I think I’ve earned the title of queen of fuck around and find out.

On a regular Sunday morning, two hot cortados sat in between me and Winston while he did the NYT crossword puzzle and I read my book. Early morning dog walkers passed us by and sniffed at his feet. Everything felt so still. He glanced up at me, catching my eyes on him. “What?” he asked. I smirked. What’s hilarious about relationships is how few words you start to need over the years to communicate once you know each other so well. His chest rose and dropped with a deep sigh. Looking back down at his phone, he said, “Oh Keyla, what are you plotting now?” I giggled. It was all so romantic, to be read like that. To be seen. “Are you going to freak out?” I asked. He locked his phone and placed it face down on the table. We both picked up our coffees, letting the steam rise to our faces, warming our cheeks from the summer morning breeze. I smiled.

“I think I’m going to quit my job.”

Over the last three months, something shifted in me.

For some people, inspiration is harmless. They digest the feeling, have a quick thought, and maybe bookmark it for later. ME? Absolutely dangerous. The second I am inspired or have any sort of clarity on my desires, I MUST take action. Like, the gap between ideation and execution absolutely fears me.

As we all know, I went to France in June. It was a calm trip, really: pastries in the morning, long walks in the afternoon, and a lavish dinner with a skinny cig and Chardonnay to top it off. What had happened was, I painted this picture of myself in my mind where I traveled like that as I pleased. No one to request PTO from, no guilt for not checking my email, and nothing to do but maybe browse a bookstore and scribble one-liners in my Notes app to add to my novel draft later that night (I’m officially actually writing, y’all, with like real goals this time). I imagined myself 3x the size. Metaphorically. A published author, an avid writer, a creative guru working with other like-minded people to accomplish their biggest creative goals. I let this script run all the way to a happy ending that felt so right.

This daydream literally energized me. The clarity comforted me. I swear, it was like I was already her. Those small visions carried me the whole trip, from Paris to Cannes.

In Cannes, surrounded by so many women with such unconventional careers and lives, there was no way that it wouldn’t have an impression on me. I was absolutely inspired. And gagged. It’s one thing to work with creators and entrepreneurs on a project and another thing to live with them for a weekend in a massive mansion of a villa, seeing their thought processes and lifestyles up close.

Commence the skin shedding.

When I got back to New York, settling back into the routine and shell of a human I left behind was absolutely impossible. There was just no way. Every day, my anger ate at me, knowing that there’s a version of me that exists that is so damn close, but not here with me yet. I envied her. Future me. Her routines, her mindset, and her determination. Have you ever experienced that? Hating your future self because she’s already there and you’re still here?

I sat with myself and basically workshopped the entire Venn diagram between me and future me. What she does every day, what she eats, how she talks, how she dresses, and overall who she is. And like I said, the idea-to-execution gap fears me because of my one major superpower: my relationship with risk.

The first time I quit my job with no plan, I wasn’t even terrified. I had taken a job freshly post-grad that I realized was a dead end. I lived at home, my only bill was a $300 car note, and the entitlement of my 23-year-old mind was alive and well. I left that job with nothing lined up and got a new offer within 2 weeks that ended up being 2x my original salary and in a career-growth role.

The second time I did it, I had 5x the bills and I was changing industries. I quit a really good job in tech to pursue the creative industry, and I had exactly 4 weeks to figure it out without having to touch my savings. I closed a freelance contract on the last day of that 4th week. The third time I did it was to leave New York and take a month-long contract job in Mexico City to lead an adult study abroad program with a travel company. That risk turned into a full-time opportunity working in travel. And thennnnnnnn (because no, I’m never satisfied), I took the risk to leave that company to work full-time in social and influencer marketing, landing a Director-level role at an established agency here in New York. I hope you can see where this is going.

I’ve become an absolute expert on how risk can live comfortably in my life. I’ve made space for it to leisurely exist as it needs to come and go. From my healthy relationship with confrontation to my willingness to step into the unknown (leaving security for lack of it), when I have a risky idea, I have all the emotional and mental tools to process it, understand it, and build the cushion needed to pursue it.

I talk about systems a lot with my friends, my coworkers, and my partner. I, at my big age, understand how unreliable, fickle, and error-prone I am as a human. It’s natural. I got to the point where I was tired of feeling sorry for myself for things that I know will take soooo much more living to change, so I built the lifestyle systems to catch me when I fall into these very natural human traps. Systems building is a convo for another day, but the point is that these risks were never taken blindly. Every single time, I set up the infrastructure to appropriately take them. My infrastructure was: 1. Savings. 2. Lack of pride to work a service job if I needed to/if the risk failed. 3. A network abundant with freelance opportunities if I needed them. 4. Faith.

Risk + Faith = Success or Learnings
Risk + Doubt = High Chance for Failure + Self-Deprecation

This is something nurtures over time, though. You have to train your relationship with risk by taking bite-sized pieces of it first. Can you strike up a conversation with a stranger today? Take initiative to reach out to someone from a vulnerable place where you’re asking for something (opportunity, friendship, etc.)? Can you invest a few hundred dollars into a business idea you think is viable to test and learn if it’s worth your time?

Or maybe you’re ready for a larger serving. Can you take a solo trip? Can you have a super hard conversation to leave that relationship/friendship? Can you put in your two weeks?

My first big risk in 2019. And then 2021. And then 2022. And then now, my latest decision to become a full-time novelist in 2026. It takes years to train and nurture your relationship with risk, but you gotta start somewhere.

So what will you do?

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Being a creative gets so damn lonely. So many of the spaces built for us end up feeling like networking events where you spend more energy than you earn. You leave with a handful of new Instagram mutuals and the same unfinished ideas you walked in with.

But this villa was an open market. We bartered and traded creative energy. One person helped solve a creative block, another held a camera to help film, another listened while one rambled through what they thought could be the next era of their business. And then, they broke off to build. It almost felt ordinary while it was happening, but looking back, everyone kept handing each other little pieces of momentum. By the end of the weekend, every person’s creative world had quietly expanded because someone else had wandered into it for a moment.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since because I keep blaming myself for all the things I haven’t finished. The novel I’ve wanted to write since I was twelve. The essays that exist as titles and nothing else. Every January I convince myself that this will finally be the year I become one of those people who wakes up at five in the morning, writes three chapters before work, and somehow also has abs. Every January, that version of me lasts about four days.

Most days my brain just feels...full.

Ideas are competing with grocery lists. Client deadlines are sharing space with book plots. I open my Notes app looking for one sentence and end up scrolling through hundreds of half-formed thoughts I apparently believed would change my life at 10:47 p.m. on a random Tuesday. Every idea feels exciting until it has to compete with the other forty-seven.

On the flight home, I watched this movie called Something’s Gotta Give (I love Diane Keaton) which is a based on a screenplay writer who hides away at her Hamptons house to meet a submission deadline and ends up falling in love with her daughter’s boyfriend. Funny ass plot, but what inspired me was this idea of locking myself away to bang something out. I thought to myself, what if I do that? So, I started looking up little cabins in the Catskills. Coffee in the morning. A fire pit at night. Looking up at the stars long enough to finally connect the dots of the book I’ve been trying to write for half my life.

But then wait, I thought of my friends. Almost every conversation I’ve had lately sounds exactly the same: “I have this idea...” “I just need to find the time...” “I don’t know where to start...”

The ideas themselves are never the problem. Everyone has ideas. My friends have enough ideas to fill ten lifetimes. This isn’t a competency problem, this is a capacity problem. Somewhere between paying bills, answering emails, and trying to maintain some resemblance of a social life, they just keep getting pushed to tomorrow.

So I texted them, and now here we are.

Last night, four of us arrived at our home for the weekend. We ordered dinner, spread our laptops across the dining table, and got to work. Someone would look up and ask, “Can you give me feedback on this?” or “Does this make sense?” Then we’d all disappear back into our own little corners of the house. One person was building a deck. Another was writing. Another filming content. I wrote this Substack and a chapter in my novel.

I’ve spent years trying to create the perfect conditions to write. The perfect apartment (coming soon). The perfect routine (I’m getting there). The perfect amount of free time (yikes). As if creativity only shows up once everything else in life has been sorted out. Sometimes it’s as simple as intentional proximity to others like you. By default, it’s inspiring and motivating to work on your ideas when you see someone else locked in building their business plan. It’s easy to feel compelled to set up the camera and film when your bestie sets up to yap at it for 12 minutes, edit for 30, and go viral in an hour.

So I think I’m going to rent a house one weekend a month. And then I’m going to continue to invite my creative friends. And we’re gonna lock the f* in

.

And then there was Cannes Lions.

You’re going to read at least 300 posts this week, minimum, about everyone’s experience at Cannes Lions, and there’s no reason for me to overcomplicate the conversation or give another think piece about the creator economy. My feelings are actually very simple: I’m super jealous. Mind you, I was there.

Major cultural moments do exactly this. You feel this hollowness in your chest while your eyebrows unintentionally furrow and your thumb goes on autopilot, scrolling past every recap, guide, and carousel full of laughs, joy, and perfectly captured moments. You imagine yourself there and the thrill of inclusion. You see yourself in the Miu Miu sunglasses and sundress, sitting at the invite-only brunch sipping a Hugo Spritz through your perfectly Rhode-lined lips wh…

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I’m literally putting myself on a timeout.

No trips, no new ideas, no actionable items. Just existing.

In the last year, I realized that ambition might be my chronic disease. I’m self-diagnosed, obviously. Not terminal, just managed poorly. My most revealing symptom is that I am a serial ideator.

I love the beginning of things. The fresh Google Doc. The Notes app manifesto. The imaginary version of me six months from now who is calm, rich, moisturized, and mysteriously booked but not busy. I have spent years in a very committed relationship with “potential,” and I’m tired.

One minute I’m fine, the next I’m fully convinced this, whatever idea it is in that moment, is the thing that will fix everything. My path to wealth. My identity. My sense of self. My lack of commitment to the gym. I love the way a new idea orients my life. It gives shape to my thoughts, routine to my day, and a north star to follow until it dies. Or my motivation for it dies.

Sometimes I’m birthing five ideas at once. E…

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It’s the first snowfall of the season in New York. The branches outside my window are heavy with fresh white snow. My espresso machine is screaming as it pulls a shot into my favorite ceramic mug. My journal is open to a blank page, ready for me to pour and pout my way through pen streaks and thoughts. I stop mid-thought to plan my outfit for an omakase date tonight at Kinjo, but then I realize that I still don’t have certain clothing pieces that I really wanted to get this year. And then it hits me: Shit. I only crossed two things off my 2025 goals list. What happened?

What happened is what happens every year.

I (like most ambitious, creative people) make a list. On it live…

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Recently, I came across a post where someone declared they didn’t like Lisbon.
LISBON? As in the city I’m in right now? The city I absolutely adore?

She wrote about the growing gap between her expectations and reality and about how the Lisbon she saw online didn’t match the Lisbon she met in person. And it made me wonder: when was the last time any of us planned a trip without TikTok?

Every European city has always had its tourist traps: souvenir stands selling the same magnets, street canvassers pitching the same tours, and endless lines for that one “must-see” landmark. That’s part of the experience. See the classics, take the cliché photo, perform a little tourism, but then go off track. The true beauty of a city is seeing it…

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Southern Portugal is exactly what I thought it would be: warm-toned cliffs lightly painted with pinks during sunset, the sound of harsh waves crashing against the shore, and the smell of grilled sardines. That’s all I wanted. That and reliable wifi, of course, so I don’t get fired.

Like most trips I’ve taken, this one started with nothing but spontaneity and desire. That flicker of curiosity that turns into a calling to see another corner of the world. So when my former co-worker turned close friend Eden told me she was going to Morocco and down to extend her trip to meet me somewhere, I opened Google Flights so damn fast. I love booking one-ways.

Now here we are in the Algarve, two laptops, one Hugo spritz each, the sun dipping below the cliffs, talking ab…

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End of 2021

Forty-five minutes had passed, and I was still scrolling YouTube, half-heartedly looking for something to watch. My dinner was mostly gone by the time I landed on a video titled “Solo in Costa Rica” and hit play. The creator dropped me right into the middle of her trip: sun on her face, sprawled on a beach, glowing and unbothered. She was tan, golden, and happy.

When you’re stuck, disconnected from yourself, you’ll cling to anything that looks like joy. Shopping, eating, partying…traveling? I hadn’t tried that yet. I sat there watching her footage, each clip stitching together the story of a woman who had chosen herself.

Seven minutes in, I pressed pause.

The only other places I traveled to at that point were Dominican Republic, Mexico, and a quick London trip I’d been too immature to even remember or enjoy. How far is Costa Rica, I thought. Letting the thought sit, I opened TikTok.

First video: a young woman traveling through Limón, Costa Rica, the Caribbean side of the islan…

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It became the foundation of who I was, and the reason behind everything: my ambition, my anger, my anxiety. It wasn’t just about returning the favor or repaying the voyage. Most days, I did feel like I owed my mother something, but I would say it felt more like having a check written that I knew I couldn’t cash yet. “Not yet, mami. Coming soon, I swear. One day, it will clear. I’m working on it.”

I actually believed it too. I lived for the chase.

The propaganda was smart, and it worked. I wanted the love story from Aquamarine, the entrepreneurial dream from iCarly and Hannah Montana, the relatability of Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, the prestige of Princeton from A Cinderella Story, the idea of a summer abroad in The Lizzie McGuire Movie. College tours, young adult…

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3 years later, I feel that again.

Collectively, we’ve all agreed: we’re not playing any games this year. Our rebrands are ripe, as is the fruit of our emotional labor from surviving the last 12 months. We’re eager to be seen differently by the outer world and by the familiar reflection staring back at us each morning.

Welcome to our pivot season.

First rule: You don’t owe anyone an explanation for how you’re moving differently this season.

Not a single person. Not your boss, not your friend, not your followers. Dim your perception of self-importance and let go of the idea that you need to announce the annulment of your former self. You don’t. You have the right to evolve whenever you want to, with or without a val…

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Somehow, on day four, I forget how good it felt to push myself for the last three days, and I give in to my temporary exhaustion. I fall back to baseline and have to start at zero all over again. I’ve done this same thing for the past five years — with the gym, new hobbies, and habits.

Why?

I bump the incline up and open YouTube. I need something to make this go by faster. I’m at the point of the workout where opt…

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I recently joined a luxury gym to manipulate myself into actually going to the gym. IYKYK. I’m the girl who has to obligate myself to do something I don’t want to do through financial guilt or procrastination. We’re working on it.

Anyway, if you’ve been to one of these gyms (Equinox, Lifetime, Chelsea Piers, etc.), then you know that the bathroom doubles as a spa—saunas, steam rooms, and skin. The girls grace the room with their presence… entirely. In the sauna, towels separate bare ass from wood while the girls sweat out the toxins of their bitchy bosses and boring boyfriends.

I sit with my towel clenched and after a deep, warm breath, ask myself, “Damn, why am I gripping this towel so tightly?” I roll back my shoulders, unravel the towel a bit, and let it fall just a litttttleeeeee.

Another deep breath.

In my stillness, sweat starts to drip, and my thoughts demand my attention.

The last few months have been interesting. I’ve been processing so many questions about my creative priorities …

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I’m talking to myself, but if the shoe fits, come take a walk with me.

“Slowing down” has been the most unachievable lifestyle goal I’ve ever set. Anyone with a productivity addiction or anxiety can agree that it sometimes feels unimaginable to move without urgency. Everything is marked “high priority.” Everything needs to be figured out today, tomorrow, this week, this month. ASAP.

Girl… sure. But not really.

The excitement of a new idea is alluring, and you savor the inspiration like it’s the last time you’ll ever feel it (hi, scarcity mindset). But don’t let those high-dopamine days trick you into thinking that your bandwidth is bigger than it is.

Disclaimer #1

Yes, you can do anything. You’re right. There’s nothing you can’t accomplish when you’re devoted. But it’s not sustainable to devote yourself to seven things at once, abandon your actual life outside of a…

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When I hit the reset button on my career, I knew that it would be a major transition. Even though there were obvious overlaps in skills and experiences, the industries and goals of the roles were vastly different. Community organizing and content marketing are second cousins, not sisters. Now that I’m 4 years into the pivot, I’m sharing my thoughts on this because:

1. I think we need to be a bit more transparent on how shit is not always sweet. I’m always the first to let people know to not be glamoured by how it seems. Whether it’s influencing, content, production, social media management, photography, PR, advertising — whatever it is. Creativity is more than just a medium or a whimsical practice; it’s a skill, and it can be hard.

2. I’m often asked about how to pivot into a “creative career” and now I’m wondering, is that something I’m an advocate for? Do you need a creative career to feel fulfilled creatively?

First thing to clarify: I love my job. I lo…

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There’s been a lot of 100-tab rabbit holes, half finished project plans, and fresh tombstones in my creative ideation graveyard. I’ve actually always been this way, but it’s different when you’re an adult because you’re expected to be “reasonable” and “responsible” — whatever those things mean.

Some of the most interesting people I’ve met share a key trait: an unshakable commitment to their childlike curiosity. To be honest, I hate that we even give curiosity the character of only being childlike because it enables the hardening and cynicism of adulthood. Being curious is something innately human, not just childish, and the happiest people I’ve met have found a way to keep that curiosity alive, regardless of how it looks in action.

They’ve started Instagram platforms that haven’t seen a post since 2021. They started collectives that haven’t had an event in 2 years. They started businesses that haven’t had a sale since launch …

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Freewill might be the simplest yet most complex concept I've ever tried to understand about myself. Technically, the “amount” of it that you have is a constant, unchanging quantity. You don’t “gain” freewill. You just have it. What does change is your awareness of it and what you do with it. What I wonder is what causes that shift because I need my freewill to be super clocked in right now. Like ASAP.

This is where some might say God steps in—whatever God you believe in. That’s what pulls your string of awareness to give attention to your freewill, your internal strength, your power. But when that presence is missing, what fills the gap?

I…

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It made me reflect on my relationship with free will. As an adult, when I don’t like something, I change it. When something is no longer serving me, I leave it. And when I’m inconvenienced, I immediately resolve it. I am very much addicted to my autonomy. I’ve always been like this— and if you have to ask, yes, I’m a Gemini.

As “liberating” as this sounds, I think it’s also becoming quite a bit of a pain in the ass.

If you know me, then you know I’ve done a major career shift in the last few years. I used to work in social justice, but I found myself wondering what a creatively led life could look like. I started so…

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If the conditions aren’t met for me to be able to “create,” then I sometimes just refuse to, and it’s one of my most frustrating adult-toddler qualities—we all have a few.

I know the exact behaviors that signal that my creative energy is feeling particularly difficult. I mope around more often, take longer to complete tasks, and sleep in a bit more. I consume more, yap less, and my brain feels rotten. It almost feels like I’m waiting on something. A spurt, a sprint, a spike. Begging for something to appear and do the hard part for me, just so I can get into the fun, flow state. A moment of inspiration, a fresh idea, an insight. ANYTHING. While I wait, I float… disconnected and in purgatory.

This is when I realize that it’s time for me to reach into what my non-existent creative coach—and I have a lot to say on that one— would call my “creative toolbox”.

Instead, I have Rick Rubin. Sort of.

“If inspiration does not come to lead the way, we sho…

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Pajóna, I thought. I started thinking about how infrequently I 'thought' in Spanish and whether my language proficiency was dying in my mind. I thought about my mom saying “Y ese pajón” when we would brush our hair together on Sundays prepping for the dreaded mayonnaise tratamiento. I thought about how beautiful a photo essay would be of just pajóns - big, small, blonde, brown, loud and round.

“But Keyla, that’s already been done before.”

And with one sentence, the creative spark dies.

To be honest, I think I’m definitely affected by all these AI creative tools that make me feel like if it’s not whimsical, it’s not worthy. Remember who your audience is: real ass people with real ass experiences, just like you.

The idea being done before doesn’t matter because it hasn’t been done by YOU y…

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