily enough, I checked my skincare biz email and saw a major franchise inquiring if I could sell my products in their store. A major franchise ya’ll! That’s a major opportunity that I would’ve begged for four years ago!! This is crazy af too because they’re asking to work with a business that hasn’t been running for the past 2 years and it’s not even a scam, it’s a real opportunity! wOW).

However, although I can see the opportunity and the promise of capital gains, I also see the price of that fruit. Being in business mode 24/7 (because it’s basically impossible to turn your brain off when you have a product based business). The body pains from standing and combining and mixing products for hours on end. Thinking of the year in quarters and having to match up to the entrepreneurial expectations of each quarter. The volatility of the materials/ingredients market right now (cocoa butter prices alone are at a record high due to “driven by adverse weather, diseases, and climate change affecting West African cocoa production supply, causing significant shortages and escalating costs” as noted by my cocoa butter supplier). All of the hats that I’d have to wear (business owner, R&D, PR, social media manager, web designer, product designer, and the list goes on). Not to mention the hassle of having so many things all the time (all the ingredients, all the materials, all the stuff).

When I look over at the fruit of the fig tree that simply makes me a writer, I feel… icky about it. Logistically speaking, you could say that becoming a writer is my destiny. I always got straight A’s in my English and Reading courses, and before I was given a laptop, I would write fiction stories by hand and fill up countless notebooks (I have since transcribed those stories onto digital documents and am too terrified to read them back lmao. Sometimes I wonder if I should take a look at them again). When I begin a writing session, I instantly yawn not because it’s boring, but because it just calms and relaxes my brain to such an extreme that I could literally take a nap afterwards (yes, even after writing my essays about society).

Writing is really just something that I just… enjoy doing. But I think that I’ve colonized my mind away from the idea that I could ever enjoy what I do (due to various traumas and such), so I had never truly considered writing as my life’s path, my career, or even a thing that I could just sink time into as an adult. Yes, even though I majored in Writing & Rhetorical Studies in college (with 7 out of 8 possible Dean’s List awards might I add), I still had never even considered that I would—or could—grow up to become a writer in any professional capacity.

So when that financial boon came into fruition, my mind, of course, went to the now, reopened door to my skincare business, not the fact that I guess I could focus on writing my novel and on Substack without worrying about starving in the process. I instantly went for the thing that I can’t quite say that I enjoyed doing, but rather the thing that I did immediately after college because the job market sucked and I needed to make money some way some how, and starting a business with $100 was somehow the easiest way to make money at the time.

I think another part of this fig tree predicament is the social media aspect. I would like to utilize social media in order to capitalize on opportunities, but man do I fuckin’ hate the growth hacks being presented to the world. Honestly, all this narration and showing glimpses of your life and creating scenes and B-roll just ICK. I’m obsessed with living a private life and I also really hated every part of the Instagram/TikTok personal brand building process because it’s just not authentic to me. I’m currently writing this post wearing my husband’s oversized Modelo tee and a pair of Aerie flare leggings with a light blue bonnet on (the leggings and bonnet being mine obviously). I have the AC cranked to a crisp 66° and I’m wrapped in two blankets—a blue and white checked blanket with tomato accents and a plain grey blanket.

Guys, I am not about to film all of that and put it on the internet as a show of “authenticity” and “realness”.

But the problem is that in turn, I was filming content that was just so unrepresentative of what my life and process actually looks like that it irritated the hell out of me. It was all made even worse by the fact that now, I can see just how much everyone’s content on social media is so faked, fabricated, and curated. Now that I’ve been in the production chair (so to say) I can spot it all a mile away. In a funny way, this has cured a lot of my social media scrolling addiction (as I am now easily repulsed the second I even begin scrolling), but now I feel too irritated to utilize social media to further my potential opportunity gains.

I love writing on Substack. I don’t have much of a community here yet, but it reminds me of the good ole’ Wordpress days. I have an old 16 year old Wordpress account that I grew to 300+ subscribers, which to me meant a lot. I blogged about my personal life and personal thoughts as I came of age in my turbulent upbringing and my words really resonated with people and I really enjoyed that tbh. I honestly think that if Substack hadn’t boomed in popularity and had gotten on literally everyone’s radar, I’d probably be back on Wordpress blogging there again. Sometimes I think of leaving Substack behind and just going back to Wordpress anyway.

This was just a random assortment of thoughts, of course, as always. I’ll have more to say in the future, but for now, I’ll be experiencing life with a few more resources than I’m used to. An experience that will certainly change the way that I craft, create, and live. I’m nervous and excited for this new endeavor that will yet again expand my human experience and grow me into, well, who knows.

Welcome to field notes, my casual blogging platform within my Substack Messy Dialectic. If you are looking for refined essays and discourse, check here for the latest posts. If you love rambling, brain dumps, and chit-chats about life experiences, then continue reading on.

Subscribe now

Hmmm. I write all of my pieces well in advance, and I wrote this not knowing that the future held even more war and turmoil. I wrote this originally with ICE and other domestic issues going on, but with what has transpired over the past few days, I think that the message stated in this piece is even more relevant.

When I was in college, I was quite an avid protestor. Even more so, I was a protest photographer with a cheap DSLR equipped with a powerful lens and secret dreams of going into journalism as a photographer. When I learned that the military had photography roles (and continued to get nonstop recruitment emails due to my high grades and indomitable desire to succeed at college LOL), I even considered enlisting to do important photographical work in that manner.

Nowadays, I am much more chronically ill and also in a climate much warmer and less hospitable than the crisp, cool air of the northeast. I personally do not have the gusto to be out in the streets, yelling for justice like I used to, so I choose to optimize my protesting efforts online with boosting, sharing, and even with writing and creating. I know that my audience is still small, but I know that by adding my own non-problematic noise into the airwaves of the internet (which is filled with a lot of problematic nonsense from right wing folks) I am able to contribute to a better world online and offline.

Subscribe now

I know that by working diligently on my books that I one day expect to publish, I am providing fodder for a better, more diverse world of authors as a Black woman. I am working on my social media marketing game as a unique, “alt” Black woman knowing that I can create a special community and corner of the internet perfect for other quirky, nerdy Black women like myself.

I am finding that it’s hard to create art/be creative/write/etc. especially when you’re weaving together worlds of optimism and utopia in today’s climate. I am writing a grandiose Black romance novel as my life is under the backdrop of an encroaching fascist regime, and as I write my philosophical/dialectical pieces online, I think of how regimes always start by harming the academics, trusted sources, and general smart folks of the population. I think about myself and all of the other lovely thinkers on Substack, for instance, and think of how we’re all targets for censorship and oppression as we all sit here writing our nice pieces on this website that, for better or for worse, is committed to completely free speech (for now). I think of how quickly all of that could change, as everything has been changing quite rapidly under our idiot in chief’s command.

I mean, hell, a month from now I might have to scrub away the fact that I typed “idiot in chief”. You might revisit this piece and see giant redacted blocks like this ██ █████ ████ ██ because it turns out that we suddenly can’t say stuff like that without facing persecution anymore. Anything is possible when the Constitution is being treated like a big fat joke.

*sigh*

I think a lot of thoughts on this notion of how we are possibly going to build the world that we hope to live in, but my pessimism kicks in as I see folks pedestalize those who make the best mediocre recreation of something that was already great in the name of getting cool points, and those who are truly all in the game for themselves. We can all be changemakers, but the call for change is always spelled out as such a tall ass order that it keeps people thinking that they can’t be a beacon for pure good, so then people get worn out and do nothing instead. There isn’t as much emphasis placed on simply creating space or taking up space and how much good that does us all as a collective. It’s frustrating.

This was all just a quick, free flowing vent/rant on the awful things going on societally right now. It’s so upsetting because I have a lot of high hopes for society and where we could be, and I try to stay optimistic, but shit is getting insane and I’m just trying to create so that I can add my own balm to a hurting, aching world. I recognize that the world needs art during the revolution, and I recognize that my creation can fuel the rest and relaxation of those who have the gusto to be out on the front lines and put their bodies on the line.

I just want to do my part, no matter how small, to help get us out of this conservative, extremist hellscape.

Subscribe now

If you know me, then you know that I have been through an insane amount of stuff in the entirety of my life. In the interest of not trauma dumping and oversharing two decades of insanity in one post, you’ll simply have to trust me when I say that my life has truly been filled to the brim with misadventures and unfortunate circumstances until about a few months ago.

Being as young as I am while having gone through so much awful stuff, it’s a tough place to be as my ultimate goal has become harm reduction and “protecting my peace” (as people say these days), and in order to achieve these two goals, I have definitely taken many steps to isolate myself from situations that have burned me in the past. However, a new issue replaced all of my old ones: that methodology led to me creating a very sterile life that, yes, protected my peace, but also kept me from living my life and enjoying activities that I had been curious about pursuing in the first place.

That’s when I knew that I had to reframe and overwrite everything that had originally deterred me from my desires in the first place.

I’m currently doing this by (finally) joining other French enthusiasts (or Francophiles) in practicing speaking French. So far, it has been a total breath of fresh air. It pales in comparison to every other experience that I had growing up and doing French 1, 2, and 3 in high school in which I was met with some sort of nonsense from both teachers and students for being a Black girl in French class, and that as a Black woman, I suppose that the only language I am “allowed” to know is English.

Despite that awful experience, I am now immersed in this community of extremely kind individuals, from young adults to the older folks, who simply want to practice speaking a language that greatly interests them.

I can’t quite pinpoint where my love and interest in the French language comes from. Maybe it’s from when I learned as a child that my side of the family is Creole and then further learned of its proximity to French-ness, or perhaps it’s from me being shaped by those images from the early 2000s that depicted waif thin girls in Paris with shopping bags, coffees, and chic outfits. Hell, it might even be from seeing so much Parisian paraphernalia in Walmart and Michaels as a child (does anyone else remember seeing an abundance of Eiffel Tower paperweights and journals with Parisian bakeries on them in the 2000s? I know it’s not just me).

But what I know for a fact is that two decades have passed and I am still enamored by this imagery and this idea that I, too, could one day speak French and step into any of these images (minus the waif thin quality of course).

My last French class was in 2014, and I was more than happy to finally be done with that chapter of my life. Finally done with the shame of being a Black girl who was, yes, beyond proficient at English but seen as stupid for having only known one language while also being shamed for attempting to learn another, finally done with being ogled for being a Black girl in a language class even though I had to choose a language to graduate anyway, and away from the teachers who judged me for not catching on to the language as fast as my peers who already knew two languages, thus making the concepts of French (like conjugations and the fact that all words are gendered and you do have to keep that in mind when utilizing the language) a much easier concept for them than it did for me.

Once I got to college, I threw away any notion of learning any language. I even threw away an opportunity to learn ASL (another interest of mine at the time) at the collegiate level simply because of my rough experiences in high school and the impact that those experiences had on me.

Subscribe now

But I don’t know. Something clicked in my mind—now a whole decade after my last French class—that has just kept dragging me back to French. It’s just like people always say these days: the process of growing and aging and healing happily is just you walking back to yourself and finding yourself through all the muck of what the world has tried to convince you to be. And for some reason, I have suddenly felt this pull back to myself despite my fierce desire to run far, far away from those days of being teased and tormented.

So, I did it. I reopened Duolingo for the first time in well over a year (which the app was sure to let me know lol), and I brushed up on my French fundamentals. Shockingly enough, I remember more than I thought I would. Simultaneously, my French interest group (that I have been in for years without having attended a single session, mind you) created a new meeting time that worked much better for me, and I forced myself to attend.

As mentioned above, the folks who I met were just so nice and incredible and welcoming. They were really helpful and definitely helped with all the nervousness that I was experiencing at the time, given that I hadn’t practiced speaking French with someone in a decade. Funnily enough, I did end up forgetting a lot of the words that I knew because of how nervous I was, but I know that in time I’ll be able to recall my vocab much better.

It was all just such a total shock to my system, and it really made me realize how important it is to allow yourself to rewrite the awful things that we’ve experienced in life.

In the same way that I shouldn’t stop eating at all restaurants simply because of a bad experience at one (or several), I also shouldn’t forgo a whole interest of mine simply because people had ruined that for me for three whole years.

Looking back, I think that the whole three years part was one of the biggest deterrents to me further pursing something that could potentially result in a potential three more years of suffering, but now that I was brave enough and allowed this experience to redeem my impression of what my life could look like as a Francophile, I can now enjoy a lifetime of casually enjoying this interest that refuses to leave my side.

I wonder what I’ll retry next.

Now that my health has improved (I, too, acquired the big flu of January 2025), my new home is finally unpacked, and I have officially settled in to my new spot, I have decided that I am finally ready to begin my “new year”. Although I began at the mid/end of February, what matters most of course is that I started at all. However, this new growth journey is much different than my prior ones.

I don’t know if it’s the prefrontal cortex development, or maybe my brain chemistry shifted after the shitshow that was 2024, but growth in this current stage of my life is actually consisting of pains. This is the first time in my life that I have experienced “growing pains”, and I now understand the true meaning of the phrase.

Subscribe now

It’s like when you’re a kid and your favorite pair of shoes suddenly pinch your toes due to your body rapidly growing and developing into its teenage form, resulting in you having no choice but to get new shoes. Sure, you can keep those outgrown shoes in a corner of your room so that you can admire a style you once donned, but after a while you realize that you had to get new shoes anyway, and that those old shoes are never going to fit you again.

(this is not about shoes, however I did go through this exact thing when I was a kid and it did suck. if you’re curious, it was about these shoes right here. this is the only set of photos I could find of them, but if anyone is able to find more lmk!)

I have gotten to this point with my growth in which I’m realizing that everything that I want to have or experience in life is on the other side of many of the habits and tendencies that I currently exhibit, and it fuckin’ sucks.

If I want to write that book, I simply have to live life differently than the me of yesterday who does not have the habits or discipline necessary to write that book. If I want to stay healthy as I continue to age (I am already beginning to feel it in my knees. Yes, I’m freaking out about it), I simply have to live life differently than the me of yesterday who phones in working out every time I begin to show results. If I want cool experiences and opportunities, I simply have to live life differently than the me of yesterday who played smaller and safer. If I want to make a living “existing”, I simply have to live life different than the me of yesterday who feels like everyone else deserves to live big, grandiose lives doing whatever they want, while I am only to do what is traditional (and thus what doesn’t work for me), practical, and common. The life that I desire quite literally requires me to change on a fundamental, cellular level that I am witnessing the progress of every single day.

This shit is really fuckin’ me up man.

When I first brought up these revelations of how I have to push myself outside of the comfort zones in every aspect of my life to my therapist, she looked at me with a concern that I had never seen her face me with before. It then occurred to me that this was the first time in our several years’ relationship that I had truly exhibited anxiety. I am typically such a confident person. On first glance I know that I appear confident. I dress confidently, I stand tall, I speak to others confidently, I write authentically, and so on. For all intents and purposes, I am a “confident” person. However, what these growing pains have taught me is that I am not confident in the parts of my being that would propel me towards the life that I want to live.

I think I got comfortable in all of these ways in which I show up in life (which is already quite a lot, especially considering my lovely history of traumas and such), and couldn’t see the ways in which I was holding myself back by sticking to those habits in lieu of adopting new ones that would accelerate me towards my desires. The issue, though, is that I am at a point in life where the adoption of new positive habits would forcibly take me out of my current goalpost of surviving, and take me towards a brand new frontier: thriving.

For me, this is mortifying.

Thriving asks of true vulnerability and authenticity. Thriving requires of you to have an ironclad discipline towards the acquisition of your desires. Thriving means being the absolute fullest extension of yourself (something that I believed I was doing, but have now come to realize that I was far from doing).

I have spent all 27 years of my life surviving. It’s something that I believe that I’m truly a master at. In a way, it’s like I’ve achieved the maximum level on the Game of Surviving Life, and there’s literally no more game to play. There’s no endgame, there’s no new game +, there’s no DLC, nothing. I can continue running around the map in circles, maybe continue to live the same-old-same-old quests and journeys, but it will never progress me further than where I am now.

In the end, I have to take out the cartridge and load in an entirely new game: The Game of Thriving Throughout Life.

It is truly uncharted territory for me, and as I spoke about this in therapy, my therapist fed me with so many affirmations and compliments on the progress I’ve done thus far with this whole growth journey that I knew that she knew that I was freaking the hell out.

The worst part of it all? I know good and well that I can never go back. It’s like this deep inner knowing that the “shoes” of my past literally don’t fit, so unless I want to wear them and hobble around uncomfortably, I quite literally have to make a change. I have to get new shoes.

It makes me feel like I’m being kicked out in a way, but instead of me being kicked out and lost, I have a path available for me to traverse in the meantime. It’s dark and uncertain, but I either travel this path or bang on the door for a life that I cannot fit into any longer.

Subscribe now

When I talk to my girls (hey gworls~) it makes this sensation even worse.

One of my girls just got an incredible artist residency opportunity that would allow her to be connected with incredible artists in the city, a whole group show opportunity, and also she’ll have a cozy, dedicated space to commit to her furthering her craft. Another one of my girls has been so irritated and frustrated with her current job that I just know that she’s on the cusp of leaving them in the dust to pursue something that rightfully pays much more for the labor that she puts into her career responsibilities (she doesn’t know it yet, but I manifest this for her constantly). A wellness girlie of mine finally attained a recurring weekly (and sometimes multiple times a week) venue for her sound bowl meditations, allowing her a beautiful and crisp atmosphere for her healing arts. A girlie who I have been less connected with these few months came to me and mentioned that she’s starting a whole journaling series at a cozy, local, bookstore bar (which is so cool might I add!!). Another girlie just won a grant (!!!) to pursue her desire to spread knowledge about cybersecurity to the general public so that they can be more protected during their digital adventures!

At the same time, I am being showered by the people on my friends list with so much love and genuineness. I’m being invited to things I am actually interested in—which of course requires people to understand me—meaning that I am finally being understood. I am finally feeling like I fit in somewhere on this planet, and the feeling is so overwhelming.

The love, bravery, and positivity beamed from all of these individuals however comes with a distinct choice that I have to continuously make. Do I choose to move forward with them, or do I choose to go back to where things feel comfortable and safe? Do I put a magnifying glass on my most authentic self and continue to share her with the girls (and the world!), or do I pinch and shrink her until she is tucked under the folds of what could have been?

Obviously the wise answer is to continue to move forward, even if all of my friends have to drag me there whilst I kick and scream of course. But it’s all still so awfully terrifying and feels so nauseating. It’s even nauseating to imagine that all of the things I desire are simply within the grasp of the choices that I choose today, and tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the day after that. It is, and always has been, that simple. As long as I keep making the choice and moving towards what I desire, it will all end up working out for my higher good regardless. All I have to do is continue to do the work. The hard, hard, work. No matter how much it hurts me.

What terrible news.

Subscribe now

2024 was a year of few ups, and several intense downs. Downs so intense that I became doomed to never return to the state that I was prior to the year’s existence. I can say that from these many downs, I certainly learned a lot, but what shocked me most were my revelations on depression.

I started the year with the loss of my cat, the loss of a couple of opportunities, and a betrayal that rocked me to my core. Now that nearly a year has passed since that betrayal, I have realized that it was depression in the form of anger that had metabolized into the form of depression as a result of my anger having no choice but to be stuffed down and swallowed into the days and months that had followed.

In the middle of the year, I felt the ebbs and flows of grief as life continued to go on after the loss of my childhood cat; the loss of my first best friend. Everything that I had ever done was punctuated by her existence, so I felt lost as I tried partaking in my habits and living my life without her presence. With everything in my life, I’ve had to remake every single habit from scratch to accommodate for a world in which she no longer exists, and the toll that it has taken to start my life over has weighed on me heavily. That in itself was its own form of depression.

Then, my birthday came, and it was my first birthday without my lil baby, but also my first birthday trip (and first vacation in the first place to be honest). I had decided to go camping, and at the end of my trip I had experienced “post vacation depression” which left me crying every single day for a couple of days. It really messed with my head, and left me wondering if I ever wanted to go on vacation ever again at the risk of feeling that heart wrenching pain again. I still remember how upset I was packing everything up and doing the three hour drive back home, only to just sit still on my couch in a heap of sadness from the end of my off-the-grid adventure. Now that a few months have passed, I can say with confidence that I will certainly go on vacation again. I can just go now with the knowledge of the sad feelings that will inevitably come at the end of the adventure.

At the end of 2024, I moved into my new spot (yay!) that I love dearly. It’s incredibly spacious and a great upgrade that’ll lend itself perfect for all of the life changes coming my way. But wow, here I was yet again, floored by depression. It was from this move that I learned about “relocation depression,” a phenomenon that I had never heard of or anticipated. From what I learned, it’s essentially a form of depression that is not classified in the DSM-5 that relates to you simply getting depression symptoms from moving into a new home/space/etc. It doesn’t matter if the move is good for you, if you’re excited, or even if it was a dire move that needed to happen. The relocation depression can still get you, and it can definitely debilitate you, take it from me.

In 2024, I learned that apparently, you can get depression from literally anything.

Any life change, good or bad, can cause you to fall victim to a sort of sadness that unfortunately, our human brain worms do like to feed on and use as information relating to the situation that currently in. Then, if we don’t fight against the sadness (of course as much as we can in the moment, I know it’s hard at times) and we just believe in what our brain worms are telling us, then that can serve to amplify the sadness that we’re feeling, and in turn make our lives even more upsetting or stressful.

These learnings really shocked me, and have definitely made me realize that going into 2025, I need much more stability in my life, but not just any stability. I need stable joys that I can depend on especially as I am architecting my new year to be a year of metamorphosis into the creative woman who I have deep-down aspired to be ever since I was a little girl. I do fear that all of this rapid and intense transformation and change will cause my being to falter and crumble at times due to how much our human brains love sameness, so I hope to get into some really good habits that keep me filled with a nice steady dopamine release that keeps me going as I work on myself.

I’m really excited about where I’ll be by the end of 2025, and I can’t wait to see all of my creative ideas and projects through. It’s gonna be really incredible, I just know it.

Welcome to field notes, my casual blogging platform within my Substack Messy Dialectic. If you are looking for refined essays and discourse, check here for the latest posts. If you love rambling, brain dumps, and chit-chats about life experiences, then continue reading on.

Subscribe now

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to finally have a much needed night out. I took a break from my current stresses (which were moving, my awful neighbors, and apartment management) and went to a late night art exhibit opening and a lil dance event afterwards that was conveniently behind the art venue.

On the surface, everything kinda seemed like it was going to be a perfect night. I’d be able to see some folks who are within my writing community, and then I’d be able to head straight to the dance’s event space conveniently located right behind the art exhibition and release some of those piled on stresses through movement. Combined with the restorative two hour nap I took prior to the event and the fact that my brand new disco-boots fit perfectly, I had some pretty high hopes going into the evening.

However, the night was anything but perfect.

I don’t know how to describe it, but the energy on the art gallery opening ceremony just was… hmm. It felt like the exhibit itself was laid out in a way that didn’t allow for all of the art pieces to connect for me as an art enthusiast. Like, I was struggling to grasp what was supposed to be connecting the fashion, paintings, and photography together due to how they were strewn about in different rooms and hallways. It just wasn’t clicking for me.

It also didn’t help that during the artist talk (which I didn’t know was on the table for that evening), the setting didn’t really feel intimate in a way that would be conducive for a warm art gathering due to the way the main room was spatially laid out. I donno, you’ll have to trust me on it. I don’t know how else to explain it.

To be completely honest, I did flee the scene the second I got the chance (aka after the artist chat and after looking around at the pieces once more), but before that, I was able to talk a bunch with my writing gworls and that was really fulfilling. I hadn’t seen them in a while due to a November recess with our meetups and then I was too sick to make October’s sesh, so it was so nice to see them again (especially since it’s the first time I’d seen them since my revolutionary birthday camping trip). It was nice to catch up but also to socialize, which is something that I had been lacking since I’ve been too stressed about my sleep deprivation and also about the moving process and its logistics to go outside much.

Funnily enough, I was able to acquire another +1 to the dance event (one of my friends from the exhibit decided to tag along!), making it a full night of newness for me, and after I left the exhibit with my friend, we ditched our coats and waited in line with my husband.

This is where the night continues to go down a spiral.

The event (a warehouse-esque party in collaboration with adidas) was slated to begin at 9pm, and at this point in the story, it’s around 9:30pm. I’m getting lots of secondhand smoke and with the way it’s mixing with the free champagne that I got from the art exhibit, I began to, as the youth say, “crash out". It was honestly just frustrating being that intoxicated at that point yet still waiting outside in the freezing cold for something that, at this point in the story is now 9:45pm!

I made a fuss about it—and was maybe speaking way louder than I realized, I blame it on the juice—and earned some giggles from the people in front of and behind us in line. Honestly, it created a funny comradery that helped the time to pass, but also allowed moments for me to connect further with the friend who tagged along from the art exhibit. It was like the struggle (standing in the freezing cold waiting for an event that was an hour late to open its doors) was connecting us further in that moment, and after a while I kinda didn’t mind.

After we finally made it inside, and were one person away from grabbing some “limited-edition” adidas (boooo), we assessed the atmosphere and decided that it wasn’t really for us. It was giving highschool dance, with folks dancing with their adidas shoe boxes and swaying with laces tied around their necks, free shoes just dangling in the air. The venue, again, wasn’t great, and there were too many cameras to feel comfortable and excited about the night ahead.

After a few fist bumps, all three of us decided to part ways for the night, with my art gallery friend continuing her night at a different bar, and my husband and I continuing our night with a friend who these days is like the little sister I wish I had. She invited us to a cozy bar/event space that was having a gaming night that exact same night. Anything felt like a great excuse to continue the rambunctious night that I was excited to have (and continuously failing to have), so we drove ten minutes away and met her and her friends there.

While the hubs parked, I met with my friend and her old childhood friend, and I felt so warm, cozy, and accepted. Both of them were so stylish and we even took some selfies, and it just felt nice to see my friend in an environment that we haven’t connected in yet. It felt like I was traversing new territory in the connection of our friendship and it was really exciting. My husband joined us, and we all went and also met the partner to my friend’s friend, and it was awesome. It wasn’t anything extreme or jaw-dropping per say, it was just that it was nice to connect with others in a way that I never really have before. This is the kind of adventure that I didn’t have in college due to me having never truly fit in enough to be accepted in academic settings. It made me feel like I was expanding as a person and ushering into a new state of being. I think I’ll expand more on this feeling a different time.

But yeah, we spent a lot of time just speaking and learning about one another. We all ordered pizza from the nearby late night pizza joint (I was so hungry I thought I was going to die at this point in the night) and it was all just a comforting, cozy experience in the cold of the outdoors.

As it got later in the night, we all decided to go our separate ways and head to our homes, and with that, my husband and I headed to the house to end our long night, and I spent that night and the next few days just processing the night that I had just had.

As a chronic perfectionist (I’m a double-Virgo, sue me), I have a habit of expecting things to go exactly as I’ve planned, so long as the plan is solid enough. When the plans are shaky, I give them more space and freedom to be less than perfect, but if the conditions seem right, I set my sights very high.

However, if you’ve read this far, then you can probably tell that that night was less than perfect. The art exhibit was meh, the dance event was blah, and I ended up going to a bar to meet people who I was not prepared mentally to meet. The night had several touchpoints of uncertainty and disappointment that just made me more and more anxious with each venue hop, and it was veering away from the perfect night out that I had planned for.

Subscribe now

But something incredible had happened that night. I had connected with the people around me. My husband and I went out for the first time in a long time and were able to get away from all of the moving stresses, I was able to see my writing community again and see them in a different environment than I’m used to seeing them in and we got to catch up and talk about a lot of stuff, I got to see my bestie again for the first time in months and I got to meet a long term friend of hers and we were able to visit a spot that she really enjoys, and at the end of the day, I got to connect. I got to connect on a deeper level with so many of the people who I care about, and I felt a closeness that made me remember how worth it human connection is.

And no, I don’t mean that I’m barely learning how valuable friendship is or anything like that. I mean the value in the simplicity of hearing about how someone else’s life is, and just having them ramble to you for who knows how long. The value in hearing about someone else’s struggles and empathizing deeply with them. The value of dealing with something challenging with someone else, and then mutually planning out situations that work better for one another even if those are two different things.

All of these other faces of the human experience are just so enriching and so underrated and vastly outweigh the sentiments that friendship, community, or even relationship should be this constant pathway to your own personal fulfilment with continuous dopamine hits to your own list of desires.

I found the give-and-take of that night to be so delightful, it was like dancing conversationally with those who I care for (and those just met) to find a medium that felt comfortable to waltz through. It was so delightful and exciting and I hope that others enjoy spending time in this gray area of relationship, where maybe you are not taking as much as you’d like from someone, but seeing their joy and mutual appreciation for what you are doing for them fills you with enough contentment to pour into them with a certain patience about the rate at which your own cup is filled by them.

I know that’s a hard ask in today’s current climate of 50/50 this and conditional love that, but right now I implore you to at least dance a little with the natural give-and-take of relationship. Feel deeply into the notion of reflecting the love you seek onto others, and examine how that feels and where that takes your relationships with those who you love and care for the most.

Welcome to field notes, my casual blogging platform within my Substack Messy Dialectic. If you are looking for refined essays and discourse, check here for the latest posts. If you love rambling, brain dumps, and chit-chats about life experiences, then continue reading on.

This is a topic that I’ve been meditating on for the past few weeks as I have been struggling with a frustrating situation of my own.

Remember that camping post? You know, where I went camping for my birthday?

Well, basically, I went on that camping trip for my birthday, and then when I came back my husband and I were met with tons of noise on the side of the wall that was originally empty when we left. As the days drew on, and the noise was constant (literally all day and night) we realized that no, those weren’t workers renovating the unit. Those were brand new neighbors.

And they are terrible.

Come to find out, what we hear all day (and primarily all night) is their zoo of 3 animals (two cats and one dog…...) who zoom around all night. They have seemingly taught their animals to play on the wall that connects our units, and even throw toys at our wall… In addition, they yell loud as hell into the night, all the way into the morning, and even have loud furniture that they slam so hard that it shakes our wall!

It has been a nightmare that the management has barely been dealing with (which started with weeks of us complaining, and the neighbors telling the management that they have no idea what we’re talking about 🤡), so what else is one to do?

Well, I’m now set up to move (🥳 yippee!) and in the meantime, I’ve actually been… sleeping on my couch…

I won’t lie, it has been a large source of frustration to sleep on my couch when I own a big, beautiful, ultra-cozy king size bed (from a cheap bed in a box company no less) and at the end of the day, I deserve to feel comfortable and safe in my own home so that I can get sleep and be well-rested for the work that I do. But this is an issue that, to be fair, has technically been solved.

The move is slated, the new apartment has been reserved (it’s so cute, I’m so excited!!), and a plan has been made to keep me from continuing to experience the levels of sleep deprivation that I was dealing with for 5 weeks when I was attempting to sleep in my bed and simply didn’t want to sleep on the couch out of stubborn dogma.

All that’s left now is the passing of time.

That part is the challenging part for me, and has made me very introspective in the past few weeks as I’ve dealt with this (reminder, the camping trip was September! It is now November!!!).

My first few weeks on the couch made me realize how much I personally just love to have what I want immediately. Now, I’m not faulting myself for wanting to sleep in my own bed, but it was more a funny thing that I laughed about with my loved ones because I found that the couch was giving me the best sleep of my life. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a new sleeping location or if it’s because of how dead quiet that side of the unit is, but wow. As someone who struggles with sleep maintenance insomnia, it has been wild to sleep at night and then wake up to my alarm especially while on the couch.

So, in a funny way, my solution to deal with this frustrating situation not only solved my problem, but it even improved a whole part of my life.

Not to mention, the hubs and I have a great exit plan that we’re grateful to have, plus we’re thankfully at the end of the lease anyway. So it all really worked out for the better. For context, I got the lease renewal message coincidentally at the height of all this insanity and at the height of the management doing fuck-all nothing, so it all really truly worked out in perfect divine timing.

The problem then, is this feral craving I have for the finish line. Again, I give myself grace, yadda yadda yadda, it’s okay to be excited for something better and exciting I know. But, I also know myself, and I know that the feeling I have inside is like a child tantrum-ing, screaming about how badly they want the candy now and when told that the candy can be had after dinner, they keep crying about how they want and need it now.

Subscribe now

It’s like a searing burn that shakes my entire body. It’s what made me realize, shit, I have been messed up by the drug of instant gratification. The damn phones done’ rewired my brain.

It triggered a set of self-evaluations within myself, and it occurred to me that this desire for instant gratification is leading a lot of my current issues in life. For one, I realized that I don’t go out to a lot of events or things like I’d like to because driving takes time (as they say, Houston is an hour away from Houston), getting ready takes time, planning with folks takes time, recharging after hangouts takes immense effort and intentionality, it all takes time and effort. And then, you put all of that work in to get a little dopamine hit that might not even have the mileage to last you to the next fun event you have scheduled later in the week.

But why go out when you can stay in? There are algorithms that serve up little surges of dopamine on tap 24/7. You don’t have to go out and put so much effort into feeling good. You can choose to be cooped up in your cozy abode, have a nice cozy beverage or meal, and scroll to your heart’s content. There’s no traffic to deal with, no rude weird energies, nothing that exhausts my introversion, no frustrating experiences, it is paradise in the palm of your own hand.

It is unfortunately the best (in the context of getting those dopamine hits), but it isn’t the most conducive to having what humans truly need for healthy mentals and for living fulfilling lives.

I also realized that I have a big problem with deriving my own dopamine from the dopamine of other folks’ success and endeavors.

I am one of those people who perfectly tailors and handcrafts their feed to be niched down to the gods. Every crevice of my identity, dreams, and hobbies is articulated perfectly in who I’m following on all platforms (YouTube, IG, and TikTok primarily). Let me tell you, it’s awesome. It’s like my own little curated TV station on whatever platform I’m craving at the time.

I primarily follow a lot of enterprising Black women who do really cool things by putting themselves out there, taking risks, and going on fun adventures. They have so many connections and stay in the streets whether that’s via public transport or driving. They are doing the work to live fun, exciting, successful lives, and they are confident and hardworking enough to broadcast that on their social media channels.

As an empath, I watch their content and feel so extremely proud of what they’re doing and accomplishing in the world. It’s so exciting to watch people who look like me accomplish things beyond my wildest dreams. It’s awesome. But the problem is that I get attached.

I get so attached to these feelings of excitement and joy for others that it does, in a weird way, take away any part of me that feels like I need to do it too. I get this weird feeling where it’s like… Because I can see how that success looks on the screen, I don’t get inspired to create that success and joy in my own life. It makes me so satiated. I end up feeling so fulfilled in my own life watching others live a life that I wish that I had.

Personally, I find this line of thinking so… fascinating and bizarre, “bizarre” mainly because it was me sleeping on the couch that made me realize that I was feeling this way for who knows how long. But the more I have given myself time to sit with it, the more I realize the extent of the mental hole that I’ve been stuck in.

I don’t think that the solution is to ban my favorite lil’ rectangular devices from my life, however I do know that I must change my mindset.

In preparation for my big move, I’ve also begun a fitness and mindset journey to just get me prepped for the 2025 that I am intending to have, and all of these thoughts are included in the journey. I have begun to consume content with much more intentionality with a focus on manifesting my own hopes and dreams.

I honestly haven’t even worked to manifest anything in my life since taking a mental health hiatus from my skincare business (it has been like 2 or 3 years or so at this point), and I donno… I think something shifted in my mind during the big 11/11 portal (I know woo-woo topics, sue me), and now I suddenly feel ready to get back into myself and into my own life.

I also have realized that I must put myself out there if I want to have anything that I truly desire since all of my aspirations are quite outward facing, and that feelings of satiation are just not satisfactory. I have to make myself keep going until I actually have what I desire. I have to reach feelings of accomplishment and triumph.

I have to realize that the pain in the processes and journeys is necessary a lot of times, and also in many cases, worth experiencing. The pains of traffic that I have to drive through to get to a friend or an event, the awkwardness and fear of putting myself out there, the sadness of rejection, the boring aspects of my creative aspirations, the frustration of not getting it right all the time (thus subsequently decreasing the dopamine I could be experiencing). It’s all, unfortunately, a part of anything good that anyone wants to have and experience, but it’s also a part of being a human, and there’s nothing that takes us outside of the natural realms of living than our little devices and their algorithmic dopamine machines.

Scrolling and watching as a bystander on my little rectangular device has protected and shielded me from the everyday pains of having to human, and in turn has shielded me from the exciting life that I could be living. It was a very easy rhythm that I accidentally stepped into, and it has felt so good to be on the receiving end of endless dopamine hits (especially with the tumultuous years I’ve been experiencing). But I donno, maybe the mental fog is clearing up and giving me the physical ability to get my back off the wall and get back into the mix of things.

As I continue to meditate on this, I only wonder how many others are trapped in this sort of loop, doing the exact same thing unknowingly.

Welcome to field notes, my casual blogging platform within my Substack Messy Dialectic. If you are looking for refined essays and discourse, check here for the latest posts. If you love rambling, brain dumps, and chit-chats about life experiences, then continue reading on.

Hi everyone! How are you doing? Today’s field notes is a shorter post that I’ll be using to speak about my intentions for this space that I’ve created on Substack. I think it’s important to state my intentions publicly because it’ll also help to keep me accountable as I continue to live and deal with the motions of everyday life. Being consistent and showing up here is very important to me, so I really want to do my best with it :).

If you were here prior to this post, then you’ll recognize that I’ve changed the name of this page from with love, tiara to Messy Dialectic. Honestly, I had no intention of keeping with love, tiara, but I wanted a name that I could use as a placeholder while I was figuring out the actual name that I wanted for my Substack, so I just copied the name I’m using on Instagram.

My intention for Messy Dialectic is to show up every other Sunday at 10:15 CST with either standard essays (Messy Dialectic) or rambles (field notes). The essays are going to touch on culture and society both on and offline, and the rambles are just chill posts about my life or even essay topics that I’d rather speak on in a more casual manner.

Every now and then, I’d love to do an audio-based episode. So we’ll see how we do with that in time :).

I started this Substack to rebuild my writing skills, as I had lost them quite a bit post-grad, and also to create a space to do what I love to do, which is writing academic-ish essays on topics that I’d have to research and carefully evaluate. I’ve been kinda shocked how enjoyable it has been to write essays again, and I wish that I had gotten back into it years ago when I had begun to crave essay writing again.

Overall, I hope to continue to cultivate this space into a place where multiple points of a topic can be looked at and evaluated to create a sense of clarity about different societal issues, events, and phenomena. It has been really fulfilling and enjoyable to spend my time writing these essays and researching topics that I genuinely care about, and I hope that you all enjoy reading them too :).

P.S. If there are any topics that you’d love for me to cover, please let me know! I will add it to my growing backlog of ideas.

Welcome to field notes, my casual blogging platform within my Substack with love, tiara. If you are looking for refined essays and discourse, check here for the latest posts. If you love rambling, brain dumps, and chit-chats about life experiences, then continue reading on.

Subscribe now

So, I’m back from my first ever vacation and I have so many thoughts. For context, I went on vacation in Wimberley, TX at one of those cute lil Getaway cabins for my birthday. I didn’t expect to be so woo’d by the scenery of the Texas Hill Country as a born-and-raised Texan, but wow. It was just so stunning. Maybe it was the vacation air speaking, maybe it was the way the sunrays hit the trees, maybe it was the Sagittarius moon eclipse that lit our evenings (we are both Sag moons so the divine timing was hittin!), maybe it was the gorgeous hillsides (ok it was definitely this), but man it was stunninggggg.

My husband and I went for three four days. It was supposed to be a three day trip but once we had gotten to day two, I just realized that I needed another day. I felt like I was on the brink of a huge mental breakthrough and leaving the next day didn’t feel right. I toiled over it for several hours before finally throwing in the towel and giving in to what I truly needed, wanted, and deserved: more time. More time to sink into all of the feelings, more time to process the shitty, grief-filled year I’ve been going through, and more time to just be. So I extended my trip for an extra day of bliss and it was perfection.

I know that a lot of people go on camping trips with plans to set intentions and be completely tech-free and read hella books and all of that, but I didn’t really do that. Prior to this, I had only gone camping with my elementary school’s 5th grader program and with girl scouts, so I wanted to have this fresh experience of camping just as an individual unaffiliated with a program before assigning rules. I just wanted to take the experience as it was, and that I really did.

I sank into the semi-limited signal I had and mainly used my phone for talkin’ to my girls (hey friends! I know ya’ll are reading), engaging with some of my books, and also just letting my mind wander to wherever it felt it needed to. What I learned was that I really needed to slow down and be more precise and intentional with living my life. I really needed to move at my own pace and stop getting so swept up in the rushed lifestyle that capitalism tells us that we have to adhere to. I needed to allow myself to go for what I wanted without there needing to be a “need” and have more bravery and courage to do precisely what I wanted with my life.

No more wasting my time doing shit that I clearly didn’t want or that clearly didn’t work for me (like applying for in office 9-5 positions when I know I have a chronic illness that would make that very challenging and worsen my condition) and instead shifting to having patience and working towards things that are more in my favor (like spending my time applying or creating opportunities that allow for freelance/hybrid/fully remote work).

In the forest I learned that having what you truly want takes time, and it’s so much worse to just force it and end up with an quick outcome that could harm you versus just sitting the hell down, being patient, and working hard on the reality you actually want (because going back to the job example, all of the months I spent doing what I call job-application-benders and sending out 100+ job applications really could’ve been used to enhance my freelance portfolio and social media page so that I could attract the clients that I’d like to have so that I could live the remote work lifestyle that I crave so much).

It was such a worthwhile experience and I have honestly been forever changed by it. I can’t even imagine being miserable the way I have ever been in the past again because I feel like I’ve learned too much to ever go back to my prior state of being. I feel like I healed and patched up so many parts of myself. I feel like I got what I needed out there, and am really sad that so many people who could also benefit from this experience may never be able to due to time or resource constraints. I hate that this sort of thing isn’t more accessible to everyone.

Another trippy thing was the amount of joy and happiness that I felt. Not that I shouldn’t or couldn’t be so happy about a camping trip, but it’s more the realization that this is my happy place and a thing that can make me happy. I also had never felt so satisfied in my entire life until this camping trip. I was fully content with just staring outside for hours, reading, talking with my husband, and slowing down. It was all very new for me and so, so fulfilling.

Things that I feel are societal conventions of happiness and enjoyment have never really rung true for me. Partying, drinking, and even drugs have all been things that I have engaged in (begrudgingly so in some cases) because I donno, I just thought that those were the makings of enjoying life (especially as an adult). It felt like everyone else was having a lot of fun bar hopping or staying up late to party or consuming as much of their desired substance as possible that I felt something had to be wrong with me because nothing I did truly made me happier. It had just never occurred to me that my dissatisfaction with doing these things that society says will make me happy meant that maybe I should look towards other things. Maybe I should experiment and just do different things and accept what is truly not for me.

Subscribe now

It took this experience for me to see that those things are just not for me. I didn’t need to escape myself or my life or my situation, I just needed nature. I just needed to do something different than the norm (especially as a Black woman) and find something that was more my speed. Of course I still plan to go out to party a couple of times a year (although these days I do it more sober than anything because my brain is friedddd from substances), but now I finally have the answer that I’ve been looking for. If I’m seeking true happiness and satisfaction that makes life feel like it’s worth living for, I’ve got to go into the woods. I finally have a button that I can just press when I’m feeling blue and seeking joy and it feels so good.

In retrospect, now that I’m back from vacation and I look at myself in the mirror, I can really tell that I needed every ounce of that experience. I’m covered in crazy deep tan lines, my eyes look more rested and clear, my body feels way less tense (save for the soreness from the long ass drive). I can literally see in the mirror how much better I feel, and I can’t believe that I didn’t take a vacation sooner.

On another note, I genuinely can’t believe that no one, and I mean no one in my life told me that I needed a vacation. I can’t believe that none of the loved ones in my life thought to tell me, “Damn girl, you are so stressed/going through it/fuckin’ miserable/a lil off your rocker/in dire need of some healing and could use a vacation.” Not to put the onus or responsibility on anyone in my life of course, but I feel like the tension in my face and body were the cries for help that I couldn’t identify in my own reflection.

But to be honest, if I couldn’t identify that level of stress within myself, then maybe no one truly realized how stressed I was from the outside. Maybe I was masking a lil too well to the point where I even fooled myself.

So, what now? Well, I’ve still only just gotten back from my experience. I’ve been really depressed as my constant dopamine hits of nature have come to a close and I’m back to living a normal life (crying as often as needed has been very helpful for moving through this readjustment).

I have a lot of cabin learnings to integrate into my city slicker lifestyle so that I can proceed in a space of joy and love for myself and my life. I’m going to be less rigid and black and white with life and understand that the gray area is where the life of my dreams exists. I’m going to make a concerted effort to move intentionally in the directions that I actually want to move in life and not feel so pressured by what I “should” be doing. I’m going to have the courage to live my life as I feel I should live it, because I am finally recognizing that I have always known exactly what I’ve wanted, I’ve just been too scared to commit to it.