“You should do this. You’re made for it.”

And preferably with excellent timing and slightly cinematic lighting. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work like that. Sometimes nobody is coming to give you the permission you keep waiting for. And even more annoyingly, sometimes you haven’t actually given it to yourself either.

I’ve noticed this in little ways. I’ll say I want something: a particular career, a certain kind of life, a creative project, a move, a bigger version of myself. And then I’ll immediately look around to see who agrees.

Does my family think it’s sensible? Will my friends understand? Will people think I’m being unrealistic? Does someone else think I’m talented enough? Would this look impressive from the outside? And somewhere in all that noise, I forget to ask the only question that really matters:

Do I want it?

Not because it sounds good, not because it makes me look ambitious, not because someone else would be impressed, not because I’ve spent years imagining how good it would feel to tell people I did it. Do I actually want it?

There’s a strange thing about wanting something for yourself. It becomes much less glamorous. Nobody has to clap. Nobody has to understand. You might have to work on it when you’re tired, you might have to be bad at it for a while, you might have to keep going when nobody is watching. And that’s when you find out whether it was really yours. Because wanting something for validation is very different from wanting something badly enough to tolerate the boring parts.

I think we romanticize ambition. We talk about the dream. The launch. The promotion. The book. The company. The beautiful apartment. The airport photograph after you’ve finally “made it.”

We don’t talk enough about the months where absolutely nothing is happening.

The applications that go nowhere, or the unanswered emails, the first drafts that are terrible, the awkward beginnings, the moments where you wonder if you’re being delusional. That’s the part where external validation becomes addictive.

You want someone to come along and say:

“Don’t worry. This will work.”

But they can’t. Because they don’t know. And neither do you.

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There have been moments in my life where I wanted something very badly, but mostly because I wanted the person I would become after getting it.

I wanted the confidence. The recognition. The story.

The version of myself who could finally say, See? I told you I could.

And there’s nothing wrong with wanting those things. But eventually you have to separate the achievement from the applause. Because what happens if nobody notices?

What happens if you get it and it doesn’t magically fix how you feel? What happens if you spend years chasing something only to realize you wanted to be admired for having it more than you wanted the thing itself?

That’s a particularly expensive realization.

I’ve also learned that other people can’t always want something for you. They can love you, they can encourage you, they can see potential in you that you don’t see yet. But they can’t manufacture your desire.

Someone can tell you you’re talented a hundred times. If you don’t believe it enough to keep practicing, it won’t change much. Someone can tell you to leave a situation. You still have to be ready to walk away. Someone can tell you that you deserve more. Eventually, you have to believe it enough to demand more.

I have always had this very simple way of looking at ambition. Do the work. Don’t obsess over whether everyone understands it. And keep going. I’ve found that increasingly difficult and increasingly useful.

Because we’re living in a time where everything is measurable: followers, likes, salary, titles, views, reactions.

Even personal growth somehow has analytics now. It’s very easy to confuse being successful with being visibly successful. But some of the most important things you’ll ever do will be invisible for a very long time.

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There is also something deeply liberating about deciding: I want this.

No committee meeting. No poll. No permission slip. No unanimous approval.

Just you.

And that doesn’t mean you become arrogant, quite the opposite. It means you become responsible. If you want it, you have to show up for it. If you believe in it, you have to protect it. If you choose it, you have to accept that some people won’t understand.

That’s the trade.

Maybe that’s why I’ve become so drawn to women who seem very certain about their own lives. Not necessarily women who have everything figured out. Women who simply seem to know what belongs to them. They don’t constantly ask whether their choices make sense to everyone else. They don’t need five people to validate an instinct.

They can say:

“This is what I want.”

And somehow that’s enough.

I want to become that kind of woman. Not because I want to be fearless. But because I’m tired of outsourcing my certainty.

And maybe you are too. Maybe you’ve been waiting for someone to tell you that you’re ready. That you’re talented, that you’re allowed to start, that you’re allowed to leave, that you’re allowed to want something bigger, that you’re not being ridiculous.

So let me say the annoying thing:

You might have to believe yourself first.

Before the opportunity, before the recognition, before the applause, even before anyone else sees it.

You have to be the person who keeps showing up when the evidence is still very small.

Because eventually, if you keep going, people may start believing in you. They may say they always knew you could do it. They may tell you how obvious it was. Smile politely.

We don’t need to correct them. They weren’t there for the uncertain beginning. You were.

And that’s the part that matters. Because the most satisfying version of success isn’t hearing someone else say, “I knew you could.” It’s being able to look back and say: “I knew I wanted this. And I chose it before anyone else did.”

Maybe that’s where real self-belief begins. Not when everyone else finally sees you. But when you stop needing them to.

I’ve asked myself that question more times than I care to count, usually late at night, usually when I’m exhausted, and always when my mind turns a minor discomfort into an epic narrative.

Will I always overanalyze everything?

Will I constantly want more than what I have?

Will I always feel like I’m lagging behind?

Will life always feel just out of reach?

It’s a frightening thought in your twenties, when the future stretches ahead with daunting openness. Yet sometimes, a rough week can feel like a life sentence.

Certain emotions arrive so firmly that you assume they’re here to stay; a lonely afternoon, a stalled career, a friendship that quietly fades, or that vague longing for a life you can’t quite picture. When these feelings linger, your mind starts treating them as identity.

This is just who I am. I’m never satisfied. I hold on too tightly.

I’ll always feel like something’s missing. Maybe. Or maybe you’re just having an ordinary Tuesday.

One of the hardest parts of being young is not having enough history to prove that things shift. You know change happens, you’ve heard the clichés:

“You’ll look back and laugh.”

“This too shall pass.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

They sound nice. They look great on a quote card. But they don’t offer much comfort at 2 a.m., when you’re mentally replaying a conversation from half a year ago.

Still, change comes; quietly, without announcement. You stop thinking about someone, you discover a new favorite place to eat, you relocate, you switch jobs, you befriend people you haven’t even met yet, you grow into a version of yourself that would’ve baffled you two years earlier.

And suddenly, what once felt unshakable becomes a story you tell casually over coffee.

I often think about my younger self, certain that some things would define her forever. Some did. Most didn’t. She believed certain people were irreplaceable. They weren’t. She was convinced her dreams were fixed. They evolved. She had a clear image of how her life should unfold. Thank goodness it didn’t.

We rarely talk about how many versions of ourselves must fade before we become who we’re meant to be.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re supposed to feel settled by now. There’s an odd expectation to have arrived; to have a defined personality, career, city, relationship, routine, even a personal aesthetic. Online, everyone seems to have it figured out. Someone’s launching a “new chapter.” Another moved to Paris. One got engaged. Someone quit their job to make pottery in Bali. Another suddenly loves waking up at six.

Good for them.

Maybe the truth no one shares is this: you never graduate from uncertainty. You just get better at living with it. You learn that happiness and curiosity can coexist. That you can love your life and still desire more. That gratitude and restlessness aren’t mutually exclusive. Some contradictions don’t need solving, they just need space.

There are emotions I feel now that I couldn’t have imagined five years ago. And there are ones I was sure I’d carry forever that I can barely recall. That’s the strange thing about being alive: you’re always becoming someone your past self wouldn’t recognize. The woman who once cried over a small thing might one day counsel others through it. The girl desperate to be chosen might grow into someone who walks away without looking back. The person convinced they needed one specific life might wake up and realize they want something entirely different, not because they failed, but because they grew.

Maybe the real question isn’t:

“Will I feel like this forever?”

But rather:

“What if I don’t?”

What if this version of me is temporary too?

What if the loneliness fades?

What if the confusion clears?

What if this restlessness is leading somewhere?

What if I haven’t even met the people who will make my current life seem small?

What if there are cities, rooms, books, friendships, and versions of myself still waiting to be discovered?

That idea makes the future feel vast. And kinder. We also forget how much ordinary days shape us. Not every shift is dramatic. Sometimes you just wake up and realize you haven’t checked someone’s profile in weeks. Sometimes you stop caring what a particular person thinks. Sometimes you quit trying to impress those who never noticed you. Sometimes you sit alone in a café and realize that you actually enjoy your own company. Sometimes the thing you waited for never happens. And somehow, you’re okay. Not right away. But eventually.

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Maybe that’s all life is:

A series of feelings you thought would last forever, until they didn’t.

A series of selves you believed were final, until they changed.

Places you thought you’d never leave, or even people you thought you’d love indefinitely. Dreams you thought were essential. And yet, you keep moving.

Not always gracefully. Sometimes messily.

Sometimes with questionable fashion choices. Sometimes by booking a flight just to escape your thoughts.

But you keep going.

So will you feel like this forever?

Probably not.

Neither will I.

You’ll feel something else. Then something after that. You’ll become someone new without realizing it happened. And one day, you’ll remember the version of you who was terrified of feeling this way forever. You’ll feel gentle toward her. Maybe even smile. And you’ll understand that she wasn’t stuck. She was simply in one moment of a long, unfolding life.

And moments, as powerful as they feel while we’re in them, have always been temporary.

We have opinions. Soooo many opinions. They’re just... suspiciously well-distributed.

The other day, I caught myself saying something about “the death of third places.” Halfway through the sentence, I stopped. Not because I disagreed with it. But because I genuinely couldn’t remember where I’d first heard it. Was it something I’d observed? Or something I’d absorbed? the distinction suddenly felt important.

I think this happens to all of us. You listen to enough podcasts. Watch enough YouTube essays. Read enough newsletters. Eventually your brain becomes less of a home and more of a really well-organized waiting room for other people’s ideas. It’s not that you’re unintelligent. You’re just... full. You’ve just consumed so much content?

The internet rewards speed. Have an opinion immediately, react immediately, understand immediately, pick a side immediately. But interesting thoughts are usually embarrassingly slow (atleast mine are!) They need silence, boredom, really long walks, missed flights, wind in your hair, coffee that gets cold because you forgot you were drinking it. and guess what? the algorithm hates all of those things.

I think we’ve confused information with thinking. They’re cousins. Not twins. Reading twenty essays about architecture doesn’t mean you’ve had a thought about architecture. It means you’ve collected references. The thought comes later. Usually when you’re brushing your teeth. Or sitting on a plane. Or staring out of the window for no reason at all. Your brain quietly starts connecting things nobody else connected for you.

That’s thinking.

One of the reasons I love travelling is because it interrupts my brain. I’ll be walking through a department store in Paris and suddenly wonder why luxury feels quieter there. Or I’ll spend an hour in a Seoul bookstore asking myself why Korean bookstores feel more like living rooms than retail spaces. Nobody handed me those questions.

The city did, curiosity did, original thoughts usually begin with original experiences. This is one of the very core reasons why I love doing brunches in open spaces with wind gushing, the food spread, the smell of coffee; and even though you’d be doing so much, you’d still have room for your thoughts.

Here’s something I’ve started doing. Whenever I hear an opinion that everyone seems to agree with, I ask myself one question. Do I actually believe this?

Not,

“Does this sound smart?”

Not,

“Will people agree?”

Just...do I believe it? Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes I realize I’ve been renting someone else’s opinion for months.

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I also think we’ve become slightly afraid of changing our minds. The internet remembers everything. So we cling to opinions long after we’ve outgrown them. But some of the most intelligent people I’ve met change their minds constantly. Not because they’re inconsistent. Because they’re paying attention.

I read a lot. Probably too much. I read books, essays, articles, linkedin posts even (when I’m feeling unusually optimistic). But I’ve realized something. Reading isn’t where my writing comes from. Living is. The reading simply gives me better language for things I’d already begun noticing. That’s an important difference.

I think that’s why I don’t completely understand the obsession with becoming “that girl.” Everyone seems to be consuming the same morning routines. The same books, the same cafés, the same apartments and interiors, the same wardrobes (remember the Carolyn Bessett trend?). Then we wonder why everybody suddenly sounds the same. Originality isn’t hiding behind another recommendation list. It’s usually hiding behind the thing nobody filmed.

Here’s my completely unscientific guide to having more original thoughts. You have to get bored, and you have to leave some room for your thoughts. Read books from people who disagree with each other. Travel without an itinerary once in a while. Spend less time consuming hot takes and more time noticing ordinary things. Write before you scroll. Visit museums. Talk to people outside your industry. Call your grandparents. Sit in cafés without headphones. Stop Googling every tiny question immediately. Let your mind wander long enough to answer some of them itself.

The best ideas I’ve ever had didn’t arrive while I was trying to be original. They arrived while I was paying attention. To a conversation. To a city. To the way somebody folded a newspaper. To the silence between two friends. To why a beautifully designed hotel makes you breathe differently. Original thoughts don’t appear because you’re trying to have them. They appear because you’ve spent enough time noticing the world that eventually your brain has no choice but to respond.

I don’t think the goal is to become the smartest person in the room. Or the most informed. Or the most well-read. I think the goal is much smaller. Much more difficult. To become someone who can still hear their own voice after listening to everyone else’s. In a world where every algorithm is trying to finish your sentence for you...that might be one of the rarest luxuries left.

The internet has convinced us that good taste is expensive. It isn’t.

The internet has also convinced us that good taste is innate. That isn’t true either.

Good taste isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you accidentally build while paying attention.

A few weeks ago, I walked into a tiny cafe in Bangkok. No viral recommendations.

No TikTok queue outside. No “you’ve got to go here” videos with dramatic background music. Just coffee that had clearly been made by someone who genuinely LOVED coffee.

I spent almost an hour inside, and I still think about it. And that’s when I realized something. People with incredible taste don’t necessarily consume better things.

They notice better things.

We’ve made taste look a lot more glamorous than it actually is. We imagine it as:

• owning The Row

• collecting vintage Cartier

• knowing obscure wines

• staying in boutique hotels

That’s style. That’s luxury. That’s consumption.

Taste starts much earlier than that. Taste begins with attention.

Please stop letting the algorithm raise you, this is probably the least glamorous tip you’ll read. Your taste cannot become interesting if every recommendation comes from the same algorithm feeding everyone else.

If your entire world is:

• TikTok recommendations

• Pinterest moodboards

• “Top 10 cafés in Paris”

• “Must-buy luxury items”

your taste will slowly become... everyone else’s.

Algorithms optimize for familiarity. Taste grows through surprise.

Read outside your lane. Fashion people should read history. Design people should read novels. Marketing people should visit museums. Luxury lovers should study architecture. People with genuinely interesting taste rarely stay inside one category.

Everything informs everything else. You start noticing that a beautiful restaurant and a beautiful magazine often share the same philosophy. That fashion borrows from cinema. That perfume behaves like memory. That architecture teaches restraint. Taste is interdisciplinary.

One of the quickest ways to improve your taste is to become curious about how things are made. Not because it makes you smarter, because it slows you down.

Ask questions.

Why is Japanese denim different?

Why does hand-thrown ceramic feel different from factory-made pottery?

Why do certain hotels feel calm before you’ve even checked in?

The answer is almost never “because it’s expensive.”

It’s because someone cared. Taste begins where care begins.

I have a rule when I travel now. For every place the internet tells me to visit, I have to leave room for one place I simply stumble upon. Sometimes it’s terrible. Sometimes it’s magical. But almost always, it’s memorable. Some of my favorite cafés don’t even have Instagram pages. Some of my favorite meals happened because I got lost. Good taste isn’t just collecting recommendations. It’s collecting experiences that nobody could have predicted for you.

You don’t have to like everything that’s considered tasteful. In fact, please don’t.

The most interesting people I know have preferences that make absolutely no sense together. They’ll adore minimalist architecture and unapologetically love terrible 2000s rom-coms. They collect vintage furniture but drink instant coffee.

They own beautiful art books and still cry watching reality television. That’s taste. Not perfection. Personality.

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You don’t need a new wardrobe every season, or to understand why you keep reaching for the same white shirt. Why one perfume makes you feel different from another. Why one hotel stays with you years later. Why one chair makes you want to sit longer than the others. The people with extraordinary taste ask why far more often than they ask what.

The internet has us obsessed with aesthetics. I think we should become obsessed with expertise instead. The florist who’s spent thirty years learning flowers. The tailor who notices details nobody else sees. The barista who can explain where your coffee was grown. The bookseller who recommends something you’ve never heard of.

Spend time around people who know things. Their standards quietly become yours.

Accept that taste takes time. This is the part nobody wants to hear. Good taste is slow.

It’s built through:

• bad purchases

• disappointing restaurants

• ugly apartments

• books you never finished

• outfits that looked much better in your head

You don’t develop discernment by getting everything right. You develop it by remembering what didn’t feel like you.

Lately, I’ve stopped thinking of taste as “choosing the best things.” I think it’s something much simpler. It’s choosing things that continue to make sense to you years later. Not because they’re trendy. Not because they’re expensive. Not because someone online approved of them. But because they’ve quietly become part of your life.

So... how do you have disgustingly good taste?

Pay attention.

Read widely.

Travel curiously.

Care about craft.

Question trends.

Support people who make beautiful things.

Let yourself love uncool things.

And perhaps most importantly...

Stop trying to look like someone with good taste. Start becoming someone who notices beauty before everyone else does. The rest has a funny way of following.

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Whenever something didn’t work out, whenever plans changed. Whenever life looked different from what I’d imagined.

He’d shrug, smile, and say,

“What’s meant for you will always happen.

When I was younger, I thought it was just something parents said to make their children feel better.

Like,
“Everything happens for a reason.”

Or,
“Something better is coming.”

Comforting.

Predictable. A little cliché, if I’m honest.

But the older I get, the more I realize he wasn’t trying to comfort me.

He was trying to teach me how to live.

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I’ve always been an overthinker, the kind of person who replays conversations in the shower, who imagines twelve different futures before breakfast, who thinks every decision is somehow life-defining.

So naturally, I spent years believing that if I just planned well enough...

If I worked hard enough, or if I made all the right decisions...life would unfold exactly as I’d designed it. It didn’t.

Thankfully.

There are so many things I desperately wanted that never happened.

Jobs. Friendships. People. Cities. Versions of myself.

At the time, every single one felt catastrophic. I genuinely believed my life had taken a wrong turn.

But looking back now...almost every closed door quietly redirected me somewhere I would’ve never chosen for myself. And somehow, almost always, it made sense later.

Not immediately, never immediately, but eventually.

I don’t think my dad meant that life is predetermined, or that effort doesn’t matter.

He definitely wouldn’t agree with that. He’s one of the hardest-working people I know.

I think what he meant was something softer.

Do your part, show up, work hard, love people well, take the opportunity, apply for the job, board the flight, send the email. And then..release your grip.

Because after a certain point, life belongs to timing, not just effort.

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We’re obsessed with control, especially my generation. We optimise everything- morning routines, career plans, relationships. five-year goals.

We’re constantly trying to engineer the perfect outcome. As if life is an equation that rewards good behaviour.

But it isn’t. Sometimes you do everything right..and it still doesn’t happen.

Sometimes you barely have a plan..and everything falls beautifully into place. Life has always been slightly chaotic. That’s part of its charm.

I remember not getting something I wanted a few years ago. I was devastated, completely convinced I’d missed my one chance.

I called my dad. Before I could finish explaining why the world was ending, he interrupted me. He laughed. Actually laughed. Then he said,

“If it’s yours, nobody can take it from you.”

I think about that conversation all the time now.

One of the hardest things about growing up is accepting that effort and outcome are not the same thing. You can be brilliant and overlooked, kind and misunderstood, ready and still have to wait. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed, sometimes it just means the story isn’t finished yet.

There’s another part of my dad’s sentence that I didn’t understand until recently. If what’s meant for you will happen...then what’s not meant for you probably won’t.

No matter how tightly you hold on. No matter how convincing your arguments are. No matter how many signs you think you’ve found. And maybe that’s not punishment. Maybe it’s protection. I know that’s an overused word now.

But sometimes I genuinely wonder how many things I would’ve forced if life had let me. I’m incredibly grateful it didn’t.

This belief has made me calmer.

Not passive.

Calmer.

There’s a difference. I still work hard, I still dream ridiculously big, I still care deeply about the outcome. But I no longer believe that every setback is evidence I’ve missed my life. Sometimes it’s just evidence that my life is still unfolding.

Whenever I travel somewhere new, I think about this. Thousands of tiny decisions had to happen for me to end up in that exact café, that exact hotel, that exact conversation, one delayed flight, one cancelled plan, one random recommendation.

And suddenly you’re somewhere you never expected to be, life is stitched together by coincidences that only make sense looking backwards. Never forwards.

So now, whenever something doesn’t go my way, I still feel disappointed. I’m human. I still overthink. I still imagine the life that could’ve been.

But then I also be calm. Certain. Almost amused.

“What’s meant for you will always happen.”

Not because the universe owes you anything, not because life is magically fair, but because there is a strange peace in knowing you’ve done your part.

The rest was never yours to control anyway. And honestly?

I think that’s one of the greatest gifts my father always has given me.

Not certainty about the future, but trust in it.

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I thought there would be this invisible line I’d eventually cross where life would suddenly become... cinematic.

I’d wake up earlier. Read more books. Wear linen. Host dinner parties. Know what coffee to order.

Become one of those women who somehow always have fresh flowers on their dining table. It always felt like I was waiting for someone to hand me that life.

Or at least invite me into it.

I don’t think we talk enough about how much of adulthood is just...waiting.

Waiting for the promotion. Waiting for the text. Waiting until you make more money. Waiting until you move cities. Waiting until you lose ten kilos. Waiting until you have someone to travel with. Waiting until life starts.

And the scary part is that waiting feels incredibly productive. It feels responsible. It feels like planning.

But sometimes it’s just procrastination wearing a nicer outfit.

I realized this one Sunday.

Nothing extraordinary happened. I was sitting at a café by myself.

The kind with beautiful cups, overpriced pastries, and people pretending to read books while occasionally checking Instagram.

(I’m people.)

I remember looking around the room thinking...

Everyone here looks like they’re living the life I keep imagining for myself. Then I looked closer.

One woman was answering work emails. A man had been stirring the same coffee for ten minutes. Someone was crying quietly on the phone. Someone else was clearly on a terrible first date. Nobody was living a movie. They were just living.

And somehow that felt incredibly comforting.

I think social media convinced us that interesting lives are made up of extraordinary moments. Trips to Tokyo, PR invites, tiny restaurants in a city, beautiful homes with impossibly good natural light.

The reality?

Most interesting lives are built on very ordinary Tuesdays. The woman who eventually writes the novel starts by writing one page after dinner. The person who speaks three languages probably spent years sounding embarrassingly bad at all of them. The friend who always seems to have incredible stories usually said yes to things when it would’ve been easier to stay home.

Interesting lives aren’t found. They’re accumulated.

The older I get, the more suspicious I become of the phrase:

“I’ll do it when...”

I’ll learn pottery when work calms down. I’ll travel when I have someone to go with. I’ll wear the nice dress when there’s an occasion. I’ll buy flowers when I move into a bigger apartment. I’ll invite people over when my house looks better.

It’s amazing how many lives are postponed by perfectly reasonable sentences

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I think that’s why I love travelling so much. People always ask what my favourite city is.

Honestly?

It’s usually whichever city makes me pay attention again. Where buying a coffee feels exciting simply because the cup looks different. Where walking to the supermarket becomes an event because you’ve never walked those streets before. Travel doesn’t magically make life more interesting.

It forces you to notice. Maybe that’s the real luxury.

Attention.

We spend so much time imagining that interesting people were simply born that way.

They’re not. They’re curious. They ask questions. They collect hobbies. They wander into bookstores without buying anything. They try restaurants with terrible Google reviews just because something about them felt charming.

They take themselves to museums. They say yes. They also say no. Mostly, they participate in their own lives.

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I used to believe that one day I’d become the kind of person whose life naturally generated stories. Now I think stories happen because people keep showing up. Not because every day is extraordinary. But because they refuse to let every day become identical.

Here’s something I’ve been asking myself lately.

If someone followed me around with a camera for a week...would my life actually be boring?

Or have I just stopped noticing it? Because there is a difference. A huge one.

Maybe nobody is coming to make your life interesting. Not a boyfriend. Not a better job. Not more money. Not a move abroad. Not a prettier apartment.

Those things might enrich your life. They might expand it. But they won’t automatically make you curious.

And curiosity has always been more interesting than circumstance.

So lately I’ve been trying something different. I buy the flowers. I wear the outfit. I go to the exhibition even if nobody else wants to. I order dessert. I sit in cafés without rushing myself out after twenty minutes because I feel guilty. I wander. I notice. I let myself become fascinated by ordinary things again. Not because I’m trying to become the main character. I’m actually tired of that phrase.

Because I finally realized something much simpler. Nobody is coming to make your life interesting.

But the beautiful thing is...nobody is stopping you either.

It’s walking into a café where absolutely nobody knows who I am. No one recognizes me. No one has expectations of me. No one already has a version of me in their head.

I order an iced latte, open a book I may or may not actually finish, and become, for an hour, completely forgettable.

Honestly?

That feels more luxurious than anything money can buy.

I think we’re living in an era where everyone has accidentally become... a brand.

Not just influencers.

Everyone.

You have your “close friends” personality.

Your LinkedIn personality.

Your work personality.

Your Instagram personality.

The version of yourself your family still thinks exists. The version your ex probably tells people about. The version strangers build from three photos and a caption.

It’s exhausting keeping track. Sometimes I wonder if I’m maintaining myself more than I’m actually living.

The funniest part is that I willingly signed up for this. I write online. I post online.

I literally have thoughts for a living. Which means people know me in these tiny, fragmented ways.

Someone thinks I’m the luxury girl. Someone thinks I’m obsessed with Pierre Bourdieu. Someone thinks I only drink coffee and romanticize airports. Someone probably thinks I spend my weekends reading philosophy in a silk slip dress. (I wish.)

The point is...everyone knows a version of me. Almost nobody knows me.

That’s why I love travelling so much.

Not because I love airports. (I do.) Not because I love hotels. (I really do.) But because I love anonymity.

I love being in a city where nobody cares who I am. Where I’m not somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s friend. Somebody’s colleague. Somebody’s expectation.

I’m just... another girl trying to figure out the train system. It’s weirdly freeing.

I remember walking around Bangkok last year. I spent hours in cafés. Tiny bookstores.

Concept stores where everyone looked impossibly well-dressed.

Nobody looked at me twice. Nobody cared.

And I remember thinking:

This is incredible.

Not because I felt invisible. Because I felt... uncomplicated.

There was nothing to explain. No history attached to me. No reputation to maintain. No pressure to be “on.”

Just me.

Ordering another coffee I definitely didn’t need.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve started documenting our lives so consistently that we’ve forgotten what it feels like to have moments that belong only to us. Dinner becomes content. Vacations become photo dumps.

A beautiful hotel becomes an Instagram carousel before it becomes a memory. Even our personalities have become strangely public.

People know:

• your favorite perfume

• your political opinions

• your attachment style

• your morning routine

• your skincare products

• your childhood trauma

And somehow we’re surprised when privacy starts feeling... luxurious.

I don’t think luxury is becoming rarer. I think privacy is. Mystery is.

The ability to exist without immediate interpretation is. Think about the women we still find fascinating.

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

The Olsen twins.

Even old photographs of women in the ‘90s leaving bookstores with no intention of becoming Pinterest inspiration twenty years later.

They didn’t explain themselves. They didn’t caption their lives. They simply existed. Maybe that’s why they still feel so magnetic. There was space for curiosity.

Sometimes I think the most confident people aren’t the ones who are seen the most. They’re the ones who don’t mind disappearing. They don’t need every dinner photographed. Every opinion published. Every achievement announced. They let entire parts of their lives remain beautifully ordinary.

Unwitnessed.

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Lately I’ve been trying something new.

When I discover a really lovely café...I don’t post it immediately. Sometimes I don’t post it at all.

When I buy flowers...I let them sit on my table instead of making them part of my content calendar.

When I have a genuinely beautiful day...I ask myself:

What if this moment doesn’t need an audience to be real?

It’s surprisingly difficult.

Apparently my first instinct now is documentation. I’m trying to replace it with presence. Some days I succeed. Some days I absolutely don’t.

I still love beautiful images. I still love fashion. I still love sharing pieces of my life.

I’m not becoming one of those people who’s going to dramatically announce she’s leaving the internet.

Please.

I’ll probably be posting my coffee tomorrow.

But I do think I’m craving something different.

Less visibility. More intimacy. Less performance. More living.

Maybe that’s the real luxury now. Not having the nicest bag in the room. Not staying at the most exclusive hotel. Not getting invited to the hardest reservation.

Maybe it’s having parts of yourself that remain completely untouched by public opinion.

A favorite restaurant no one knows you love. A weekend no one watched. A version of yourself that exists only for you. Because in a world where everyone is trying so hard to be seen...

There is something unbelievably chic about occasionally disappearing.

I have a confession.

For most of my life, I’ve had this quiet, persistent feeling that I was meant for something bigger.

Not necessarily fame.

Not necessarily success.

Just... something.

Something larger than the life directly in front of me.

Something that would justify all the restlessness.

All the longing.

All the strange certainty I’ve carried around for years without being able to explain where it came from.

And if I’m honest, I think a lot of people secretly feel this way.

We just don’t talk about it because it sounds arrogant.

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The phrase itself makes me cringe a little.

“I was meant for something bigger.”

It sounds like something a teenager writes in her journal after watching one too many coming-of-age films.

It sounds self-important.

Delusional, even.

Because what are you really saying?

That your life is somehow destined to be more significant than other people’s?

That ordinary things aren’t enough for you?

It’s not a particularly likable sentiment.

And yet.

I think many of us carry it anyway.

Quietly.

I used to think this feeling meant I wanted success.

A bigger career.

A more impressive life.

But the older I get, the less convinced I am.

Because every time I achieve something I thought would finally satisfy me, the feeling remains.

Not stronger.

Not weaker.

Just... there.

Waiting.

Like it was never attached to any specific accomplishment in the first place.

Which makes me wonder if the feeling isn’t actually about greatness.

Maybe it’s about possibility.

If you were ever told you had “potential,” you probably know what I’m talking about.

Potential sounds like a compliment.

Until you realize it becomes a debt.

A future version of yourself you’re constantly trying to repay.

You start living with an invisible audience in your head.

Teachers.

Parents.

Friends.

Your younger self.

And they’re all asking the same question:

Are you becoming what you were supposed to become?

It’s an exhausting thing to carry.

Because no achievement ever feels final enough.

There is always another version of you waiting around the corner.

Slightly more accomplished.

Slightly more realized.

Slightly more worthy of all that potential.

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Of course it did.

Now every day we’re exposed to people who seem to be living lives of extraordinary scale.

Twenty-five-year-olds founding companies.

Twenty-two-year-olds buying apartments.

People becoming:

• successful

• influential

• visible

at increasingly alarming speeds.

And suddenly a normal life starts feeling suspicious.

Like you’re missing something.

Like everyone else received instructions for greatness and you somehow misplaced yours.

This is the question I keep coming back to.

What if the feeling that you’re meant for something bigger is not a sign?

What if it’s simply part of being human?

What if every generation has walked around carrying this same ache?

This sense that life is somehow larger than the version they’re currently living.

Not because they were destined for greatness.

But because humans are uniquely capable of imagining futures beyond themselves.

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The biggest lie hidden inside ambition is that one day you’ll arrive.

There will be a moment.

A promotion.

A recognition.

A milestone.

And suddenly you’ll think:

There it is.

That’s the thing I was meant for.

But every successful person I’ve ever met seems haunted by the same restlessness.

The horizon just moves.

The dream gets promoted alongside you.

The destination becomes another starting point.

Lately I’ve been wondering if we’ve misunderstood what “bigger” means.

Maybe bigger doesn’t mean:

• more followers

• more money

• more influence

• more visibility

Maybe it means:

• deeper relationships

• stronger convictions

• richer experiences

• a fuller life

Maybe the feeling was never asking for scale.

Maybe it was asking for meaning.

And those are very different things.

Because here’s the truth.

I still have the feeling.

Even after all this reflection.

Even after trying to intellectualize it.

Part of me still believes there’s something out there I’m supposed to find.

Some version of myself I haven’t met yet.

Some life I haven’t fully stepped into.

And I don’t think that’s entirely unhealthy.

The dilemma is knowing where inspiration ends and dissatisfaction begins.

Knowing when ambition is pulling you forward—

and when it’s preventing you from appreciating where you already are.

Maybe the people who feel they were meant for something bigger aren’t arrogant.

Maybe they’re just sensitive to possibility.

Maybe they can feel multiple versions of their life existing at once.

The one they’re living.

And the one they imagine.

And perhaps growing up is learning to hold both.

To keep reaching without constantly postponing your happiness.

To stay ambitious without treating your current life as a waiting room.

Because maybe you were meant for something bigger.

Or maybe the bigger thing was never a destination at all.

Maybe it was simply becoming fully yourself.

And maybe that’s the hardest ambition of all.

I don’t think we noticed it happening.

Not really.

I think one day we were just people with interests, and then suddenly we became:

• “clean girls”

• “book girls”

• “pilates girls”

• “old money girls”

• “matcha girls”

• “girls who romanticize their lives”

And somehow, all of it started feeling strangely mandatory.

Not in an aggressive way.

In a softer way.
A quieter way.

The kind of conditioning that arrives disguised as self-discovery.

At first, the algorithm felt helpful.

You liked one video about interior design, and suddenly your feed became:

• soft lamps

• linen sheets

• women making coffee slowly in sunlit kitchens

You saved a few posts about fashion and suddenly you had an entirely new visual identity being suggested to you daily.

It felt inspiring.

Like you were “finding yourself.”

But looking back, I’m not sure how much of it was discovery and how much of it was… direction.

The Internet Doesn’t Just Show You Things Anymore

It shapes desire.

That’s the scary part.

You don’t wake up wanting:

• silver ballet flats

• framed black-and-white prints

• a specific kind of relationship dynamic

• expensive olive oil in aesthetically pleasing packaging

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You are taught to want them through repetition.

Slowly.

Constantly.

Until the preference feels natural.

And maybe it is natural by the end. But it wasn’t born in isolation.

The Algorithm Loves an Identity Crisis

Because uncertainty is profitable.

If you’re unsure who you are, you become incredibly easy to market to.

So now every feeling gets turned into an aesthetic category:

• burnout becomes “soft living”

• sadness becomes “girlhood”

• discipline becomes “that girl”

• loneliness becomes “solo dates”

Everything is packaged beautifully enough to feel aspirational instead of alarming.

And honestly? It works.

Because humans want coherence. We want mirrors. We want names for the things we’re feeling.

The algorithm understands this better than we do.

We’re All Becoming Slightly Similar

This is the strangest part.

Everyone talks about self-expression online, but somehow everybody’s apartments, wardrobes, playlists, and morning routines are starting to blur together.

We all have:

• the same candles

• the same fonts

• the same niche interests

• the same “random” personality traits

And I don’t even mean this judgmentally.

I’m in it too.

Sometimes I’ll genuinely think I’ve developed a new preference, only to realize I’ve simply seen it 400 times over the last month.

That’s not intuition.

That’s exposure.

Pierre Bourdieu Would Have Loved This Horrifying Little Era

Bourdieu believed that taste is socially shaped, that our preferences often reflect the environments we’re exposed to rather than some deeply original inner truth.

And social media has accelerated that process beyond anything he could’ve imagined.

Now the environment shaping our taste isn’t just:

• family

• education

• class

• social circles

It’s an endlessly refreshing algorithm studying:

• what pauses your thumb

• what makes you linger

• what version of yourself you seem closest to desiring

And then feeding it back to you.

Over and over.

Until it becomes you.

Or at least, a version of you.

I don’t think people are shallow for this.

I think we’re tired.

And when you’re tired, it feels comforting to be handed an identity.

A routine.
A style.
A personality archetype.

Something that says:

“Here. This is who you could be.”

Especially in your twenties, when so much of life feels emotionally unstable and weirdly undefined.

The algorithm gives structure to people who feel unformed.

Of course we cling to it sometimes.

And, if the algorithm disappeared tomorrow,
what would still feel like you?

Not aesthetically.

Genuinely.

What would you:

• still wear

• still listen to

• still want

• still believe in

without constant visual reinforcement?

It’s a harder question than it sounds.

Maybe None of Us Are Entirely Original

And honestly, maybe that’s okay.

Humans have always copied each other. Trends existed long before TikTok or Instagram.

We’ve always been influenced by:

• our cities

• our friends

• magazines

• films

• people we secretly wanted to become

The difference now is the speed.

And the intimacy.

Your algorithm knows what version of yourself you’re reaching toward before you fully articulate it yourself.

That’s what makes it unsettling.

I don’t think the algorithm created us from nothing.

But I do think it gently edited us.

Repeated certain desires back to us until they felt personal. Smoothed out our edges. Suggested identities we could slip into without too much resistance.

And maybe the real challenge now is not becoming completely untouched by influence, that’s impossible.

Maybe it’s just learning to pause long enough to ask:

Did I choose this?

Or did I simply see it often enough that it started to feel like me?

Not the one you post.
Not the one that knows how to explain itself.
Not the one that’s aware of how it’s coming across.

A quieter one.

The one that reaches for things without thinking about whether they’re good. Or cool. Or aligned.

And lately, I’ve been wondering

Do I even know her anymore?

We don’t think of ourselves as performing.

We think we’re choosing.

But choice, especially now, is rarely untouched.

It’s shaped by:

• what we’ve seen

• what we’ve been told is “good”

• what signals something about us

You don’t just wear something, you represent it.
You don’t just enjoy, you curate.

And slowly, almost invisibly, taste becomes less about instinct
and more about alignment.

There’s a small voice that shows up when you’re about to like something.

It asks:

• Is this too basic?

• Is this trying too hard?

• Does this feel like me?

But what it’s really asking is:

How will this be perceived?

And once that question enters, the moment shifts.

You’re no longer just experiencing something.

You’re evaluating it.

Positioning yourself around it.

Pierre Bourdieu would say this isn’t accidental.

That what we call “taste” is shaped by our environment: our upbringing, our exposure, the spaces we move through.

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We learn what’s:

• refined

• aspirational

• worth liking

And once we learn it, it feels natural.

Like it was always ours.

But sometimes, it isn’t.

Sometimes, it’s just very well internalized.

There are things I used to love that I don’t admit to anymore.

Songs I’d skip if someone else was in the room.
Shows I’d never recommend out loud.
Clothes I quietly retired because they didn’t fit the version of me I was becoming.

Not because I stopped enjoying them.

But because they didn’t translate well.

And that’s when it hit me,

I wasn’t just refining my taste.
I was editing myself.

We like to believe there’s a version of our taste that’s untouched.

Completely ours.

Uninfluenced.

But is that even real?

If you grew up somewhere else,
with different references, different exposures,

Would you like the same things?

Probably not.

And that’s not a failure.

It just means taste is less about truth
and more about context.

So What Happens When No One Is Watching?

It’s a harder question than it sounds.

Because even when you’re alone, you’re not entirely free.

You’ve already absorbed the gaze.

You’ve internalized the standards.

You’ve learned what’s “better.”

So even in private, there’s a version of you that’s still…aware.

Still adjusting.

Still choosing carefully.

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But If You Sit With It Long Enough…

Something starts to loosen.

Not immediately. Not dramatically.

But slowly, you begin to notice:

• what you reach for without overthinking

• what holds your attention when there’s nothing to prove

• what you return to, even when it doesn’t elevate you

It’s quieter than your curated taste.

Less impressive.

But more honest.

They’re not always cohesive.

Not always refined.

Not always “on brand.”

They’re:

• slightly chaotic

• emotionally driven

• sometimes contradictory

And that used to bother me.

Because it didn’t fit the narrative I had built.

But now, it feels like relief.

Because for once, it’s not about being consistent.

It’s about being real.

The harder part isn’t discovering your unfiltered taste.

It’s allowing it to exist publicly.

Because once you do, you risk:

• being misunderstood

• not fitting neatly into an identity

• losing the approval that comes with being “well-curated”

And that’s uncomfortable.

Because we’ve been taught that coherence is desirable.

That your taste should make sense.

Maybe your taste can be:

• inconsistent

• evolving

• occasionally questionable

Maybe it doesn’t need to signal anything.

Maybe it can just… exist.

“What would I like if no one was watching?” isn’t a question you answer once.

It’s something you return to.

Again and again.

Each time peeling back a layer of what you’ve learned, absorbed, performed.

Not to reject it all,

but to make space for something underneath it.

Something less polished.

Less strategic.

More yours.

Because maybe the goal isn’t to have perfect taste.

It’s to have taste that doesn’t feel like it’s constantly being observed.

Even when it is.

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I don’t struggle with being alone.

I look forward to it.

Not in a dramatic, “I hate people” way; but in a quieter, more deliberate way. The kind where silence feels like a reset, not an absence. Where time stretches a little, softens around the edges, becomes yours again.

Being alone, for me, has never felt like something to fix.

It feels like something I return to.

There’s a very specific shift that happens the first time you realise you enjoy your own company.

Not tolerate it. Not distract yourself through it.

Enjoy it.

You sit somewhere; maybe a café, maybe your room, maybe just a long walk and there’s no urgency to fill the space. No need to reach for your phone. No subtle anxiety humming underneath.

Just you.

And it feels… enough.

Not in a performative, “I’m so independent” way.

But in a deeply grounding, almost private way.

Solitude as Clarity

When you spend enough time alone, things start to rearrange themselves.

You notice:

• what you actually like (without influence)

• what you’re drawn to when no one is watching

• what your thoughts sound like when they’re not interrupted

It’s subtle at first.

But then it becomes something sharper, almost like clarity cutting through noise you didn’t realise you were carrying.

You start separating:

• what you want
  vs

• what you’ve been absorbing from everyone else

And that distinction changes everything.

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The Luxury of Not Performing

There is something incredibly freeing about not being perceived.

No micro-adjustments.
No soft self-editing.
No awareness of how you’re coming across.

When you’re alone, you don’t have to be:

• interesting

• agreeable

• emotionally legible

You don’t have to explain yourself.

You don’t even have to understand yourself fully.

You just get to exist, without translating that existence into something consumable.

And in a world that constantly asks you to be seen, that kind of invisibility feels like luxury.

But Here’s Where It Shifts

Loving solitude is one thing.

Turning it into an identity is another.

Because somewhere along the way, it becomes easy to start saying:

• “I prefer being alone”

• “I don’t really need people like that”

• “I’m just someone who enjoys my own company more”

And again, there’s truth in that.

But if you’re not careful, solitude can quietly become something you cling to.

Not just as a space but as a definition.

When Being Alone Becomes Who You Are

There’s a subtle line between choosing solitude and hiding inside it.

And it’s not always obvious when you cross it.

It looks like:

• cancelling plans not because you need rest, but because it’s easier

• convincing yourself that connection is optional, not meaningful

• becoming so comfortable alone that anything else feels like disruption

You tell yourself you’re protecting your peace.

And sometimes, you are.

But sometimes, you’re also avoiding the complexity that comes with letting people in.

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The Awakening No One Talks About

Here’s what solitude has actually taught me:

Not how to be alone forever.

But how to be fully myself when I am.

It’s where I’ve:

• understood my patterns

• softened my reactions

• learned what genuinely excites me

• realised what I was settling for

It’s where I’ve become more honest; with myself, first.

And that honesty changes how you show up everywhere else.

Because when you know yourself in private, you don’t need to perform as much in public.

You Can Love Being Alone Without Closing Yourself Off

This is the part that matters.

You don’t have to choose between:

• solitude
  or

• connection

You can deeply enjoy your own company and still allow space for others.

You can:

• protect your time

• cherish your independence

• build a life that feels full on your own

And still be open.

Still be curious.
Still be willing to disrupt your solitude for something that feels real.

The Soft Discipline of Returning to Yourself

Being alone isn’t a statement.

It’s a practice.

Something you come back to, not to escape the world, but to understand how you want to exist in it.

And the more you do it, the less you need to prove anything about it.

You stop:

• romanticising it

• explaining it

• building an identity around it

Because it becomes quieter than that.

More internal.

I love being alone.

Not because I don’t need people.

But because it’s the only place where everything becomes clear again.

Where I can hear myself without interference.
Where I can reset without performing.
Where I can exist without being interpreted.

But I don’t want to turn that into who I am.

Because the point of solitude was never to replace connection.

It was to make sure that when I choose it,

I’m choosing it from a place of knowing, not avoidance.

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You know it.
It’s in the way someone recommends a film without hesitation.
Orders at a restaurant without scanning the menu twice.
Curates a playlist that somehow feels like a personality.

For a long time, I thought I had that.

I thought my taste in books, clothes, music, even people; was mine. Carefully chosen. Intuitively refined. Almost… earned.

But lately, I’ve been wondering:

What if it isn’t taste at all?
What if it’s just training?

The Quiet Architecture of Taste

There’s a concept by Pierre Bourdieu called habitus.

It sounds academic (it is), but the idea is disarmingly simple:

Your preferences are shaped by the environment you grow up in: your family, your class, your culture, and they feel natural to you because you’ve never known otherwise.

In other words, what you call “taste” might just be familiarity wearing a nicer outfit.

The books you think are “well-written.”
The clothes you think are “effortless.”
The kind of people you find “interesting.”

You didn’t stumble upon them.
You were slowly, invisibly introduced to them.

My Hand-Me-Down Tastes

If I’m being honest, a lot of what I like doesn’t actually belong to me.

It was passed down.

1. My Family’s Taste

Growing up, there were unspoken rules:

• Loud colors were “tacky”

• Certain music was “classy,” others “cringe”

• Restaurants were judged by ambience, not just food

I didn’t question it. I absorbed it.

Even now, I sometimes reject things instinctively; not because I dislike them, but because they don’t fit what I was taught to like.

2. School & Social Conditioning

There was a phase where liking obscure things made you feel smarter.

So I trained myself to:

• Prefer indie films over mainstream ones

• Say I liked books I barely understood

• Develop opinions that sounded “informed”

Looking back, I wasn’t discovering taste.
I was performing it.

3. The Internet’s Influence

Then came the algorithm.

Suddenly, taste wasn’t just inherited, it was optimized.

• Pinterest told me what “aesthetic” looked like

• Instagram told me what “cool” looked like

• Substack told me what “intellectual” sounded like

And without realizing it, I started curating myself accordingly.

Not consciously.
But consistently.

4. People I Loved (and Wanted to Be Liked By)

This one is harder to admit.

There are songs I love because someone once loved them.
Writers I admire because someone admired them first.
Even certain “types” I’m drawn to…because they once chose me.

Taste, in this sense, becomes relational.

You don’t just like things.
You inherit emotional associations with them.

The Performance of “Good Taste”

Here’s the uncomfortable part:

Sometimes, “good taste” is just knowing the right answers.

• Knowing which director to mention

• Which café to recommend

• Which brand signals “effortless” instead of “trying too hard”

It’s a language.

And like any language, you can learn it.

You can become fluent in appearing like someone who has taste, without ever asking:

Do I actually enjoy this?

A Small, Honest Audit

If you’re up for it, here’s a quiet way to test your own taste.

No judgment. Just curiosity.

Ask yourself:

• What do I like when no one is watching?

• What do I defend publicly but don’t revisit privately?

• Which preferences make me feel safe vs genuinely excited?

• If I had grown up in a completely different environment, what would I like instead?

• What did I once love but abandoned because it didn’t fit my current identity?

And maybe the hardest one:

• What do I like that I’m slightly embarrassed about?

That answer is often closer to you than anything you’ve carefully curated.

I once spent an entire evening pretending to enjoy a film I didn’t understand.

Everyone around me spoke about it like it was genius. Layered. Important.

So I nodded. Added a few vague thoughts. Said things like “the pacing was intentional.”

But on the way home, I felt oddly disconnected.

Not from the film, but from myself.

Because I realized:

I had chosen belonging over honesty.

And maybe that’s what a lot of “good taste” really is.

So… What Is Real Taste?

Maybe it’s not about rejecting everything you’ve absorbed.

That would be impossible.

Maybe it’s about noticing it.

Separating:

• What you genuinely enjoy
  vs

• What you’ve been taught to appreciate

And allowing both to exist, without pretending they’re the same.

You don’t have to dismantle your entire identity.

You don’t have to stop liking what you like.

But maybe, just maybe, you can hold your taste a little more lightly.

Question it.
Play with it.
Let it surprise you.

Because the goal isn’t to have perfect taste.

It’s to have honest taste.

And that might look less impressive.

But it feels a lot more like your own.

“Gifted child.”
“So mature for your age.”
“You’re going to do something big.”

Teachers said it. Family said it. Sometimes even strangers said it after hearing a few details about my life. I collected those words like proof, like receipts. Somewhere along the way, they became less like compliments and more like a debt I owed the world.

If everyone keeps telling you you’re special, you start to believe two things:

1. That you are somehow exempt from the ordinary.

2. That if your life ever looks ordinary, it means you’ve failed.

It’s a terrible way to grow up.

The background hum of “not enough”

There’s a specific kind of fear that lives inside ambitious people who were told they were “meant for more.” It doesn’t scream. It hums.

It whispers when you scroll through LinkedIn and see your peers raising funding, speaking at panels, launching brands, moving abroad. It pokes you when you see engagement posts, baby announcements, apartment tours, “I got into my dream school” carousels. It stirs when someone younger than you has already done what you thought you’d do “someday.”

The fear isn’t just, “I’m behind.” It’s more insidious:
“What if I’m actually… just… normal?”

What if this is it?
What if my life is just deadlines, group chats, a confusing love life, and a few nice holidays a year?
What if I never write the book, start the movement, build the empire, become the name?

And then another part of you chimes in:
“Do you hear yourself? Other people would be grateful for this life. You’re being ungrateful.”

So now you’re not just scared of being ordinary; you’re also ashamed of being scared of being ordinary. Excellent. A layered cake of neurosis.

The algorithm only shows us extremes

It doesn’t help that our world is absolutely obsessed with the outliers.

Our feeds are a curated museum of the most photogenic moments of the most unusual lives. Viral “day in my life” videos from 23-year-old CEOs. Couples who work remotely from different countries every month. People who went from zero to multi-million anything in two years. Hyper-productive, hyper-pretty, hyper-interesting.

We rarely see the in-between: the long, uneventful phase where people were just quietly trying and failing and trying again. We don’t see the years where they were nobody in particular.

So we compare our entire, continuous life to someone else’s highlight montage and feel smaller by the second.

The ordinary starts to look like a personal shortcoming instead of… the default of being human.

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Who taught us that “ordinary” is an insult?

When I really sit with this fear, I realise it’s not entirely my own. I inherited it.

It came from adults who bragged about us like we were trophies. From school systems that only rewarded the top 5%. From narratives where the hero is always the one who breaks free from the crowd and becomes extraordinary.

We were never taught how to be content being “just one of many.”
We were told to “stand out” long before we were ever taught how to simply belong.

Even in luxury, in fashion, in this world I work in now, the language is always about being iconic, unforgettable, one of one. No brand wants to be ordinary. No founder wants to say, “My dream is to build something… fine. Respectable. Quietly good.”

But sometimes, when I’m honest, I look around and realise: most of the people who hold my life together are exactly that. Not legends. Not icons. Just good, solid, ordinary people doing their jobs, loving their families, showing up.

The exhaustion of being “promising”

I think there’s a unique type of grief in letting go of the fantasy that you are destined for some spectacular exception.

It doesn’t mean you won’t do beautiful work. It doesn’t mean you won’t be deeply loved. It doesn’t even mean you won’t achieve extraordinary things.

It just means accepting that you are not the exemption to every rule of human life.

You, too, will have seasons of boredom, of stagnation, of trying things that go nowhere. You, too, will experience mediocrity in at least some areas of your life. You, too, will make choices you can’t fully optimise.

There is so much pressure in the word “promising.” It keeps you in an endless rehearsal. You are always about to become. Always almost there. Always a draft, never the text.

At some point, you have to decide:
Do I want to keep living as a promise, or do I want to live as a person?

The ordinariness that secretly saves us

I think about the ordinary moments that have quietly saved me:

A late-night phone call with a friend where nothing got solved but I slept better.
The barista who remembers my order and asks how my week was.
My mother sending me a photo of the sky and saying, “This reminded me of you.”
A random Tuesday evening where I read in bed with no plans and no makeup and no witnesses.

None of these would make a good pitch deck. They won’t go in any biography. They’re not proof that I’m extraordinary. They are proof that I’m alive.

The older I get, the more I realise how fragile these small consistencies are, and how lucky I am to have them at all.

When life gets harsh: a health scare, a loss, a breakup, a money problem, it is rarely the “special” parts of our life that hold us. It’s the persisting ordinariness:

The friend who shows up.
The family group chat.
The way your body still knows how to sleep, how to shower, how to make breakfast, even when your brain is on fire.

There is a sturdiness in the ordinary that exceptional moments simply do not have.

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The luxury of a life that’s allowed to be unremarkable

It’s ironic: many of us work in or orbit around luxury, an industry that sells exception, rarity, uniqueness. And yet, if you zoom out far enough, being allowed to live an ordinary life is its own rare privilege.

It means you’re not at war.
You’re not fighting for basic survival every single day.
You are allowed the emotional bandwidth to even ask, “Am I special enough?”

It’s a luxury to be neurotic about self-actualisation.

Of course, that doesn’t cancel out the genuine ache of wanting more. I’m not interested in guilt-tripping anyone out of their dreams. I still want a big life in many ways: impact, art, beauty, deep love, interesting work.

But I’m trying to stop insulting the parts of my life that don’t look like a highlight reel.

Ordinary mornings. Ordinary chores. Ordinary conversations.
These are not failures of branding; they are the fabric of existence.

You are not a headline, you are a whole story

The fear of being ordinary will probably visit me for a long time. It will show up when I see big news about people my age. It will show up on birthdays. It will show up when I’m scrolling late at night and find myself comparing my behind-the-scenes to someone else’s carefully edited front.

When it does, I want to remember this:

The world doesn’t need me to be a constant spectacle. The people who love me don’t love me because I am “exceptional.” They love me because I answer the phone, remember their favourite food, show up when I say I will, send them stupid memes, hold their hand in waiting rooms, sit on the floor with them while they cry.

None of this is special in the way TED talks and magazine profiles and viral posts define special. But in the tiny universe of our lives, it is everything.

You are not a headline. You are not a LinkedIn bio. You are not a “rising star” paragraph in someone else’s presentation deck.

You are a full story, with boring chapters and brilliant chapters and chapters that are just you doing your best on a random Wednesday.

If being ordinary means having enough love, enough beauty, enough curiosity, enough stability to keep going, then maybe ordinary is not something to fear.

Maybe the real fear should be waking up at 60 and realising you spent your entire life trying to be impressive instead of present.

I still want to do things that matter. I still want to write, build, create, love loudly.

But if, in the end, what I have is a life that was honest and kind and full of small, good days, I hope I’ll be brave enough to call that what it really is:

Not a failure.
Not a fallback.
Just a quietly extraordinary ordinary life.

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