Cause ever since at 13 years old I learned about an artist called John Singer Sargent and the infamous Portrait of Madame X I couldn’t fully let it be.

In 1884 (don’t roll your eyes, we’ll travel in time soon and talk about present) an American artist painted Virginie Gautreau in his portrait now known as Madame X. She stands there, anonymous but recognisable, turning her face away from the viewer.

In the original version, one of the straps of her dress was painted slipping down.

That indecency (of how a woman can be aware of her own beauty) obviously caused a scene.

Sargent eventually repainted the strap back onto her shoulder. Without even mentioning her real name in the painting title her reputation was ruined.

Now, we’ll tell ourselves that this is just an extreme example and of course the past was different and society was more conservative then. I do not think we should turn it into something ridiculous and distant.

It got stuck in my mind precisely because it’s a representative example how the level of comfort to be discomforted by women.

We turn women’s fates into examples. We dissect, we discuss, we judge, and eventually, we punish.

Autonomy and self expression are sees as a threat, we blur the lines so that we make sure to leave the room for a misreading the intention.

If there’s no clear distinction between confidence and vulgarity we not only tend to think the later but also make sure to create an environment for that. We do anything to justify our pre existing beliefs even if they’re shaped by the norms that show no grace to women.

We created a labyrinth that consists of curiosity, admiration, aspiration, over saturation and inevitably disgust.

And then everyone acts as if they were never fascinated with her in the first place.

There is almost no safe place to stand.

The public never really mind seeing a portrait of the most interesting socialite in Paris, but then punished her for becoming part of it. They wanted to see her in a painting, but once she was there, they wanted to discuss her body, her appearance, her attitude, her morals, and all the attributes they projected onto her.

Cause this interest was never pure, it always came with the price tag of leverage & access, they wanted her to be displayed to gain a right to have an opinion.

As if visibility has to be bought with other people’s entitlement. Once you’re under a ray of spotlight, brace for misinterpretation.

They still want her there just to be able to punish her whenever they’ve decided.

That is why the strap matters. Cause it was enough. It was sufficient to destroy someone’s life.

And like to think we are more humane now because we are not scandalised by a painted shoulder. And we don’t have a conservative Parisian salon but we have all the other outlets to exercise that authority.

The strap has been safely returned to her shoulder. I’m less certain we’ve become any less interested in the trial.

Actually, not even one song, sometimes it’s one particular moment of one song. Like from the 30th second to the 53rd second and I’ll just keep going back to it. I listen to the part I like, go back to the start of it, listen again, and then go back again. It’s slightly scary that I somehow know exactly where my favourite part of most songs starts. I can open one and immediately drag the bar to the right second without even thinking about it.

I don’t really bulk-listen to albums either. I never have these perfectly organised mixed playlists where one song flows into another and everything fits the mood. Usually I hear something completely by accident, one particular part catches my attention, and then I listen the hell out of it. That is basically my way of discovering music.

I think what I like about it is that at some point I know exactly what that part of the song is going to do to me.

Like, I found it. I found the exact second where something happens in my head, and I know if I go back there it’s going to give me the emotion I want. Maybe that’s why I keep replaying it instead of just listening to the whole song normally. There is almost something safe about it.

Which sounds overly dramatic considering we are talking about a twenty-second part of a song, but I genuinely think that’s what it is.

There are very few things where you can decide that you want to feel something and then more or less get it immediately. Real life obviously doesn’t work like that. You can’t say, I want that exact feeling I had two days ago at 7 p.m., and then go back to it whenever you want. But with music, you kind of can.

Or at least you can try.

So I keep going back.

And the funny part is that I don’t even try to protect the song from myself. I know people who say they avoid listening to a song too much because they don’t want to ruin it, which makes complete sense, but I can’t do that. If I like something, apparently my instinct is to completely exhaust it.

I want it playing while I’m getting dressed, while I’m walking somewhere, while I’m in the shower, while I’m doing work, while I’m lying in bed. I want to squeeze the exact same feeling out of it until there is genuinely nothing left.

And there is always a moment when I realise I’ve done it.

The song is playing, the part comes, and nothing really happens anymore.

And I’ll still play it another few times because I remember how much I liked it. Which is kind of strange when you think about it, because at that point I’m not even really going back for the song. I’m going back because I remember what it used to make me feel.

Maybe that’s why the first few listens are always the best. The first time you don’t know it’s coming. You hear something, a voice changes or the music changes or there is one line, and it just catches you. Then you go back because you want it again. But now you already know it’s coming.

And then eventually you know every second that leads up to it.

Maybe the surprise gets replaced by comfort.

I also think that’s why I don’t like mixed playlists that much. If I already found the exact thing I want to hear, why would I want another song to suddenly come in and give me a completely different emotion? Sometimes I don’t want variety. Sometimes I want the same 23 seconds for an hour.

And maybe it’s a bit about control as well.

Not control in some massive psychological sense, but just being able to choose. I know this is the part I like. I know this is the feeling I want right now. I know where to find it.

There is something very satisfying about that.

The more I think about it, though, the more I realise that I probably don’t only do this with music.

There are foods I suddenly want constantly and then don’t want to see for months. There are topics I find and then spend days reading absolutely everything about them. Sometimes there is one film or one idea or one place that suddenly becomes disproportionately important to me for a while.

I don’t really know how to casually like things.

Maybe that is the actual pattern.

I find something, become completely obsessed with it, and then eventually drain whatever I was getting from it and move on.

Which maybe isn’t the healthiest way to enjoy things, but I’m not even sure I dislike it.

There is something quite nice about having a week where one song is genuinely the best thing in the world to you. Even if you know you’re probably going to ruin it by next Tuesday.

And then one day it stops working.

You don’t really notice when. You just open Spotify and, instead of going back to that song again, you play something else. Maybe you hear something accidentally. Maybe it’s in a video or playing somewhere in the background. There is one part that makes you pay attention.

And suddenly you know that from 0:47 to 1:09 is going to be your entire personality for the next week. So hi, my new obsession.

Slowly, though, there was this shift cause I started meeting new people, having more plans, being invited to different things, and so maybe six months after we were first introduced, we happened to be sitting over coffee and I realised that my social circle had nearly doubled, while she casually complained to me that she basically didn’t go out with any of these people anymore.

She told me she preferred solo dates, even would go watch movies on her own, go to dinners on her own, spend time by herself.

And I’m sorry to by dear introverts, but I know that a lot of people among you are impostors.

And it took maybe another half an hour of conversation to realise that she didn’t actually choose to have solo dates. She didn’t particularly want to spend all this time on her own, and she hadn’t suddenly started identifying as an introvert.

She was just, as she put it, “being selective.”

She doesn’t do last-minute invitations or like being invited with, “Oh, do you want to join us?” because, by definition, that means she wasn’t part of the original plan and was therefore somehow left out. And it’s actually disrespectful to my time.

She doesn’t want to go if unfamiliar people are invited or like it if somebody else is going to join halfway through or tolerate a change of plans.

And all of these things, according to her, were just her standards.

Then I remember she rescheduled twice and got so picky with my cafe options, I almost felt like I’m selling her the place for a good amount of millions. Anywaays. There is obviously nothing inherently wrong with wanting a particular set of rules around your leisure time. It is your life. Who am I to tell you what to do?

But it got me thinking: why does your company require fifteen things to be considered first?

Why do so many completely ordinary social factors have that much power over you?

So I started asking her why.

How does any of this actually make you feel?

At that point I felt slightly like a therapist (maybe I spend too much time with mine and have accidentally learned how to ask questions her way)

But what I realised from that conversation is how fragile we have become around the possibility of feeling left out. We are so vulnerable to it, and so ready to interpret situations as exclusion even when the situation itself doesn’t necessarily demand that interpretation.

And I think there has to be a line somewhere.

There is a difference between genuinely being unwanted, when people repeatedly show you that you are unwanted in a certain group, and creating such a complicated set of expectations around inclusion that almost nobody can realistically meet them.

Because there is no way around it: if you have to be the first person invited, if the guest list has to be fully approved by you, if there can be no change of plans, nobody unexpected can arrive, and nothing can happen in a way you hadn’t imagined beforehand, then you’re not really spending time with your friends.

You’re hiring an event planner who does things exactly your way because you’re paying them money.

And one of the things I’ve learned to do is simply not care that deeply about these things.

Most things are not being done as a direct attack towards you. Actually, almost none. You’ll be attacked one by a random girl, probably put her in a place, send a bunch of voice notes to your group chat, and that’s it. Stop bracing like it happens left and right.

People usually aren’t thinking about the precise wording of an invitation. They aren’t sitting there calculating whether inviting you at 6 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. will adequately communicate your social status. Someone might simply think of you and say, “Oh, Nicole would like this. Ask if she wants to come.”

Everyone is hella selfish.

And I actually think the faster you understand that, the more relieved you become in your everyday life.

Most people are thinking about their work, university, relationships, hobbies, what they’re wearing, whether they’re tired, whether they want another glass of wine, and whatever is happening in their own heads.

They are usually not constructing a sophisticated psychological attack against you.

Because in the end, what my friend was describing was the feeling of being left out.

But I kept wondering: were you actually left out? Or did you simply not make any effort to include yourself?

Are people purposefully excluding you, or are you expecting them to continuously go out of their way to drag you in?

Because you only have as much space as you take up.

And I think some social isolation can become strangely self-created in that way.

Of course other people shouldn’t actively prevent you from being included. If you’re constantly being ignored, dismissed, excluded from plans in front of you, or made to feel unwelcome, that is different.

But if nobody is preventing you from being included, at some point it becomes your job to include yourself.

Hopefully, other people make that easy. Hopefully, your friends make you feel wanted. Hopefully, people think of you, invite you and make space for you.

But nobody owes you the constant labour of making absolutely sure you feel included in every second of every social situation.

If they do it, great.

But if you refuse to take up any space unless someone has prepared that space perfectly for you first, eventually people are going to stop trying.

Nobody needs to play curling around you, sweeping the ice in front of every interaction to make it as smooth as humanly possible, just so your brilliant ideas can finally reach the broader audience over steak and wine on some random Friday evening.

Everyone already had work, uni, hopefully no toxic boyfriend, plans, calls. And now finally is there to enjoy themselves too.

Sometimes you weren’t left out. And nobody stopped you from walking in.

I understand the idea. I really do.

Life can easily turn mundane and we’re all coping. So walking is boring, but a hot girl walk comes in a package with a certain self esteem (even if it’s temporary). Reading can be postponed, but hot girls read sounds like you’re a part of a little community. Drinking coffee is just a 4 euro drink that I’d over in a few minutes, but hot girl coffee makes it feel like part of a big city character.

But I can’t help but wonder why everything has to be hot now.

Why does every ordinary activity need to be attached to the idea that we are attractive while doing it? Or we’re becoming hot after?

This became even more obvious to me when I learned that phrases like Hot Girl Walk and Hot Girls Read had become trademark issues. And there is something so strange about that, a cute little phrase that started as a tiktok keyword for girls to connect over romantisibg life suddenly becomes something with paperwork, enforcement, merch, legal categories, and people arguing over who gets to use it.

But the legal part is not even the most interesting part to me.

The more interesting question is why those phrases worked so well in the first place.

Why are we so ready to click on anything that says hot girl?

Hot girl walk. Hot girls read. Hot girls journal. Hot girls go to therapy. Hot girls drink matcha. Hot girls have boundaries. Hot girls do Pilates. Hot girls heal. Hot girls do whatever the internet wants to make feel aspirational for the next two weeks.

At some point, hot stops meaning anything specific.

We take activities that do not need to be hot at all, things that could simply be good for us, interesting to us, private to us, and then we add the adjective anyway.

And I think part of it comes from a very old idea: women exist to be perceived.

John Berger wrote about this in Ways of Seeing. His argument, very simply, is that women are taught to watch themselves being looked at. Not only to live, but to imagine themselves from the outside while they are living. To see themselves as an image, a sight, a person who is doing something and at the same time being observed doing it.

That is why the “hot girl” label feels more interesting than it seems.

Because it is not only saying, “I am doing this thing.”

It is saying, “How I’m perceived doing this thing”

We are never truly alone in the room anymore, even when there is no audience. There is always some imaginary observer.

We do not just go for a walk. We think about how we are perceived as we are walking.

We do not just read a book. We think about what kind of person we look like reading that book.

Of course, this is not only about men. The observer now is more complicated. Sometimes it is men, sometimes it is other women, sometimes it is the algorithm, sometimes it is people from high school, sometimes it is your own idea of what your life is supposed to look like. But the result is the same: you start living with a camera angle in your head.

And perception always comes with an adjective. If we are going to be seen, we want to control how we are seen. We want the reassurance that this version of us is not random or vulnerable.

And right now, the most marketable adjective is hot.

It reminds me of those older advertisements where everything was sold through the idea that a woman’s dream was to become more desirable to men. Buy this perfume, this lipstick, this diet product, this dress, this shampoo, this coffee, this lifestyle, and you will become the kind of woman people want to look at.

We are still selling women a version of life where even ordinary self-care becomes more valuable once it is connected to being seen as attractive.

And again, I do not think every use of hot girl language is evil or stupid. Sometimes it is just a way to make life feel less boring. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel pretty, confident, or fun while doing normal things. I understand why people like it.

But I think we should be honest about what it is doing.

Maybe that is the part I want to come back to. There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel attractive. But there is something sad about not being able to let ordinary life exist without making it visually desirable first.

Some things are allowed to matter without being attractive to anyone at all.

It has many names. Too many, probably. A glow-up. A rebrand. A winter arc. A monk mode. A mysterious little disappearance from the radar so one day you can return with a better body, better hair, better discipline, better clothes, better habits, better boundaries, better taste, better posture, better life. Something that movies of 00s and 10s has started I guess.

You disappear, work on yourself in silence, and come back as the kind of person people do not quite know how to speak to anymore.

Which sounds beautiful, of course.

But trust me, you are very much recognizable.

No matter if you start going to the gym, change your haircut, change your style, read five self-help books, start waking up earlier, stop texting certain people, move cities, reorganize your feed. You are still you.

Maybe a more disciplined you. Maybe a better dressed you. Maybe a calmer, stronger, slightly less self-destructive you. But still recognizable.

I do understand the instinct not to tell everyone everything before things work out. Oddly enough, as much as I want to think it is all superstition, I have sadly found it to be true time after time. Some things just don’t work as well when you explain them too early. Some plans need privacy.

Not everything has to be announced.

But disappearing completely is something else.

Because the fantasy of disappearing is often deeply rooted in the idea that it is somehow shameful to be trying. Shameful to be in process.

Shameful to be caught navigating. Starting. Learning. Adjusting. Being bad at something. Being visibly inconsistent. Being the person who has not yet mastered the thing but is clearly attempting to.

It is almost like you want to grow into the right version of yourself before you are ready to be seen.

As if the world only deserves to meet you once you are successful enough to justify the effort.

Trying feels too vulnerable, you begin to hide not because you need privacy, but because you cannot tolerate being witnessed before you are impressive. You want the result without the visible apprenticeship.

And I understand that. Of course I understand that. There is something humiliating about the middle. The beginning can still feel romantic because it has possibility. The ending can feel proud because it has proof. But the middle is where you are just there, doing the thing badly, with no guarantee that it will all work out and transform you whatever way you want

No wonder people want to disappear for it.

But isolation should not be the price you pay for being uncomfortable with not being perfect.

That is the line I keep coming back to.

The ego says: do not let them see unless it is perfect. Do not let them see you wanting something before you have proof you can have it.

But life is a continuous path of starting something new, adapting to new environments, shifting from one thing to another, becoming a beginner over and over again. You cannot hide every time you enter a new phase. You cannot isolate every time you are not yet good. You cannot disappear every time reality asks you to learn something before it allows you to be impressive at it.

At some point, you need a character strong enough to be seen in process.

Not because everyone deserves access to everything.

They do not.

But because hiding every unfinished version of yourself trains you to treat growth like something shameful.

Maybe it is becoming strong enough that being recognized in the middle no longer threatens you.

When I first experienced loss and grief, when I was going through the darkest time of my life, it gradually drew a barrier between me and almost everyone I knew. Not in every life aspect, not in everyday life, but I started to realize that I’m not capable of that level of closeness anymore. It’s like there’s a different side of me now that everyone knows about, but no one can really see.

And once you notice that barrier, it is very difficult go around it.

There is this idea that nobody has a truly unique life experience. That everything you feel has been felt before. Probably a million times. That pain is universal. That grief is universal. That heartbreak, loss, fear, loneliness, despair all of it connects us, because someone, somewhere, has already lived through some version of it.

I understand why people say that. But I think I stand by the opposite.

I think everyone has a unique life experience.

It is considered almost narcissistic to think that even in your pain, you are the only one who feels it on such a deep level. That nobody suffers like you do. That nobody’s heart aches like yours. That nobody could truly understand the exact shape of what happened inside you.

But I do think the context is always different. The chain of events is different. The timing is different. The person you were before it happened is different. The person you became after it happened is different.

Two people can both say, “I lost someone.” And it will never be the same thing. Trust me, I’ve heard that reassurance to a point of numbness. We can find similarities, but no experience is a replica of another.

And maybe it is narcissistic. But it is also how I feel. And nothing can change that.

I do not say this with pride. I do not say it because I want my pain to be special. I say it because there is a kind of solitude in grief that no amount of empathy can fully dissolve.

I do believe you can understand what I am saying when I talk about it. But you cannot truly feel it with me. My pain is not something you can borrow and try for yourself to understand me, not that I offer it anyways. And trust me, if I thought even for a second I could’ve bring out my emotions in someone else the way I feel them, I would’ve never open my mouth.

There is a limit to what can be shared. Even with the people who love you. Even with the people who try. Even with the people who say the right things and sit beside you and mean every word of their compassion. But that nobody can come all the way in.

They can sit beside the grief. But they cannot be inside it. And maybe the mistake is thinking that they should.

Maybe the deepest loneliness does not come from the fact that other people cannot fully understand us. Maybe it comes from expecting them to. From searching for that perfect form of understanding. From hoping someone will not only hear the sentence, but feel the wound in the same place.

Loneliness is standing in front of people and waiting for them to enter a place they cannot enter. It is trying to make them share a sentiment that belongs to the exact chain of your life. It is expecting them to be on the same page about something when they do not even have the same book.

Solitude on the other hand is accepting that some parts of your inner life cannot be fully translated. It is painful, but it is honest. It does not demand the impossible from other people.

And strangely, I do find some peace in that solitude.

I am pretty fond of visually curating, organizing the feed, capturing the lifestyle, thinking about what looks beautiful, what tells a story, what expreses how I view myself.

And because of that, I have heard every version of the sentence:

“I could never do that.” Usually said with a certain casual superiority.

“I can’t imagine, all this stress, these events… attention… but love that for you, Nicole”

And of course, sometimes that is true.

Some people genuinely do not care. Some people are happier offline.

But very often, “I could never do that” does not really mean “I don’t care.”

It means: I would rather believe that I could be good at it than risk discovering that I might not be.

It’s like you are welcoming any other form of narcissistic self expression but the only one that means any risk.

Because there is a very comforting idea hidden inside refusal. The idea that if you wanted to, if you decided to pour your precious time, energy, taste, and obviously unique vision into something, it would work.

Of course it would. You just do not care enough.

You are above it. You are too complex. Too private. Too intelligent. Too busy living an actual life to turn it into something public.

Trust me I’ve been there.

What makes you so certain that if you started, you would not be one of the hundreds of people who never made it? Why don’t you think you would be one of the people getting 200 views on every video? And maybe life  might not be interesting enough, your taste might not translate, your hooks might not work, your consistency might fail, your vision might be much less obvious to the world than it is to you?

You can imagine yourself as magnetic forever. But once you post it, reality does its thing when it never fails to show you have to work harder (and occasionally smarter).

And sometimes it replies with 217 views. For weeks. Until maybe the video number 357 breaks out from the low view jail. Oh yes, we do have a term for at cause it’s not an uncommon occurrence on a creators journey.

This is why so many people prefer to remain theoretically impressive. There is ego saying you do not want it. If you never start, your fantasy of potential stays unharmed.

But the moment you begin, potential becomes tested. And evidence is often not exactly reassuring.

We often think that if something is “authentic,” it should somehow be effortless.

But nothing is going to come easy to you just because it is you.

That sentence sounds cruel until you realize it is actually freeing.

Because the opposite belief is much more dangerous. The belief that once you finally dedicate your precious self to something, it must work out. The belief that your refusal to start is not fear, but selectiveness. The belief that your lack of success in a field only exists because you have not chosen to care yet.

There is no such guarantee.

None.

Chances are, if you start anything, you are much more likely to join the hundreds and thousands of people who fail, give up, get ignored, post inconsistently, become embarrassed, change direction, blame the platform, and quietly disappear, than to immediately land in the top one percent of any niche.

And if that thought offends you, maybe that is exactly the ego you need to examine.

Because the fantasy of effortless success is not confidence. It is the belief that other people are struggling because they are average, but you, once you decide to begin, will somehow be exempt from the ordinary humiliations of learning.

You will not be. You will have to make bad things. You will have to be ignored. You will have to find out that some of your ideas are not interesting enough yet.

If you say you are not interested, you remain safe. If you say you could never do that, you remain above the arena. If you say it is shallow, you do not have to ask whether you would actually be good at it. You get to keep the fantasy that your private taste would translate beautifully if only you cared enough to make it public.

In the end of the day the goal is not to remain the kind of person that proudly tells others they could have been great.

The goal is to become the kind of person who no longer needs this theory.

That sounded a bit colder than I mean it to sound. Because I do crave connection. I crave friendship. I crave intimacy in that dinner-and-wine way, in that walking-around-the-city-talking-about-life way, in that sending-something-because-it-made-me-think-of-you way.

But I don’t want to be someone’s person.

Because being someone’s person is never as romantic as it sounds. It means you become the one who has to be there. The one who accompanies them through every emotional collapse. The one who holds them through breakups. The one they vent to. The one they send all the life updates to. The one who knows too much, receives too much, carries too much, and somehow becomes an essential part of all the ups and downs.

And I think, every time I unspokenly sign up to be this person for someone, I brace myself to be discarded the moment they find their actual life partner or figure themselves out enough to sustain without a temporary solution like me.

Because that is usually what happens.

You become essential during the chaos. Then, once they are loved properly, or distracted properly, or healed enough, or busy enough, or finally absorbed into the central relationship of their life, you become less necessary.

Not hated really.

Not even fully rejected.

Just quietly downgraded.

And maybe that is what I am tired of.

Being someone’s temporary phase.

The person who held the emotional weight before the “real” life began. The person who knew them in the in-between, who listened to every detail, absorbed every heartbreak, helped them interpret every message, every date, every self-doubt, every crisis. All only to eventually realize you were a placeholder.

And the most confusing part this alliance has a great potential to be very much fair if only I was able to fully participate in it.

I don’t really do venting. I don’t overshare. I don’t overexpose. I am too scared to inconvenience people to fully reciprocate. So it makes me a very good damn listener.

And among many narcissistic traits I sadly only possess the least beneficial ones such as genuinely thinking that when I’m suffering it is a suffering no other human can possibly understand, so why even sharing then?

So I become easy to pour into.

Not because I have no inner life. I have too much of it. I can listen for hours. I can understand too much. I can offer empathy, perspective, little pieces of wisdom I probably should have saved for myself.

And because I don’t ask for the same space back, people begin to assume I do not need it.

That is the trap.

You become the friend people can bring their pain to because you do not make your own pain inconvenient. And then people call it closeness.

Now…

I want to be everyone’s dinner-and-wine friend.

I want to be the friend you meet when you want to feel more alive, not when you are falling apart. I want the beautiful conversation, the interesting restaurant, the gossip, the philosophy, the little walk after dinner.

As a classical Russian poet named Mikhail Lermontov said “I want to laugh with everyone, but cry with no one”. Forgive the misuse of context but that’s how I feel.

I want to be a good friend. Not best, just good.

And you do not have the capacity for ten things.

So you do nothing at all.

You look at the day and it is not even that every task is impossible on its own. Realistically, a lot of them are simple. Clean the room. Wash your hair. Answer the message. Go for a little run. Put yourself together. Buy groceries. Open the laptop. Start the draft.

None of it sounds dramatic enough to justify the paralysis.

And yet, somehow, the moment one thing appears, it brings the entire chain with it. If I clean the room, I should also do the laundry. If I do the laundry, I should also organize the closet. If I organize the closet, I should shower. If I shower, I should get dressed. If I get dressed, I should go outside. If I go outside, I should get groceries. If I get groceries, I should cook. If I cook… well it doesn’t really matter cause I’m not doing any of it.

Again, instead of doing one thing, you do nothing.

And the most annoying part is that the usual solution sounds so reasonable.

Start smaller. Do the simple task. And of course, sometimes that works. But sometimes it does the opposite.

Sometimes the smaller task is exactly what keeps you stuck, because it may be simple, but it does not excite you. It does not give you any inspiration. Because you turn all these minor tasks into obstacles to something that you unconsciously already know you actually want to do.

That is the trap.

What I found is that the only thing that actually helps is often the opposite.

Do not start with the smallest task.

Start with the most exciting one.

Ask yourself: if everything were already perfect right now, if everything were sorted out, if the room was clean, if the hair was done, if the groceries were bought, if the schedule was under control, what would I actually want to do?

Do that thing first.

If what you actually want is to write the article, write the article first. If what you actually want is to start posting on Instagram, create the post first. If what you actually want is to record the video, open the camera before you have created the perfect conditions to become the kind of person who opens the camera.

Go straight for the final thing.

Because sometimes the final thing is not the reward you get after doing the responsible tasks. Sometimes the final thing is the only thing that gives you enough energy to do the responsible tasks at all.

This is what people misunderstand about momentum.

They treat it like something that comes from discipline alone. But sometimes momentum comes from self-expression. From doing the thing that makes you feel less like a passive body surrounded by errands and more like a person with desire, taste, ambition, and an actual inner life.

A clean room can help, of course.

But. sometimes writing one paragraph does.

Sometimes filming one video does.

Sometimes creating the thing you actually care about puts you back into yourself so quickly that suddenly the other tasks stop feeling like a punishment. You look around and think: now I can clean. Now I can wash my hair. Now I can go outside. Now I can buy groceries. Now I can do the boring things, because I am no longer trying to use them as a bridge to my real life.

I am already in it.

That is the difference.

When you start with the small, dead task, you are trying to build your way toward aliveness.

When you start with the cool task, you borrow energy from the person you are trying to become.

And maybe that is why the advice to “just do something small” can feel so irritating when you are deeply stuck. It assumes the problem is only effort. But sometimes the problem is not that the task is too big. Sometimes the problem is that the task is too empty.

It gives you nothing back.

So no, maybe you do not need to clean your room first.

And then, from that mood, from that different internal setup, cleaning the room might stop sounding so tedious. Groceries might stop feeling so mundane. Putting yourself together might become easier.

And I don’t mean stupid in a casual way. I mean stupid in the way many casual phrases become stupid only after you look at what they are actually asking from people. Or more specifically, what they are asking from women.

Because there is nothing inherently bitchy about having a calm, neutral, emotionless expression.

There is nothing hostile about not smiling. There is nothing cruel about looking tired, composed, focused, absent, bored, serious, thoughtful, or simply not available for emotional decoration at that exact second.

And yet somehow, when a woman’s face is not actively performing pleasantness, we have created a whole little diagnosis for it.

Resting bitch face.

As if neutrality itself becomes suspicious when it appears on a woman.

The main idea of patriarchy has always been that women should be pleasant. Not only beautiful. Not only desirable. Pleasant. Welcoming. Approachable.

A woman is expected to move through the world with a face that says: I am not a threat. I am not judging you. I am not above this. I am not closed. I am not inconvenient. I am not difficult. You may approach.

That is what makes the term so revealing.

If someone’s lack of openness to you is repelling it is your problem.

There is this strange expectation that women should constantly soften the atmosphere around them. Not only with words, but with expression. To signal kindness before anyone has earned it. To reassure strangers, coworkers, friends, family, whoever is looking, that we are not cold, not arrogant, not offended, not difficult, not “in a mood.”

Even when we are doing nothing.

Especially when we are doing nothing.

That is the absurdity of it. Resting bitch face is not even about an action. It is not about what a woman says. It is not about how she treats people. It is not about harm, cruelty, arrogance, or actual hostility.

It is about a face at rest.

A face that has committed the crime of not performing.

And maybe that is why the term irritates me so much. Because it takes something private and involuntary, the natural arrangement of someone’s face, and turns it into a character flaw.

A man with a neutral expression is serious. Focused. Mysterious. Intense. Intellectual. Detached. Maybe even powerful.

A woman with the same expression is a bitch.

Not because her face is doing anything different, but because the culture reads female neutrality as refusal.

Refusal to charm.
Refusal to soften.
Refusal to invite.
Refusal to make herself emotionally convenient.

That is the real offense. Not that she looks mean. That she is not offering reassurance.

There is something deeply misogynistic in the idea that a woman’s face should be a public service. That her expression should exist to regulate other people’s comfort. That her calmness needs to be explained, softened, corrected, or renamed as bitchiness.

And the word itself is so telling.

Not resting serious face.
Not resting neutral face.
Not resting unreadable face.
Resting bitch face.

Because the insult is the point.

There is nothing wrong with a woman looking calm. There is nothing wrong with a woman looking unreadable.

Sometimes a neutral face is just a neutral face. Sometimes a woman is tired. Sometimes she is thinking. Sometimes she is distracted. Sometimes she is observing. Sometimes she is simply existing without considering whether her expression is charming enough for the room.

And maybe that is what people find so difficult.

A woman simply existing without trying to be pleasant. And that, apparently, is enough to make her a bitch.

I don’t think mine would be.

And I know myself too damn well to gaslight myself into believing that is my case.

Teenage Nicole wasn’t like that. Trust me.

I have always been ambitious. And none of my fantasies ever included anything remotely relatable. I always dreamt of becoming someone almost otherworldly. The bar was so extremely high that now, as an adult, it burns me from within to know how much more I have to do.

Because again, people don’t change.

And I know my appetites.

Or rather, my hunger for life.

I often think about the way I was in my early teens, because trust me, she is the main source of inspiration to me. She is someone that I, as an adult, look up to almost every day.

Maybe that is a trauma response. Maybe it is because, in my life story, she belongs to the time before I went through so much grief, pain, loss, anxiety, and eventually depression. Maybe I look at her with such reverence because she was the last version of me untouched by everything that came after. But I also think she was my most true, authentic self.

I wish I had more years of that version of me. More years of that true authentic self, unharmed and unburned by what I went through later on in my teenage years and young adulthood. There is a part of me that feels like I was interrupted.

And when I feel in doubt, when I feel especially low, I constantly go back to her. She had so much internal strength and freedom. So much courage. And I miss that. I wish I could borrow it from her.

What I admire most is that she did not need anyone to understand what she was doing. None of her friends really understood her ambitions, or her inner world, or why she expected so much from life. But she was so strong in her self-belief that it did not even feel like delusion.

Like this understanding that she will bend luck her way.

That she will force the outcome she’s hoping for into existence.

She had high damn expectations of life. Not vague dream, not “maybe, one day…”

Expectations. As if life owed her something exceptional, and she was not shy to demand it. And she could never imagine that this side of her would ever be so vulnerable and so fragile.

And knowing that I was once like that makes it so damn hard to do anything ordinary now. Because I know I have let her down in so many more ways than one.

Somewhere along the way, I slowed down the trajectory. I became more afraid. More tired. More distracted. More emotional. More easily consumed by things that, if I am honest, she would have found beneath us.

That is the part that hurts.

Not because she would be cruel to me. I do not think she would look at me with disgust. She would be understanding. She would probably be sorry for me. She would probably see the reasons, the losses, the grief, the way certain years hollowed me out in ways I could not have prepared for.

But she would not be proud. And that is a very different thing. That is what makes me want to do everything I do.

Because my younger self is not just a phase of my life. She is my raw and unfiltered essence. That was the time where I fully embodied the truest version of who I am. It was not just a period of my life. It feels almost sacred to me. A sacred essence of who I am at my core.

And none of the external things motivate me as much as my wish not to let her down.

Not money. Not attention. Not validation. Not even success in the shallow way people talk about it. Those things can excite me, of course. They can guide me in the day to day life. But they are not the center of it.

The center is her.

An equal amount of fear to let my true authentic self down and a wish to honor her and give her what she deserves.

That is what creates the sense of desperation in me. The kind of desperation that fuels me to keep moving, to not become fully consumed by my emotions, to not allow every wound to become an excuse, to not slow down for too long.

And maybe that is why no one can really understand why I do not want to slow down for a second. Why I can never fully exhale. Why rest is never peaceful for my mind. Why I am always trying to pull myself toward something bigger, even when I am tired, even when I am overwhelmed.

Because she is always in the back of my mind. I will do anything to make sure she will not be disappointed in me. My essence will not be disappointed in me.

Not because I am above it.

Because I know myself.

I know how easily my brain can cling to an idea, an imaginary character, or a real life person because my mind has enough empty space to paint the picture on its own.

I already think about imaginary scenarios if I have any spare second. I don’t remember a night I would fall asleep without daydreaming (well, not exactly day, but you get what I mean). And because I know myself too well, I am extremely scared to feed it.

I think all obsessions have something to do with escapism.

We treat them like interests, but often they are little doors. We like to have just the right amount of knowledge, just the right spark that excites us, just enough material for the imagination to take over. Then we dive headfirst into whatever becomes the subject of our obsession.

And suddenly it creates this perfect little bubble.

It was first offered to you externally. Someone else created the character, the music, the story, the person, the image. But it still gives you enough space to feel like you are in control. You can ignore the parts you do not like. You can choose what to believe in.

That is the danger.

Fantasy gives you control without consequence.

In real life, people interrupt the image you have of them. They disappoint you. They text strangely. They behave inconsistently. They reveal details that do not fit the version you were trying to build. That is unsafe and frankly a lot of emotional labour.

A fictional character cannot contradict you. A celebrity you do not know cannot really reject you. Worst case scenario you move on to the next one cause the place is not exclusive.

What was I saying? I am very scared to be obsessed with the wrong thing.

Because I am ambitious, and having a brain as obsessive as mine feels like an advantage. Frankly, this chase is a big part of what gives me life energy.

But that is exactly why I am cautious with it.

I am scared of being allured by a fantasy distant enough to bring me comfort and miss out on living an actual life. I am scared of giving my best attention to something that cannot give anything back. I am scared of waking up and realizing I know every single detail about a person I have never met and probably will never meet, or worse, a person I know very well, because then the obsession has consequences.

So I try to avoid getting even a spark of curiosity toward certain things.

Not because curiosity is bad. But because I know that for me, curiosity is rarely innocent. It is the beginning of a tunnel. One question becomes ten. One detail becomes an investigation field.

So I try to control it.

I try to force that constant wandering eye, the part of me always searching for something that can excite me, something that can give me the sense of interest or chase into the right field. I take the unconscious element out of it as much as I can.

I try to choose the object of interesting before it chooses for me.

This is why I would rather become obsessive about art, literature, writing, culture, psychology, philosophy, or whatever direction I consciously decide has the right to consume me. I try to pick something that can build me instead of something that only sedates me.

Then I let my brain do the thing.

I let it dig until the stone. I let it research and research. I let every possible overthinking path unfold. Sue me, at least it moves in a direction I chose.

The same brain that can waste three days obsessing over a fictional character can also spend three days researching Monet, writing an essay, learning how to speak better, or building an entire creative project. The mechanism or rather approach is not the problem. Direction is.

Maybe this is why I do not trust the idea that we should always follow whatever excites us.

Some sparks do not lead you toward yourself. And I have to keep reminding myself. Because I do not think I can stop being obsessive.

I am not even sure I want to. I just take the reins and use that unfair advantage not so many people have