Eruptible annoyance landed first. The sadness of being an expectation instead of a person arrived next. This really struck me as something to sit with, because it’s rare when someone gifts you the chance to look at your own evaporation process.

We’ve been so annihilated by the idea of consistency that we now expect humans to keep the same tone, voice, and personality without any alteration.

This is the part where we find shelter in losing ourselves, and never come back online to display the change.

This is where we’ve decided that we can’t show up in survival, when we’re tired, when we don’t know what to say, because we have to maintain. Living a real life requires you to be inconsistent, naturally.

Every creative knows that coming back and going away, in voice, physical shape, energy, and life force, is almost a default.

Remaining consistent as a person is the biggest downfall to creativity.

You must promise me that you won’t let people’s streamlined idea of you stop you from being inconsistent. That this might be, controversially, the most important part of sharing consistently.

I’ve dialed in this backwards consistency process to a science, and it’s very simple.

To come into contact with your truth, you must also create in ways that feel invented. And creating on the internet is the ultimate invention.

This is our hallelujah, by the way. If consistency is your issue - with any medium or pathway- you must also allow yourself to be inconsistent in the way you experiment, share, try on trends, etc.

Let this be your next achievement in creation: be so unlike yourself that you have no other choice but to be so genuine to your core.

We have mistaken finding and losing ourselves as a negative reaction to being alive, both online and in the flesh. And this only illuminates more when we do this act in public. Good God.

Yes, being consistent as a person makes you trustworthy.

But I also find that allowing yourself to be inconsistent is what reveals your wholeness, and social media only discounts you as a piece, a percentage.

To be consistent as an inconsistent person is my greatest strategy, and my life’s work. To show you, give you the mere permission to wobble.

The internet has influenced you to maintain one way and hold on for dear life.

To be so symmetrical that you end up being a complete bore.

Please wobble.

So that someone else can become unlike themselves and give them the blessing to do so. The only promise I can offer is that I will wobble again. I’ll forget who I am, and before you know it, come back swinging.

Perhaps you know what it’s like to be inconsistent as a person, and feel the silent expense of showing up when someone liked, approved of your inner consistency.

To think you’re responsible for either disappointing or exciting others with your regularity.

I hope someone gets to watch you fall and get up again, because when you do that, you stop marketing the product of expectation itself.

Maybe this is why pivoting, changing your life, can feel shaky. Maybe this is why we fear it so tremendously. Every new chapter asks us to be inconsistent with the version of ourselves people already tried and tested.

I created 30 Mornings to remind you that being inconsistent as a person is survivable, and that you don’t have to disappoint others alone. My friend, consistency should not be the price of becoming.

I’d love to guide you every morning for an entire month, before you invent the idea that remaining the same is the only way you’ll ever be loved.

JOIN 30 MORNINGS

xoxo

Sierra

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I’ve had a boner for founders since the smoothie bowl blog era.

Starry-eyed by Forbes features. Click. Save. Re-read.

The carefully edited photographs. Linen in the home. The fridge full of their weekly favorites.

Founderhood glistened with a different kind of desire.

I wanted whatever they built.

The original cool girl. The world builder. She knew how to start a brand but somehow felt utterly relatable in an interview.

Before the creative director became aspirational, before everyone’s innermost reflections found their way onto Substack, founders embodied their own tarot card.

Archetypal. Intimately close. Always just out of reach.

I’ve completely, entirely fallen out of love with founder fever.

As someone who’s a founder themselves, I stopped searching for my highest self through branding. The golden ticket of it all.

Now we all want brands. And let us.

The minute a creator reaches a certain altitude, the brand follows. The perfume. The lip liner. The capsule wardrobe. The blur begins.

Somewhere inside that blur, I’m left with my own form of founder.

The person who’s done the podcasts. Had the features. Collected the proof.

And somehow, none of it scratches the same itch anymore.

The constant building in public.

The constant deconstruction of myself.

Are we done masturbating to founders?

Probably not.

But I do get the inkling that the kink is on the decline.

The founder has gone from mythology to mortality.

And strangely, I love her more for it.

The founders I find myself drawn to now aren’t obsessed with becoming.

They want afternoons.

They want hobbies.

They want to decompose in the Greek sun.

They want collaboration that exists outside the algorithm.

Business. The erection of it.

I love a hot scaling.

We’re natural beings. We crave growth.

But I’ve grown tired of worshipping the straight line. The endless ascent the internet insists is always happening.

This essay is my rain dance.

And I want a downpour.

Leave a comment

xx

Sierra

I slept in till 10 today (a Tuesday, mind you) and ordered sweaty carnitas tacos for breakfast that felt like lunch. Became iridescent in the sun and knew I wouldn’t get anything done until 1.

Last week, I would have shivered at the slightest accent of this language. I would have translated it as wasting time. Being irresponsible (my inner critic is devoted to that one).

Me? Speaking the mother tongue of what my own mother would call lazy?

2026 has been a year of trying- God, the act of attempting, a fool’s trick or something to commend? I still don’t know the verdict- to do it right.

A commitment that has separated me further and further from my nucleus. There is no right or wrong, no final judgement, when it comes to orbiting your honest path.

People have no appetite for the impression of declaring honesty. They slobber for the honest things you do, without explanation.

A mission to be a true business owner and carry the impression that, 4 years into solo-entrepreneurship, I’m successful. I have a morning routine. I know how to perfect my homemade matcha. I don’t.

I’ve grown so weary of my ambition, and I’ve grown weary of yours too.

Children making IG accounts, promoting high-ticket sales with their day-rental houses in the hills. Girl bosses dying out, but still, by all means, living for their income screenshots.

My father has always wanted me to work for Amazon, the promise of stability, while he’s never slept in on a Tuesday, listening to Latin House music at the taqueira.

He’s never bought a cacao while bumping Ying Yang Twins, remembering that he doesn’t need to respond to that person if he doesn’t want to.

I never knew that becoming the antithesis of what I thought I wanted (what he wanted, transgenerational goals) would reveal the sincerity of my ambition.

My ambition, sincerely, is my inner child trying to have a correctional experience.

My ambition is a drive to be good enough because the river is dry. Local life has fled, and the critters have been promised artificial dwellings. Fluorescent lighting and lifeless American architecture. My nature, from a young age, needed cover.

Ambition became that construction.

My version of ambition became the lifeguard of rest. My true self drowns in leisure, and that’s life-threatening to the world’s blueprint.

Ironically, I’m a genuinely hard worker.

But I’ve been working so hard to keep the idea of me alive that I stopped contributing to the me who loves to chill.

I believe the great cosmos, the invisible threading that makes your inner tapestry, will make you work stupidly hard until you question your ambition.

Ambition on its own without an agenda is divine.

Ambition with a snarl, a motive to prove, is subterranean.

You’ll never see the light of day.

I used to think I needed to make these long, that the mere stretch of my brain could check the box of accomplishment. The most dignified thing I could do, after skimming the cream of this subject, is leave it here.

The dew of summer is dripping.

Meet me there, under the leaves, without checking off your boxes.

Without justifying why.

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If you’re a business owner, or a wannabe business owner, and you too want to create a world without feeling like it can only follow a blueprint, I highly recommend snagging a spot in the Business Onion.

We’ll create your whole offer ecosystem in 6 weeks. Jeanine said, “She completely cracked open my perspective on what’s possible, both in business and in the way I relate to myself within it.” We start June 8th ⋆˚꩜｡⋆

JOIN THE ONION

The term has never done anything to understand the control that fabricates my innocence.

And trust, I’ve read the self-help section 3x over, and simmered in an analytical velvet soup that belonged to my therapist’s couch.

I believe in mechanisms that act on our behalf if we already feel wrong. Wanting to do everything right is our adopted machinery because we don’t believe in our natural mechanics (faults, fucks ups, learnings, you know, the good stuff).

Scathed with burns of what comes after being wrong- the protection of that consequence- is what people call perfectionism.

It’s really just avoidance.

It’s the shackling fear that someone will see you undone. Anger that has forgotten to keep smiling, and to remember its place behind keeping it cool.

Perfectionists love style; we love layers.

But instead of creative expression for yourself, it’s for everyone and anyone else. It’s the spring outfit formula that you don’t actually wear, because you use it as a cloak.

The truth is, if you think you’re a perfectionist, you might just actually be the realest person in the room. Not the fakest, not the performing artist.

By the way- I can’t stand the way people use the word “performing” to shame you on the internet these days. We’re all on a stage. How else would we develop the agency to rewrite our life’s script?

Perfectionists are the realists because they understand the pain of what it’s like to have experienced the exposure of wrongness.

I, myself, created an armour lined with the flowering of gold, the budding of iron.

Armour: protective clothing with the ability to deflect or absorb the impact of projectiles or other weapons that may be used against its wearer.

Modern warfare is with ourselves.

We’re battling with the weapons of people’s opinions, and whether or not they become the projectiles we're defending against.

Bowl or skull: your self-concept that plays on repeat while driving on the freeway, wishing you had somewhere else to go. It’s usually unconscious, just like the song you also have on repeat.

Breastplate: what you say to yourself when no one is home, and it’s just you sitting with a recent mistake. If you’re lucky, it’s mean, but not totally brutal. You’ll survive yourself, and continue like it wasn’t that deep after you move on from the moment.

Knee cop: the twitching you experience when something feels “leaked.” A story about you, the weakening of how hard you’ve maintained your image. It’s the unstoppable feeling that something is about to get you; it’s the ghoul moving through the walls.

This is all I’ve ever operated from.

That’s why I see perfectionism just as a pathway. A very loving, enduring road to avoid what you already feel is to be true.

Yes, you’re wrong, but more importantly, you’ll be found out.

The antidote to this avoidance: decide that there’s nothing wrong with being wrong.

Stay with me.

I’ve kept the lights on for a library of past mistakes. Made it my civil duty to pay rent for the space that no one is allowed to enter. Imagine that?

A library of yourself that no one is allowed to check out.

That’s how it feels being wrong all the time, especially when you look so good covering it up.

Accolades, life lessons, the best unsolicited advice that I could give you all live in that reading room.

Authored by wrongdoings, edited ruthlessly by what I think is right.

I cried on the way to the (actual) library today, where I wrote this very piece, because I felt like my whole identity was finally being exposed to myself.

That’s the irony- the real exposure of being wrong, inherently, inevitably wrong, has nothing to do with your friends, your following, your barista. It’s the unveiling to yourself that feels the most arresting.

But please, let me tell you, this is your get-out-of-jail-free card.

Recently, I came to the sobering conclusion that I act, bend, and cirque du soleil my way of being from the belief that I am already wrong.

Being wrong before making any choice at all.

Especially being wrong after any choice.

Reader, my entire personality is a devoted response to being wrong.

I am both the child and the adult who is punishable and punishes.

Instead of re-parenting (which I thought I’ve been doing this whole time), I’ve been replicating.

It took me 3 solid months of daily 1-hour meditations to finally arrive at this conclusion. No, the meditations did nothing externally for this.

Yes, the meditations gave me the internal capacity to see what I wasn’t changing.

We spend an agonizing amount of time changing everything from the outside.

Claude prompts. The pilates reformer class. The hot pilates reformer class. The aesthetic of our fridge. Posting matcha so green it becomes annoying. The influenced linen pants that are still slouching in your closet, and not steamed on your body.

If I continue approaching changing all of these things outside of me from the lens of “I’m wrong,” what actually changes?

You begin to seek flesh instead of your soul.

You begin to see -out there- as the mistake, instead of -I think I’m the mistake- so, life is willing to mirror what you avoid. And when you do face it, my God.

Watch out. Scar tissue will cover the self-injury of being wrong, and you’ll have no other choice but to heal.

That is love, and that is a power of your own.

xoxo

sierra

If this piece resonated with you as a creative, a business owner doing it on their own, or you’re just business-curious, I’ve recently opened up the waitlist to my offer, the Business Onion. It’s the system for those who have felt like they’re doing business “wrong” because they are convinced there is always something to fix. I offer support that gives you both internal change and external structure for your work.

Join the waitlist here, and receive early access to a spot, plus $300 off the public price. I would love to see what types of shifts happen in your work from the inner world first.

I open the waitlist doors on May 26th!

join the business onion waitlist

“But once you grow your audience on there, you can monetize your content.”

A message I received after announcing the start of my YouTube channel.

Oozing with the silk of a non-monetized spider, I’m spinning intricate designs of creation without making it into a strategy.

The creature within me and you have lost the plot.

We’re asking the sun for a funnel, the moon for trial reel hooks.

Reader, I haven’t created “content” (if that’s what you can call the freckles of nature’s skin) without it being attached to money in years.

I kept the start of my new channel for 2 quiet hours to myself without needing to share, immediately, and gained one subscriber. I felt the iridescence of true visibility.

Visibility is an abused word in our online world. Stripped of its pores and blemishes, covered in pimple stars and under-eye patches.

Someone sat with me through a mini vlog for 5 whole minutes (the fact that I have to say whole is sobering). They said yes to opening a very precious, supernatural pocket of their human day to watch me eat buffalo cauliflower in a park, and walk through an architectural tour.

Nothing else matters.

The personal brand I’ve hand-carved over the past few years.

The companies I’ve worked for, the projects that only my value-seeking self could salivate over. Jumping out of the water like a guppy on its last breath to tell you.

That lagoon, covered in sprawling moss of insecurity, will give you the fantasy of catching bigger fish deep below. The pole disappears as soon as it hits the surface.

That’s all there is- the surface.

The entire decade of approval to someone, anyone who seemed better than I.

Washed and exfoliated from one stranger, one blanked subscriber. Creating for the sake of creation spritzed me with rose water, and now, I’m not looking for the idea of building, scaling, or converting to gloss my selfies.

It’s been less than 24 hours since starting my channel, and I feel the gravity of true value. Another word that is teased and dangled to mean anything outside of yourself.

There’s no coincidence that the same week I posted my first video, is the same week I return to a Substack hiatus. Wreathed by the remembrance of creativity absent from outcome, I’m on holiday.

It’s the Christmas garland on the door.

That knob is always there for you to open; we just get swooned by the short-term memory loss. A symptom of putting money first.

I’m going to a beginner knitting workshop this Saturday, a floral arrangement workshop this Sunday.

Waiting for enrollment for a water painting semester at an art studio.

I’ve had my business for 4 years, and can’t remember the last time I’ve felt genuinely inspired. None of it is centralized in my work—none of it in my bio.

This is my testimony on the course of living.

It’s used as an ad, and it keeps popping up in the fyp of your heart.

I hope you buy it during its early-bird special.

No need to sign up for the waitlist. You can enroll at any time.

I hope you’ve been well, and I’m quite smitten to come back here.

Leave a comment

xx

Sierra

I’m assuming, since you’re subscribed to some girl’s Substack, that you’re also a suitor of long-form content. If you’d like to also get to know me on YouTube, I would love to have you there. ꩜

subscribe to my channel!

Ways to play (work) with me:

✿ join my free ShopMy training to expand your work beyond offers & services here.

✿ book a ShopMy consultation with me if you want 1:1 creative direction for your curated shop (!). get intimate time with me here.

I attended so many of my own funerals last year that I had to start RSVPing “no” to the e-vites. In true rebirth fashion (no pun intended), I became both the afterlife and the casket; the vessel that holds all my shedding is also, me too.

“10 things I find chic”: burial style.

All of these findings are what I would adorn myself during the self-hospice visits. Both ethereal and equally subterranean, you’ll discover that the below suggestions can be applied to any stage of your life’s existence.

I feel insanely vulnerable with any new style of expression, but ironically, being vulnerable has only created that much more magnanimity for me. Thank you for reminding me that this too is an exhale. Today’s subby is a list-style piece. A pregnancy that has decided its due date is today. And you know what, you just can’t choke on the divine calling of your water breaking.

You’ll swallow yourself whole.

A mini curated collection (just 5 things), if you will, of how to dress yourself in the next coffin.

1. Wearing a heart-locket around your neck that carries whatever you’ve been hiding. You already know what it is; it’s severely calculated and talks to you in your sleep. For example, I want to share more fashion “content” (what else do we call this?). This would normally turn me into ashes immediately, but now, I want nothing more than to nuture it’s reincarnation. I’m thinking something like this. What do you want to place inside your locket of desire this year? Can you flaunt it? Wear while being caressed by hot sprinkles in the shower? It’s vital that you try to style whatever this concealed hobby, lifeforce, thing is. “What you seek is hiding in the places you avoid. Turn toward your shadow- it’s the beginning of becoming whole.” Carl Jung

   
   

2. Dousing yourself in a signature scent of resurrection. Death is an obtrusive fragrance- do yourself a favor and decorate whatever is dying right now with a new aroma. Or does aura work better here? I think this is your year to smoke a different incense of yourself. This can look like using a new font for your IG stories, getting up earlier to write the fucking Substack, or committing to walking into a room differently (just for the experiment of it). All of this creates a swirling, sensationally colorful trail wherever you go. You linger long after you’ve gone. You reside in your friend’s sweaters after a haven’t-seen-you-in-awhile hug. This is the perfect way to sample what this could smell like if you don’t know where to begin.

3. Rolling into a grave with nothing but the earth itself (like this dress). I think a dress stands for a single message. An anchor, if you will, maybe it’s the manifestation of a “my word of the year,” but it breathes a stance. My personal stance this year is to have fun at all costs. That’s the dress I’m wearing. If you had to dance in one elongated fabric, what would it be? What feels edgy to be seen in? That’s the point of the dress; it doesn’t evaporate mid-air. Dresses require substance. What are the silks and cottons that make up your rebirth? I find that mine are art, films, writing, being anywhere but social media, and roaming aisles of produce.

4. Okay- not something you’re technically wearing, but your energy is styling it for you. I like to think of this coffin category as your “micro-dose.” It’s the thought/feeling feedback loop that is unconsciously creating the kaleidoscope around you. The stars listen to your internal conversations; they manifest and become the planet you walk on. To be completely honest, my heart has been closed off to myself for a very long time. I’ve had a genetic helex of self-loathing for who knows how many generations. Despite despite all the love that punctures my masonry. I collect brick & mortar spaces on Pinterest for inspiration, but I have yet exhaled into loving my own building material. I want to feel my heart again. It starts by feeling love for the sake of it first. This helps.

5. A bag that signifies a return to yourself. The other day, I was pondering on the thrown-out idea that you need to live your truth. That’s a lot of pressure, no? To know the entirety of what feels like your origin without 50 more years to back it up. To act as if your truth isn’t fractured into microscopic particles, and to glue it all together as a single form of expression. I think you’re always finding your truth. Find relief in it’s coiled design of crisp edges, intricate stone-walls, trimmed hedges that cuffs your questions of “what’s next.” A clutch holds you all together. If you really want to know about the truth of a woman, find out what’s in her bag. Trinkets, payment methods, and (hopefully) a notebook. How are you becoming your own purse in 2026? Parts of you need stiched comparments-complimentary to the hidden zipper for your most treasured contradictions. Physically, I think this bag will do.

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I’m hosting a free class this evening. Yes, it’s very late-notice, and yes, it’s disgustingly on-brand. “Write Emails People Actually Read”: an email marketing extravaganza (lol) for creatives, service-providers, and anyone who resonates with having a personal brand. A must if you too have realized that just having a Substack (although heavenly, glorious) is only half the equation to sharing your work off socials. I’ll teach you all the foundations you need to know to build an email list that loves you back.

Tonight, Wednesday, at 4pm PST. Can’t make it? A replay will be sent out.

I would love to get silly/serious with you about the power of what a real reply culture can do for your business and microcosmic life.

Sign Up Here

Please note that some of these links may generate me a small amount of affiliate income. I believe in sharing things I love, so that maybe, who knows, you can love them too.

I haven’t been naked around strangers since 2019. My bare bones found community on that July day in the marrow of a random Oregon hot springs. It was a small hike to what seemed like the breath of Nirvana herself. Secret, uncontaminated by the world’s cold symptoms. Nature surrounded my peripherals, but I tried my best to remain blind to nature itself- naked bodies.

Ever since I could remember (i.e., being in a 6th-grade locker room, dreading the grey aura of P.E. clothes), the mere thought of bodily exposure haunted me.

More ghoul than spirit, I always felt inside, especially with showing, undressing skin.

It’s odd to admit how you have to get used to being nude around nudity. We’ve become so well-dressed that it’s like we’re barely raw to begin with.

I truly can not begin to describe the healing of 60-year-old nipples. The way we all stretch, flab, hang. The normality of it all!

You’ll realize in 5 milliseconds that social media is a complete mirage. Salivating for a drop of mineralized water, you lose your thirst every time you scroll. Touching the dessert-kissed Instagram sand, hoping, praying, it’s real- it’s not. It won’t be.

Being in a Korean spa with your elders will make you throw your phone down the cosmic wormhole that is the father of illusion, invention, and deception.

Bodies naked from the perfect polyester sets.

Stretch marks elongating the joy of a woman’s container.

Angels don’t come in Victoria's Secret; they come in the exposé of normal.

The ordinary form is enticing to me. Exhilarating! The idea of proportions being unproportional!

Exposure therapy, but actually exposing yourself, is as therapeutic as they say.

To crave realness in a world of A.I. is to go to a Korean spa. To feel human again is to do the most human thing you could do: strip down. Peel the layers. Find safety in your unprotection of the algorithms (including people’s perceptions of you, another form of a metaverse, in my opinion).

Can we have our metaphorical titties out online? With our friends? In the grocery store? With people who only like us because they project a preferred image on our human-sized screens?

Some of us depend on others to be naked, to feel the requests of the human experience through feeling & seeing all of itsconditions, because it would be too much of a threat to be bare themselves.

I’m choosing to get more naked with my world in 2026.

Not because I necessarily want to, but because I must.

I must if I want a life of origin, a life of authenticated existing.

Where have you been styling a part of your life, opinions, beliefs, values, or way of operating that feels too risky to be nude? The danger is losing friends. The danger is judgment. The danger is rejection. The hazard is being seen differently.

The greatest danger of all is never getting the chance to dance, titties out.

The most prevalent peril is sacrificing yourself for the jury of those who would always find you guilty anyway.

It’s a crisis, you know, being clothed in this age.

xo

Sierra

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PS- I’m in the lab, chemically crafting an offer around making hotter emails in 2026 (or if Substack is your thing- hotter Substacks). Emails are so fucking boring these days that I’ve lost all sensual urge to open my inbox. So have the people you send emails & subbys to. Forget the analytics, remember the subject line. Make people save your emails and become tantalized by the next one. It’s a writing meets strategy offer.

God forbid you make someone want to open your emails. I think that’s the coolest thing in the world! Especially if you are someone who sells things on the interwebs.

If this interests you and you need support getting off socials and into people’s real trust bubbles (their Gmail), please let me know by leaving a comment, or if this is in your inbox, reply baby. Reply reply.

A molasses of thunder oozed into me when I was less than good. Silence rained when I was perfect. There was no in-between idyllic weather for my nervous system. For my achievements. For what I hoped, prayed would give me sun rays in my dad’s sight.

Our eyeballs are the physical globes of our inner world.

Perception is an optic.

Tormented by the chilling of doing something wrong, anything wrong, I captured irresponsibility like it was my own prisoner. Chained myself when I made an error. Made sure to embody a judge before anyone else could.

Guilty.

Guilty.

No innocence before in my psychic court.

The molding of a good-or-else childhood will have you believe that you’re always on the edge of getting in trouble. You will walk on eggshells even when they aren’t there.

But this time, you are your own father.

Being a good child- now a good adult- will shell you from the best kind of trouble. The kind where you laugh at your dog embarrassing you from succumbing under someone’s chair for a crumb. The kind where you buy an item without a scarf of guilt strangling your neck.

God, buying self-care things without guilt. Revolutionary for self-surveillance!

I was taught that spending money outside of basic necessities was irresponsible.

You will do everything in your power to renounce a part of you that was told you were bad, wrong, or, for the sake of this topic, irresponsible, if that meant your survival in a family system depended on it.

When you exile a child of yourself, you act from the place that you are truly. irresponsible. This becomes your entire being instead of a parent or caretaker’s idea of you.

To be a perfect good girl is to operate in the world as if you were already bad, because that’s what you believe. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t need to prove a damn thing. Editing every sentence would be annihilated. Protecting others’ feelings for your truth would be foreign.

I grew tired of canceling myself for the sake of joy, the sour aliveness of lemon in my natural rebellion.

I’m becoming more irresponsible, Dad, Mr. Parivs from third grade, that stupid first boss I can’t even remember by name. My irresponsibility was plagued by the boogie man of punishment. He loved to tell me that I would lose it all and my life would colossally fall apart.

All in the idea of me. I adopted that concept and became its fostered haunted house.

Here are some little ways I’m actually becoming more irresponsible (because you’re ironically the opposite of the thing you’ve been taught you are):

⋆˚✿˖°Once a week, I’m buying coffee without guilt. Yes, buying a fucking matcha sometimes skyrockets my guilt to the moon. “Could have made it at home. Now I want a second one.” There, I’m left without a way back home to earth. This will accumulate, eventually. The point for me is that whether I deem a purchase good or bad, it will not become my entire identity.

⋆˚✿˖° I started tracking my expenses again through Rocket Money, and as I’ve been going through them (granted, I abandoned this activity long ago, but recently went through the last 3 months of transactions), with seeing how that paid substack makes me feel connected. That ClassPass subscription gives me the juice of the reformer. I’m rewiring how joyful spending actually is (what I would deem as high alert, you’re the epitome of irresponsibility).

⋆˚✿˖° Bent over, I used to squiggle my schedule for others. I don’t like seeing people for the first few days of my period, let alone the entire week. I’m on day 2 as we speak, and I cleared out the week from seeing people. Didn’t need to sound the alarm. No war. Just decided that ghosting people when I need to is super responsible for who I am. Considered, uncanceled.

Where could you use some irresponsibility? I would love to know :) By the way, my spellcheck wanted to correct this to “Where could you use some responsibility?” and I thought that was hilarious.

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I don’t offer 1:1 work anymore, and I’m majorly shifting my business model when it comes to supporting creatives practice the art of non-abandonment. But here are some ways to get intimate with me, with you.

🧸ྀི Human Design Readings: I have one personal reading for the season here, one business reading for the season here. These act as vessels for the new person, or rather, the original person to sprout through the concrete cracks of conditioning. I won’t be offering these very much this year, so now is a great time to snag what’s left.

🧸ྀི The Reset Roadmap: The Notion template I’ve created that is quite literally my digital home office. I would be a fucking mess without it. It helps me with literally everything for both sides of my daily existence (business & personal). “I’ve been running my business for 8 years and it felt like a little glow up ✨ and omg if I had something like this from the very start 🤯” ___ you can find that here.

xo

Sierra

Being agreeable is the spirit’s insomnia. You will take melatonin and do all the sleep meditations in the world to return to the unknown. The place where your dreams and ideals are void of judgment, lethargy, cancelation.

The creative is trained to sustain an image for the safety of others; it’s inherently dangerous.

Security seized by the idea of you will always be more imprisoning than sharing your true self.

The core of the human condition revolves around the solar panels of others. Isn’t that ironic? It’s a true form of astral projection; we outsource our electrical pulse to a follower, a group you belong to, a family member who lives light-years away anyway.

The relief in being undetected, even for a mere moment, is only hypervigilance.

Threatened by hands turning into silk and truly letting go of the perceptions of your work (but really, of yourself), you manufacture. You hold onto all your materials that never see the light of day.

Muting your multiples is full-time work. It’s a career without credit.

Cracking open the most disagreeable parts of you is the only real job there is.

I don’t believe there is any creativity left when it’s held captive by confirmation. 2026 will be the year we either completely barricade curiosity, or we dismantle the walls to see nuance in ourselves (and if you dare, in others).

You will be disagreed with because your life is yours.

Maybe it’s less about needing confirmation for every thought you think, and more about remembering where your legitimate security breeds.

For every person who has ever been disappointed with my work or who I am, a part of me celebrates the victory of still living. To no longer be spellbound by the ministry of perception is to become your most supernatural self.

Remember: your magic is often camouflaged by what others want your magic to be.

Where are you currently being creatively hypnotized? What shrieks in the potential of a moonbeam? The interference of light in motion creates iridescence.

This will turn some off; others will be entranced.

Take unemployment from both.

xo

Sierra

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Pockets of the younger parts of myself holding onto ideas of what landing on the moon was like. A half crescent that never felt full- these craters on my body are impartial to all the drybrushing. The warm lemon water. The gua sha became a routine without reason.

The first moon landing was when I was 16.

Admittedly, I was sending a nude(ish) to a boyfriend (was he even a boyfriend? what was dating in high school?), when I involuntarily became an astronaut on my right butt-cheek.

Gasping for oxygen, I saw it.

The single dimple that made my physical hyperfixation turn online. The WiFi signal was irreplaceable from that point onward. Searching for that connection to that one indent was never a problem for me.

I could find it in an instant.

Eyes closed, I gained the addictive power of gravitating my finger towards its atmospheric pressure. It was my magnet in spankies underneath my cheer skirt. A lighthouse to the darkness that would evade when naked in a mirror.

I always felt naked with clothing.

I still do.

Once you land on the moon, you become hypersensitive to its extraterrestrial discoveries.

One more crater appeared at 17. Another formed in my inner thigh at 18. More cups of life form began sprawling on the side of my legs, and in my late 20s, creatures of this sort made their way to the back of my arms.

The deeper the cavities got, the more I became an alien to myself.

Another word for a crater is a depression.

I didn’t quite understand what the term “body dysmorphia” meant when I was younger. It felt like I was someone who had a normal (eek) sense of captivity by their imprisonment. Held behind the bars of my less-than-toned-but-doing-everything-on-earth-to-change-that body, I became atomic.

Small.

Invisible.

Mircocosmic.

Being very athletic & sporty since childhood (from two very athletic parents themselves), I never understood why my body was creating separate planets of its own. I did everything in my power (control) to space travel correctly.

I ate salads & smoothies! Did cardio every day in college! Ventured into affirmations!

The more I felt encapsulated by the biggest indentation of them all-my percepetion-the more I entertained isolation as my transportation back to Venus. I was always searching for that bodily love, lightyears away from me.

I realized that my relationship to my body was more than just a comparative one. It started to become the white noise machine in every outfit. All-consuming. Mirror-avoiding. A manipulation and careful calculation of where or how I would be seen.

These legs, my God, these legs have been the water-bearer to all my insecurities.

Dehydrated from my own source, I stopped working out where people would see me.

Where they could see the astronomy without a telescope. I became so dense in this physical matter of mine that there was no way I could give these limbs space.

To be honest, I never thought I would be able to work out again in person. And if I did, the thought of wearing shorts would haunt me; leggings would be the only option for any such thing.

Stagnant after giving up for a few years, I thought the option of working out at home with an online platform would suffice. For context: I’m self-employed, and most of the channels of my life exist on the internet.

I DM friends in a different state. I work through building offers in the corner of my Notion homepage. I slack freelance clients. I absorb education from YouTube videos. I’m researching coffee shops through TikTok. I’m becoming a better writer through another online course.

I’m. Online. For. Everything.

I realized that working out with a screen became another form of loss.

Loss of sensation and the ability to actually feel my endorphins in a space outside my own. Healthy space travel stops when you do everything in the same room without being aware of it.

After pausing my last online movement platform, I made the jump to going to my first-ever pilates studio (!). Fun fact: my dad has been a pilates teacher for over 20 years, and we had a reformer in our garage when no one knew what the hell it was.

I used to actually be embarrassed by it when friends would come over, because it was just another reason to be avoidant of sharing more about my family.

I loved that damn contraption. Its straps cradled me like a ballerina who could do no wrong. Slow, precise movements gave my ambition a rest. It gave me space.

I returned to the reformer from over a decade of abandonment in October of last year.

I look in that fucking mirror in every class.

The astronaut in me retired when I became the woman who saw movement as strength, instead of using it as a bandaid for what I perceived as weakness.

“Weak” in my body-type.

“Weak” for not having the boob job pushed up in the studio selfie.

“Weak” for not being the SAME. I just wanted to be the same.

Going back to pilates in-person changed my life trajectory because it changed my life’s perceptive direction. It helped me open up to my differences.

I write this for anyone who feels, or maybe once felt, like they couldn’t work out with other people because their body consumed their matching set.

May this encourage you to try again.

To look in the lit-up mirror and still love what’s there.

That’s the point.

Yes, incredible movement for your structure, and you feel little twinkles of stardust every time you return and do something you couldn’t do two weeks ago.

But it’s really about moving for the sake of tender care over tending to the sole tone.

Toning the spirit is what I now sign up for every week. No matter what I’m wearing or how much more advanced the person next to me is.

Tone yourself; tone your heart, and the tight butt just becomes a bonus.

xo

Sierra

If you’re feeling curious about moving in a room with other people again (or for the very first time), I’m sharing a free ClassPass trial below. It offers extra credits beyond their normal trial and gives you space to explore without committing. No weird juju- just an option that genuinely helped me, and now, I’m passing it along. 𓈒𓏸 ଳ⋆.𖦹𓂃 𓈒𓏸

JOIN CLASSPASS FOR FREE

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I unintentionally gave myself a severance package from social media—one month of being laid off without a Christmas bonus.

Exhaustion became my new circumference. Weary of my online geometry, I’ve become shaped by body comparison, someone’s new bag, again, and calculating what the fuck a viral hook is.

I sunk.

I forgot to swim. I forgot how to swim. Pooling my creative resources, I decided to leave the shallow end and become disgustingly fascinated with my real world again.

They say social media isn’t real, but it is. It becomes your reality, and when you close the screen and tap off an app, you find yourself in a mid-panic because you have to meet yourself without a bio.

Who are you without a caption? Can you describe something without abbreviated, shortened language? What is your dialectic?

I’ve been tethered to a tongue that isn’t mine. Tongue-tied, I was lost in my phone, exploited, and I forgot that I was the way out.

2026 is the year I become so entrenched in the way I speak and how words shape my life force that I simply can’t go back. I refuse. I’ve found my God-given geometry in books that open me to pages of my spirit’s speech.

December 5th, 2025: my last post of the year, vacant as a human being. Checked out, I traveled internally.

January 5th, 2026: I spent countless hours in libraries, read more books in a month than I did in a year, started carrying a dictionary, filled a pocket book of new words, left DMs read, became me. It’s only the beginning of January. It’s only me, the embryo.

You can always begin again. Birth is an illusion. Detering from the masquerade of being stuck in a timeline, I gave myself a library card.

You can’t argue with your limitations anymore when you check out books. You start caressing yourself, your daily decisions with solicitous care. You must, because you have to return these pages. You reappear in your inner world. The outside becomes clear of this.

Ephemera dissipates, and you're left with the significance of your personal character.

The protagonist in your waking life develops, and its precision infiltrates you.

You can’t help but disrupt what you thought consumption was before. What at once feels sombre in 5-second videos becomes flowered hills of vibrancy, colored barriers of flora reintegrating into the biome of your brain.

Digestion, in the form of literacy. You’ve missed your appetite, and you had but the faintest idea.

Give yourself one month with a library card.

One month to engulf the barrier between you and who you left behind a screen.

One month to take care of something. My God!

To borrow a book. To act as its breathing umbrella in the rain because you mustn’t get a single noun wet. I’ve mothered library books this past month. I’ve re-parented myself in the process.

Getting a library card has done more for my heart than anything I could ever remember from scrolling. From any product I’ve saved. From any quote I’ve stacked in a digital folder. I stopped buying so many damn matchas out.

Picturesque snapshots of plywood tables under careful lighting, masked by dialed-in latte art, didn’t find me in December. It won’t find me in January either.

I’m at the library. Don’t call my name over the counter. I’m absent, and I’m claiming my real handle again.

Left in the dim corners of myself, I mustered the courage to be my own light source.

I got a library card.

I turn each page, ambition lost on me (exhale), I map out my being like she’s uncharted territory.

I got a library card.

So when you ask what’s new, I’ll say, “I got a library card, and I keep checking out new versions of me.”

xo
sierra

Quotes that have recently devoured me (from library books):

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅ “The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single entity that one person could understand. I was a kaleidoscope, each glittering piece of glass changing as I turned.” All Fours, Miranda July.

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅ “I then sat with my doll on my knee till the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room.” Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë.

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅ “ Any writer may be in or out of step with his or her time, but a great one is inextricably bound to place.” Slow Days, Fast Company, Eve Babitz.

How Should A Person Be? Sheila Heti

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We’re left salivating at the mouth, unneutered. Tempted at all costs to reproduce this feeling, and we call it our nature. The offspring of my goodness has been left fatherless for God knows how long.

Fending to reparent myself, I am left in the unforgiving forest. Scraped, bruised by low-hanging approval and its thorns that trick me into their delicacy.

These thorns promise you the rose, but leave you nothing but the colorless stem of a vacant garden. Society loves to civilize its weeds.

To be bad is so wild.

Fertile with a desire to explore one’s own acceptance, we are left isolating the origin of ourselves and becoming domesticated by our employer. Kept captive by family and Instagram and that one cool girl who will never give us the time of day.

Thorns of the rose without the rose- this level of domestication.

To be the good girl is to be the punished girl. I’ve come to find that the cocaine of being good in someone’s eyes is the drug of the child. The child who only seeks to survive.

You think you’re saving yourself from punishment (finally, finally), only to succumb to the truth that your greatest punishment is the need to be good.

To be “bad” is to be a threat, and you simply couldn’t have that.

Being good is not just about external validation.

Being good is about shoplifting someone’s validation for yourself.

(It ends up in a landfill anyway.)

Good girls are emotional thieves looking for their next internal robbery. We’re sneaky, seemingly confident until the chemicals wear off, leading us to research what we could put in our bags next.

I recently received long-awaited twinkling words of starbursts and cosmic kisses about my work. I’ve longed for this type of space travel: taking me off my lesser-than Pluto and fast-forwarding my perceived image to the moon.

She glimmers from afar, but I’ve learned it doesn’t mean it’s actually brighter. A star’s ultimate brilliance also depends on its proximity to us.

Being perceived as good is like the safety warning on your car’s mirrors: “objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” Seeking that pious goodness is distancing you from that wildness. The freedom in your own confirmation. That evidence.

That damn evidence.

To my sobering awareness, this praise did absolutely nothing for my being.

An empty present underneath the big Mercedes-Benz bow.

I scoffed, honestly. The ostentatious costume that I’ve been begging to put on was the wrong size. It always was.

I need you to know that freedom from endorsement, this co-sign on your life, isn’t a parade of fireworks and Fourth of July blueberry pie.

It’s often quiet.

There is no need for it to announce its presence.

And that’s how you know you’ve done it.

You release the anticipation of both the praise and the letting go of its praise, and you become liberated.

I hate to admit it, but part of the game of being a good girl is the thrill of the chase.

Muted self-assurance is not sexy nor fun, or cool.

What even is COOL?

Being a bad girl isn’t what you think. It’s not smoke and fire. Leather pants with red lipstick smacking in your face.

It’s being a different type of arsonist. One where the fire isn’t wasted on revenge, but cultivated for one’s own sustainability.

Being “bad” is an auric signature that does not need to sign on the dotted line to begin with. Its confidence is shockingly subtle. It’s the feeling of coming home after a long day, and the browned butter of your soul knows there’s no one to impress, no one to melt for.

I’m in the process of evaporation, and its wilderness is normal to me again.

Like vapor, I drift into a pure nothingness. Nothingness has given me the most incredible praise in the world. It’s invisible, and I can’t put it on my LinkedIn.

Self-preservation of your goodness is a full-time job. And honey, I’m not here to work.

I guess this is how you age.

You’ve bent your knee an embarrassing number of times until you decide that you have better use of your joints. Like lubrication, letting go of being good becomes the organic verification. No GMOs or seed oils that inflame your spirit.

Diffusing praise is getting off the metabolic hamster wheel of a 3pm crash.

Natural caffeine, this shit.

I’m no longer opting for the decaf version of myself, and I can still fall asleep fine.

“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”

― Georgia O’Keefe ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

Thank you for your eyes. In a world of brain rot and overconsumption, I hope to provide a mid-day cerebral snack. All the grams of protein included. This past year has truly been the Year of the Snake for my work, and I know that soon, soon, I will leave behind business mentoring too. It’s become another version of a shadow career for me, and I’m okay with illuminating it.

Until then, I aim to commit to my writing in 2026 and fully embrace being an artist. The internal gag! Creating tools and offerings for creatives without the hierarchy of a label in between still seems to be present for me. May it become a gift for you in the upcoming year, too.

x

Sierra

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The cursor blinks for me, as I’ve been trying to compartmentalize the right words in the human language of this keyboard. Covered in incomprehensible crumbs and stained from an unknown beverage, this keyboard wishes it could clean sweep me.

I wish I could sweep my sleepy words, too.

The infatuation with escaping the imprisonment of work has always existed in me.

A purple sparkly dress with lived-in Sketchers glows loudly, as the mini child version of me does too. This child is asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

She blinks (perhaps the last time she ever did such a thing) and says, “Nothing.”

What a ridiculous question to ask the mind of one who is destined to build forts and doodle under the spirals of a tree.

It’s all a spiral, isn’t it?

To pay for planet Earth and perhaps do that through the means in which it’s felt as a purpose rather than a means.

I’ve never felt like I had a purpose to begin with.

That feels extra tender to share here. But yes, any type of purpose that was work-related feels foreign- a language that you attempt to learn through Duolingo, but you know that you will never be able to take it into a real conversation.

The only thing I’ve ever become an expert in is the experience of work, but I haven’t quite translated “my thing.”. I’ve freelanced for brands you love, walked dogs for that extra latte, worked full-time just to go back to part-time, and then the cycle repeats.

I’ve had my own company for almost four years now, and I still feel like it’s not fully satisfying. The one thing that my inspos didn’t tell me- no amount of success will patch the purposeless hole.

The awe in my spirit when I watch an interview of someone who has materialized their purpose through work- it’s a drug to me. A longing in my chest that never sleeps. Maybe that’s why restlessness comes easily to me.

The biggest drug known to man is knowing.

I snort it in mornings that are too quiet and in evenings when I feel like the day isn’t complete.

Oh, how I would love to know what that thing is. I would love to build it like a fucking brand and give her ads and make it feel warmed with cayenne.

I would give it a run club every Saturday at 8 am and let the world experience it through pop-ups and collabs.

Oh, how I would love to know what that thing is.

I don’t.

My business is dying because I’m letting go of the idea that my business is my thing.

My truest thing is so far removed from my work. It could never be bottled into an offer or upsold at checkout, or given free shipping.

Elements, fractals, and swirling atomic material are infused in business, surely.

But it’s not all of it. It never could be.

It’s none of my business, my true thing.

It’s felt when I hold a friend’s hand and when I taste a hojicha cloud on a random afternoon. It’s touched when I style a new outfit and when I laugh out loud at a stupid meme.

I don’t think it’s my job to try to package it anymore. To give it branded wrapping and to perfect its logo once more.

My thing is joy.

It’s bottled into jasmine perfumery, and it’s painted across sunrises on dog walks when I’m still barely getting up. My thing is writing to you and having as many real talks as I can, even when it feels sticky.

In this very auspicious Scorpio season, I’m grieving my business. It’s a subtle mourning because I thought this was going to be my thing, I thought this was going to be all of me.

My business is the transportation to my thing, but it’s not the vehicle itself. I’ve wanted my work to be that damn Porsche for so long that its wheels are spinning.

Permission to let go of what you thought would be yours. What you thought was the source of your purpose, when really, your purpose is just being without something.

Does that make sense?
Something I ask myself consistently.

Death is always a rebirth.

There is no difference between the two, unless that’s what you choose to see.

My latest experiment in this life is to remove the weighted blanket of purpose from the mattress of my work. I’m allowing myself to rest. The pillows, patted with love instead of the force of needing to know what they’re made of.

November & December are a rehabilitation of knowing.

A detox of predicting what the path is and why there is even a path to begin with. A juice cleanse (do those still exist?) of purpose analysis.

I hope this didn’t find you well- like an email waiting to be replied to. I hope this finds you undone. Peeled. Raw.

Purpose is so layered that its only job is to convince you of living no matter the circumstance. To return to its core essence as much as you can. To take the pressure off its imagery and what it’s supposed to look like.

Or at least, that’s what it shares with me when I’m trying to decode it for the zenith time.

Thank you for your eyes- I haven’t written a Substack since July. It’s often these moments that remind me of the power of writing and what it can cultivate between strangers and lovers alike. Maybe you’re going through some type of death/rebirth, too.

xx

sierra ｡𖦹°‧

PS- I’m leaning into making a mini private podcast course on either finding your purpose outside of your work, or learning to trust at all costs again. If this is of interest to you as we wrap up 2025, please let me know by commenting here or replying to this email (if this landed in your inbox). <3

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It’s shocking to the untrained mind.

A hanging entity without the earthly grounding to be a part of the earth.

That’s been my July, my motivation.

Missing on a milk carton. Diffused into the air with the lingering scent of lavender essential oil and a crackling of a book that desires to be read before responding to someone, again. It seems that there is always someone to respond to now.

It’s a trick, this collective pressure to be constantly motivated. Society is the magician, and you are the participant in the show.

My YouTube algorithm has been subconsciously suggesting that I need a “glow-up.”

I need to uplevel. Buy a new dress. Start a budget. Change my diet. Put on lipstick. Take a new supplement. Cut out coffee. Set another boundary.

Glow-ups are side effects of the pharmaceutical motivation complex.

This type of content suppresses the necessary treatment of whatever the opposite of a glow-up is—the unruly self. Your ability to ghost, which becomes essential for some time. Your lack of current style. The soul-deep rebellion of doing anything about it. Your in-betweens. The unglamorous part of transformation. The cocoon that keeps you crawling. You forget to walk, and it’s called failure or laziness.

I am just remembering.

Aren’t we all?

My memory is like a child who refuses to tell you what just happened.

Cloaked in weeds. I’m picking mustard and blowing wishes in dandelions. I’ve decided that mowing my mental lawn doesn’t suffice. I need to love the weeds before thinking that cutting them would solve it. My father’s solution would never suffice.

I’m sorry, Dad, I can’t perform like you can. I’m impressed with how long that type of production can go on for. I feel like I’ve expired, and any external stimulus has only made me relinquish the incentive of motivation even more.

My brain is hungry, once more. Illusionary satitaiton from attaining something, anything at this point. A need for a great answer with the in-person prompt of “What’s new with you?”

Funny how remembrance needs to be wrapped like a package with a catchy hook and a loud thumbnail.

It’s so uncomfortable being this quiet with yourself.

You could hear a pin drop in my empty house of motive. That’s the saying, right?

It’s finally occurred to me that what I’ve considered “motivation” has been a presentation all along. My version of ambition is a form of entertainment. It’s my debut. My public pursuit to prove.

Proving is a sport to me.

I’ve been awarded so many medals at this point that their shine lacks luster within their dusty storage. All of these years, and I just store the medals anyhow.

Did I die?

Or did the idea of me needing to accomplish wither?

Whatever it is, it’s ghoulish.

My ego is concerned.

My soul is weirdly at rest.

Being self-employed amplifies your relationship to achieve.

It calls upon your anxiety to share. To create unnecessarily. To be cool. To do this collab. To be invited to the table. To make the god damn table.

Splinters in my entrepreneurial hands, they feel like dropping carpentry as an offer.

The offer is me. I’ve spent so much time building anything except myself.

And just like that…spirits lift the veil, and my mental abode becomes haunted again. Deadly hushed with only the breeze reminding you of sound. Like I said, it’s this type of quiet that makes you really question your drive. Who is really behind the wheel?

Deciding to drop your own performance awards you no applause.

You get no likes. No reshares. No views.

You fucking view yourself.

It’s calming.

It’s so odd.

It’s unimpressive.

That’s the best part.

It’s July, and I’ve been an underachiever.

The exploration of the bare minimum is enticing. It revives me more than anything I’ve ever tried to sensationally capture in the cemetery of my awards.

Something indescribable stirs in you when you realize your motivation may have just been a badge of honor. It’s empty. It creates light. It makes you smell roses on your walks and carve out space for depth. You see the sky differently. You feel. You feel.

I need you to know that motivation can be a barrier to you just being yourself.

Ironically, the more I’ve been leaning into this departure of self, the more I’ve approached this life with more ease. A stronger ability to just do something without over-analyzing it, questioning every thread of it.

The next time it appears that your well of motivation requires fulfillment, look once more. Peer into its hollows. Let it just be. Let the rest of summer just be.

I would love to know what you think about the idea of motivation sometimes being a performance. A conditioned neural network for acceptance, belonging.

It boggled me for days. I’m still processing it myself.

Thank you for reading this. “Cross Your Mind” by Shelly played on repeat through this piece. A cold matchacano sat next to me, pouring its l-theanine into my achy ability to write again. I’m writing again. That’s a good thing, I think.

꩜

Sierra

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꩜ THE PERSONAL BRAND DIARIES ARE RETIRING ꩜

The subliminal shift fan-favorite audio course is closing. The call to make more space (especially with this whole motivation is covert performance for me thing) is asking me to simplify. To streamline. To get weirder. To question. To let go.

PBD is an audio course (transporting you via a private podcast) that gives you a lifetime of permission to truly create your way in the interwebs. For the digital creator, the human who went full send into business, and then went Oh shit, I need to get back to me again.

I’ve come to discover that you’re not building a personal brand, but building a deeper, truer relationship to yourself in public. This is the most fascinating thing to me in the personal brand sphere- not the offers you create or the feminine funnels. The way you shapeshift when you stop feeding the comparison cycle. The light that dares to shine when you stop asking for it to be seen through metrics.

SIGN UP FOR PBD ꩜

It’s pure magic, this ability of yours to be yourself online.

Very few risk the danger.

I would be honored to guide you in loving the threat of it all. To find your voice in your work. To encapsulate the tools needed to create with freedom, with confidence.

Tomorrow (Monday) is your last day to access the most chic on-the-go creator mentoring. The Personal Brand Diaries is expiring, along with me. Let’s bring flowers to her funeral.

Can’t wait to see you inside. To watch the way you audaciously love your work again. To fall head over heels for showing up (crazy, right?) This is your ticket to that type of tango. May you allow yourself to dance with utter liberation. PBD is 20% off and offers a payment plan option. The closing sale ends Monday ______________ ꩜

JOIN THE PERSONAL BRAND DIARIES

In my last Substack piece, I intricately shared my own experience with personal finances and how sticky I’ve felt for (my whole life?) a majority of my adulthood. I seek to create expansion for the gentle humans in my corner around taboo topics.

Financial education rooted in equal practicality and energetic philosophy (because they are the same spirit) has become the foundation of this wonderful collab with. ꩜

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are beaming with sunrays, feeling the pleasure of what we excavated in the Spring, and becoming attuned to our capacity once more.

If you’ve been feeling on the edge and in need of truth delivered in slow bites, this read is for you.

Our financial friends at Wealthkind have taken your secret wealth questions and answered them here (anonymously, of course) with the addition of my spiritual perspective. I find that both interpretations offer harmonious nourishment to the cells that need the most financial minerals.

May you feel at ease. May you feel collected and harnessed like water coming back to its vessel, brimmed with clarity, sustenance, and recovery.

꩜ I’d love advice on how/where to invest, and curious to hear more about your take on side jobs?

Wealthkind: Start with the basics- a low-cost, diversified portfolio through index funds is one of the most proven and accessible ways to invest. You don’t need to pick stocks or time the market—just consistently contribute to a well-balanced fund that reflects your long-term goals. As for side jobs, we’re all for extra income if it feels aligned and energizing. But not at the cost of your mental health. Ask: Is this side job in service of your bigger financial vision, or a band-aid for an unsustainable system?

Sierra: After years of only contributing to my wealth in short-term channels, I believe that investing will not only support us from a sustainable, practical level, but it will also energetically signal responsibility and aligned actions (which the universe loves). I’m brand new to investing, so I don’t have much to add except that just taking the creepy crawly steps towards it is a spiritual healing. It says, “I’m willing to take care of myself now and in the future.” The more you align with that reality, the more it becomes easier to take financial steps that seemed scary or foreign to a previous self. I’m also a big advocate and fan of side jobs and extra streams of income that feel genuinely good. I’ve done SO many random side jobs that only left me more stressed and obligated to tasks that I never enjoyed. Before hopping into side jobs, look at where you can increase your current income now (whether that be a promotion at work or another stream in your business if you’re self-employed). This will provide you with more grounding before hopping into something just to make more income.

꩜ Projector in HD here- how do I make money when I only want to work 4 hours a day? lolz

Wealthkind: We love this question because it’s about honoring your vision. Start by asking: What skills or services can you offer that are high-impact with minimal output? Think: digital products, 1:1 sessions at a premium price, or rental income. And then: how can your money make money? Investing is key to creating income beyond your time and energy. A sustainable income strategy for a Projector includes both aligned work and intentional investing.

Sierra: I loooove this question! Your energy management is everything when it comes to your energetic blueprint. I think it’s important to note what *isn’t* working now before investing more time and space into new ways to make money in less time. What have you done now or before that feels like it breaks your rhythmic flow of rest? What do your friends and family come to you for when it's about guidance and seeing through something? This will be a key to how you can use your natural gifts of being a seer and monetize that without putting in so much effort. There are SO many incredible resources out there that can support you in making passive income as well, especially when it’s related to your skillset. My swirly mapping workshop is a great place to start if you have gifts but don’t know how to create offers from them. Projectors do the best with long-term wealth planning. As the Wealthkind angels mentioned, investing and letting your money make money (for instance, in a high-yield savings account) will take off the pressure to be aligned with societal norms.

꩜ What about when you have hardly any extra money to invest?

Wealthkind: Start where you are. Even $5 or $20 a month builds momentum and rewires your identity as someone who invests. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s consistency. Focus on setting up a monthly auto-transfer to your investment account and slowly increase it as your capacity grows.

Sierra: I can relate to this question so hard. I’ve had serious financial ruts and rock bottoms throughout my adult life (stemming from the same thing in childhood), and I thought that investing only meant hefty monthly contributions. I find that the subconscious mind rewires primarily based on two main components: repetition and emotional priming. The more you repeat investing just the money you would spend on a coffee or out for a lunch just once a month is the repetition needed to signal to your below surface consciousness that you are someone who *can* invest and with the emotional priming of that (confidence, self-love, excitement, peace, joy, etc.) you will begin to subconsciously find ways or the ways will find you to contribute more and more. As someone who was attached to the numerical value of money her whole life, I find that loving the amount you can invest now only expands from that place of self-acceptance. The real challenge isn’t investing small amounts, it’s “can you love and accept where you are with that right now” in the process.

꩜ The balance between "money is energy" to actually doing the practical earthly things in money?

Wealthkind: At Wealthkind, we don’t see the energetics and practicality of money as separate. Money is energy—it holds charge, emotion, and story. AND it exists in a very real, material world. The practical is part of the energetic. Opening the spreadsheet, checking the balance, setting up the auto-transfer — these are rituals of self-love and care. The mundane is sacred when it’s aligned.

Sierra: Ooooeeee this is a good one. After YEARS of avoiding all the practical money things that make you feel tethered to Earth (like spreadsheets, cutting out subscriptions, talking about bills with your partner, etc.), I have found that the most practical money things are indeed the most energetic and spiritual. My 20s only consisted of money energetics: the meditations, manifesting without actually building long-term wealth, and all of the money narrative journaling without doing something with it. Money energetics are real, but in many spaces (especially online in social media spheres), it becomes a distraction with even a hint of bypassing what the real energetics are. The energy of money is the most supported when you do the practical. It seems like a dichotomy, but it’s really supportive of its invisible forces (trust me on this one). To be really honest, I think the energetics of money are actually all rooted in the subconscious. The energy around money can shift when are beliefs around it shift. Ask yourself, if practicality and energetics were both partners in the relationship of money, how could I support them both? There are no sides here; they are equally the same thing.

꩜ How can I find good investment options (like in the stock market) aligned with your values? Feels hard and boring af

Wealthkind: Totally get it — the investing world can feel dry and full of jargon. A simple, values-aligned entry point is ESG ETFs, which screen for environmental, social, and governance factors. Just know that ESG isn’t a perfect label — some funds still include companies you might not personally support, so it’s worth checking the underlying holdings, which you can do on Google, Yahoo Finance, or any other free investment research platform like Morningstar or MarketWatch. That said, some investors choose to invest broadly in the overall market to maximize returns, and then channel their profits into the causes they care about.

And to make it feel less boring and more like a possibility, picture every ETF purchase as planting a tiny seed. You’re giving your dollars a job in companies that mirror the world you want to see. Then — hands off! — Let time and compounding do their quiet magic, checking in only now and then as those seeds sprout.

Sierra: I love this question because it brings humanity into the equation when it comes to our own personal investments. I’m not an investing expert at all, but what I can say from an energetic standpoint is that you, the individual, have the power to give back to small businesses, foundations you care deeply about, and causes that feel aligned with the wealth that you will grow through investing. You may not be able to find complete alignment in your portfolio (or hey, maybe you will!), but you WILL find alignment in your personal spending from those investments. Try to remember that you will have more agency and autonomy with who you share your wealth with when you start growing your wealth in the first place.

꩜ Thoughts on having your partner support you indefinitely? What are the energetics of that?

Wealthkind: This is so personal, and the answer lives in your body more than in your bank account. The key is intentionality and consent. If you feel empowered in the dynamic—and it’s a conscious agreement, not an unspoken expectation—beautiful. If it’s rooted in shame, power imbalance, or avoidance, it may need tending. No judgment either way — just gentle inquiry about whether the energy exchange feels honest, and whether it’s serving your highest growth.

Sierra: My partner supported me for a couple of years while I was going through a major health journey (to which I couldn’t work anymore), and during that time, it felt really uncomfortable for me to accept his help. I think this is sooo beautifully intimate and individualized, but from a person who carried shame over being supported, I need to say that, regardless of whether it feels aligned or not, having open communication about money is everything. Some people say that it’s an energetic red flag to have your income come from a partner or family member. While I understand the sentiment of that, I also don’t agree with it. What if you were the main provider in another lifetime, and you are learning to receive in this one?

There are so many unknown, unearthly factors that are involved with partnership/money that people get too rigid over with energetic rules. If you do want to be supported indefinitely by your partner, get real and raw about shared investments, long-term planning, and do look out for yourself. Regardless of being supported or not, the reality is that anything (and I mean, anything) can happen, so look out for how you will be supported in the case of death, unexpected separation, etc. I speak from deeply lived experience on this one!!

꩜ What is the small financial step to take coming out of a financial rut or rock bottom?

Wealthkind: First, take a deep breath. You don’t need to fix everything today. You just need a starting point. One small step we love? Open your bank app — not to judge, just to check in. From there, choose one action: maybe it’s writing down your next three expenses to bring awareness, maybe it’s setting up a $5 transfer to savings, or maybe it’s picking up a personal finance book to shift your mindset gently back into motion. Take your time. Offer yourself some grace. You’re on your way.

Sierra: Oh boy, the financial rock bottoms I have personally gone to! I know this might be an eye-roll, but from someone who also easily eye-rolls at answers she doesn’t want to hear, this rock bottom or rut is insanely purposeful for your next level-up. It asks you to radically do things differently so you can set up a life that you truly want to live. The energetic component of this is completely interwoven with compassion. It asks you not to change how things occurred, but to make changes now moving forward.

I believe the biggest shifts happen in simplicity. How can you tend to your nervous system in one small, free way when you still feel like you’re in survival mode? How can you see or be willing to see that this is happening for you and not to you? That alone will drastically alter the financial course for you. In the meantime, please don’t compare yourself to others who seem miles away in financial “achievement” at this time. You have to be open to seeing that there is no such thing as someone doing better than you; it’s just you being able to improve from where you were before. :)

꩜ As an entrepreneur, I don't receive consistent paychecks every couple of weeks. If I wanted to automate my savings and investments, how would I go about doing that if consistency is not in my personal bank account?

Wealthkind: Irregular income can make money systems feel tricky, but it’s absolutely doable. There are two approaches we love:

Option 1: The “Pay Yourself First” Method.

Every time you pay yourself — no matter the amount — you send a set percentage (say, 10–20%) to savings or investments. This method is flexible and helps you stay consistent, even if it requires a little manual effort.

Option 2: Income Smoothing.

This is where you build a buffer — usually one or two months’ worth of business income — in a separate account. Then, you pay yourself a consistent amount each month from that account, just like a salary. Once that’s in place, you can automate your transfers to savings and investing. It takes patience and some admin setup, but it brings so much peace and predictability — and that’s a gift to your nervous system and your financial goals.

Sierra: Right there with you, angel! I don’t receive regular income through subliminal shift, so it’s been tricky for me to navigate how to do that when it comes to savings and putting income towards goals/visions. I actually just learned the “Pay Yourself First” Method from Wealthkind, and this process BLEW MY MIND. I find that energetically, a lot of entrepreneurs actually have a negative belief around being inconsistent with income, and that this says something about us or our value or worth. Although I’m not here to be the financial advisor, I am here to be the spiritual support.

The biggest thing I would ask you in a session with me around this is, “What do you believe inconsistent income says about you as a person?” We will repeat and guarantee our external realities with more inconsistency (hi, from lived experience) when we are attached to the idea that this is a bad thing. What if this wasn’t bad? What if it was absolutely brilliant that you are making money at all from doing your own thing? This is just as important as paying yourself first, in my very biased opinion.

꩜ Do you believe in budgeting?

Wealthkind: We prefer to think about benchmarks over budgets. Traditional budgeting often feels restrictive, backward-looking, and can easily become a source of stress or guilt when things don’t go as planned.

Instead, we teach the pay yourself first approach: you prioritize your future self by setting aside money for savings, investing, or debt payoff before you spend a single dollar. For example, you might set a benchmark of investing 20% of your income each month.

Once that’s taken care of, the rest is yours to spend freely, joyfully, and without guilt. It’s about creating a system that supports both your goals and your happiness.

Sierra: Budgeting feels very outdated and old, energetically speaking. I love the way Wealthkind promotes the “Pay Yourself First Method” mentioned in this substack already, but I believe that if you grew up with a negative outlook on budgeting or you always had to save without really watching true wealth grow in your household, you will subconsciously block yourself from being able to grow your own wealth too. Did money feel tight or restrictive in your childhood? What connotations do you have with the word budgeting? These need to be addressed, along with aligning new ways of taking care of yourself for the long term. If you could replace the concept of budgeting with something else that still creates a sense of intention, what would that be?

I’ve felt so incredibly inspired by Wealthkind and what they have provided here that it’s my greatest delight to share with you their Financial Foundations Course (starts July 8th!).

This is a live, month-long course with women hand-picked to be on this journey with you. You receive the coolest, most intimate teachings, such as financial wellness, investing 101, hands-on guidance for learning the stock market, and creating an actual strategic vision for your finances.

It’s the most grounded meets practical financial well-being course for the woman who does want soft opulence. Opulence in the form of work optionality because her investments can one day cover her bills. Opulence in the form of not stressing about retirement. Opulence in the form of monthly facials, because you already paid yourself first.

Pinching myself that a course (let alone a female-focused financial brand) like this exists in this timeline. Join the Wealthkind Angels in their Financial Foundations Course this July. If you’re looking for nutrient-dense support on any of the questions or topics above, the course includes twice-weekly office hours — intimate coaching time dedicated to your personal questions, systems, and goals. It’s the feminine touch you didn’t know money needed.

Use my code “SUBLIMINALSHIFT10” for $150 off the course!

entering soft opulence

꩜ Not sure if the course is the right fit for you? Book a 15-minute chat with Wealthkind here.

꩜ Course Application Link here.

꩜ Course Website Page here.

join the financial foundations course

Use my code “SUBLIMINALSHIFT10” for $150 off the course!

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xx

Sierra

Pulling me through weeds as tall as the atmosphere would allow.

Dry, brittle, and untamed. Was it me? Or was my relationship with money itself that needed trimming? Snip. Snap. For many years, I attempted to be a financial gardener, or a steward of opulent circulation, but I hid. Oh, hiding kept me so small. The smallness that you inevitably enjoy until you don’t.

Financial weeds have a way of making you feel safe in a very twisted inner child way.

They convince you with the nice thought of getting out one day.

“One day.”

You know that one day of financial inspiration turns into weeks, years, centuries inside one lifetime of avoidance, fear, and self-shame.

I find this piece has parallel timing with the topic of money, life abundance, and energetic prosperity being a theme in June.

In the Northern Hemisphere, this month flickers with sun kisses, sweet bearings of fruit, and an opportunity to become bigger. To take up more space. To live out the inventory you have been quietly collecting from the seasons before.

I want to make a note here that we must find the courage to equate richness outside of numerical data. It is a radical act of rebellion and beauty to proclaim and take ownership of our wealth, being undefined by such mathematical symbolism.

However, I am a woman of curiosity. I have a new goal of not judging those with affluence; right now, I only care to get curious. Inquisitiveness will do more for your expansion than judgment ever could.

I am a feline of fascination when it comes to money, how it’s made, the journey of an earthling generating it. I love to bathe in someone’s transparency. It makes me warm-blooded, not in the way of boiling in bubbles of frustration, but in feeling a zest in my flesh.

Money is still so unutterable (unless it’s about the bondage of scarcity, then we can have heaps of those conversations).

I crave to mumble and utter it in ways that feel open, less bone-shaking, and loving.

Can we create a space where money loves us back?

I believe that’s something to dance with as we elongate our days, touch the hands of friends, and become attuned to the immaculateness of power that is claiming a different type of economy: the richness of true self-care.

Self-care in a high-yield savings account so your money can make money (I’m signing up for my first one this week).

Self-care in peeling back the “I don’t know how” when it comes to investing.

Self-care in making small adjustments to build up that emergency fund.

Recently, I shared in a newsletter (if you’d like to receive that weekly love note outside of Substack, please join here!), about how I opened up on making my biggest sale day in my business thus far: $7k, if you wanted to know.

I felt so fucking cringe.

But I knew that there were women out there who were also like me: making herbal infusions, in touch with the elements, tea enthusiasts, lovers of farmer’s markets, etc., who are also curious.

Curious not in the “scale to $100k months” ads we see on social media that feel colossally ancient at this point, but curious in a way where we hold both truths: prosperity is barbarically limited in just numbers, but also, what are the numbers?

What did you do to create not just safety, but true wealth? What type of accounts have you opened up? Where did you learn that from again?

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting the sheer outpouring of replies to that newsletter. Women, like myself, who were also led by soft curiosity. Women who wouldn’t be buying mega mansions with their millions, but spending more time reading by bodies of water, going on airplane mode, and eating a good cheesecake.

Simple opulence.

That’s what I imagine for myself, and apparently, many of you share that vision as well.

I find that any cringe you have about finances is worth sharing.

So, to continue my cringe financial journey, I wanted to give you an intimate peek at my first-ever financial coaching session. I’m so delighted to share that this was hosted by the phenomenal women behind my new favorite financial resource: . Lexi & Delana are some of the kindest, most open-hearted people to ever let into your personal finances sphere (especially when you have money heebie-jeebies).

If you asked me 5 years ago if I would be willing to do this, I would have ghosted you for a millennia.

Now, I’m writing a Substack about it, hoping you join me in healing through creating internal & external financial well-being too.

I’m far from perfect at anything with finances; I’m messing up, slipping, and sliding along the way. But, I would love to be more open about them so you can feel less alone in this labyrinth. True progression is not done linearly; it is tethered in spirals.

(( a gallery of my simple opulence: time in nature, skincare that makes you feel like a holistic princess, pens for days, a curated stick of Japanese incense, moments with my creature, and a book that requires you to turn off your phone ))

The session began before the session actually began. The women behind Wealthkind sent me what they call an “aligned money tracker” before our call (which again, 5 years ago would have sent me running for the hills. Goodbye! Farewell! Never to be seen again).

It was a pre-calculated spreadsheet that made me come face to face with my income after taxes, spelling out what my fixed expenses are (rent, utilities, dog food, phone bill, etc.). debt repayment, monthly savings/investing, and then flexible spending.

I find that the shadows that live inside the financial weeds in your garden are there simply because you have gotten so used to avoiding them. They have essentially become the garden themselves.

Half the battle (if it feels like a never-ending fight or struggle) is due to not looking at your numbers. Very simple, plain, and eye-rolly all wrapped into one money sandwich. Please take this from me, a healing avoidant queenie who always says no goat cheese.

Just looking at what comes in and what goes out will do more for you than another meditation, money healing course, chakra initiation, etc. I’ve done them ALL for the past decade.

Money has taught me that it’s earth-based. It’s seasonal. Practical. It just wants your embrace for what is presently there. Not what isn’t there or what you wish was there, just was is there now. Sigh, drop your shoulders, love on your money now, no matter the size, weight, or volume. ꩜

Once I made the jump to clicking on that Zoom link, I was greeted by the delicate compassion that honestly only women could provide in such a session, mysterious as “financial coaching” is, I felt safe.

We went through all my numbers (yep, all of them, including my credit card debt, the money left over without a home, and the $0 next to investments).

They gave me probably the biggest mindset gift I’ve ever received upon picking up threads of personal finance advice: pay yourself first.

“Wealthy people pay themselves first,” Delana confidently mentioned, which, to my brain, never trickled down as I was passed down this old framework = income - fixed expenses - flexible spending = savings and investing (basically saving whatever is left over from everything else).

The above image is what I screenshotted from our session. It’s the Pay Yourself First Mindset that is completely shame/guilt-proof for when you want to buy that buccal sculpting facial every month.

These women taught me that the word -discipline- should just be replaced with the word automation. It’s not about becoming a personal finance expert in your life, but about setting it all up automatically.

It actually is that simple.

During the session, I had zero automation set up. My emergency fund was all in a checking account that was gaining zada interest compounding daily (money growing money just by being in the account).

I haven’t dipped into investing yet because I’ve felt intimidated to do so, but in all honesty, I’ve just been putting it off, and now I’m more inspired than ever to open my first brokerage account.

The hot tips I received from these personal finance angels:

• Tackle down credit card debt right away, especially if your interest rate is above 8%. My current interest rate is 27% (yikessssss). My CC is basically making money off me. Make it a goal to pay double or even triple the minimum amount so you can shed literally years off the amount owed. I like Ramit’s debt payoff calculator to see how long it will take to eliminate this. Lexi recommended that I call my CC company and ask for a payment plan, which actually makes me excited.

• You don’t have to deposit thousands of dollars to open your first investing account. Even contributing $10 a month is better than nothing. True wealth isn’t in your checking account; it’s generated through investing.

• If you want to invest in something within the next 5 years, keep your cash. If you want to purchase property or something that requires more time, put your cash in the stock market so it can grow.

• Ideally, 50-60% of your income goes towards your fixed expenses (they said most women come to them with 80-90% of their income going towards fixed expenses). I think this is the year we drop funkiness over doing little side jobs (or other bigger jobs) in order to become more holistic with our allocations.

• Healthy credit card behavior = autopay the entire amount owed every month so you aren’t stacking up interest

• Women deserve Venusian pleasures. When you adopt a pay yourself first method, you release activations around the weekly flowers or the pearl ring because you are literally taking care of your retirement, emergencies, etc. Every dollar needs a home; you’re allowed to make that financial abode a beautiful one.

  ---

  SUBLIMINAL SHIFT COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY:

I’m excited to announce that and I will be doing a co-authored Substack on answering your juiciest personal finance questions! ｡𖦹°꩜.ೃ࿔

By commenting below or DMing me on Instagram here: What do you want to know about personal finance from Lexi & Delana? What spiritual/philosophical meaning do you want on it from me?

This is your opportunity to engage with Substack and make it feel more connected, more prosperous. We would love to get all inquiries possible to make our collab in service of this special corner on the internet. 〰️

When I first got introduced to these financial cool girls, I knew that this collab would be in your hands. I want financial education to be more accessible, healing, and open. I want you to be a part of this more than anything else because, well, it’s for you.

Let me know what your burning personal finance questions are by commenting below. I would love to know xoxo

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I haven’t written a Substack in what seems like the point of no return at all (a very dramatic elongation of 54 days). I’m listening to this ongoing meditation as I come to you bare-handed without any aroma whatsoever.

Imagine being naked of oils, scents, perfumes, pheromones.

Having no trace of personal fragrance. No way to remember who you are through a smell that captivates your limbic system. A single scent creates a doorway, an unblocking of sorts, into the mental library of memory, sounds, sensations, and lived experiences.

In this season, I am stripped of any access to that inner archive. The library card to myself (which I actually want to get one in reality this year?) has expired, and I am meticulously blanking at which book I’m supposed to read next.

In tea ceremonies, you are often asked to avoid wearing scents that could overpower your experience of sitting with the tea.

I have been sitting with myself without any smell of who I am for the past 6 months.

My living experience has asked me to be deathly exposed.

There are seasons of adorning yourself in the scent that is “you,” and there are many seasons of unmasking what you thought was your vapor.

As someone who grew up excruciatingly body-conscious, being naked was the epitome of falling to pieces. Shards of tissues and a cracking of bones lay out on the floor, begging to be sun-dried by morning.

It’s a full moon type of processing.

One where you howl by nightfall and see your nudity in the reflection of your eye’s deepest waters. Pools of absorption. Waterfalls of cleansing.

I have been severely unsheathed by external swords that used to act as my perfumery. Swords that look like the perfect home, the successful relationship, the clothes, the rings.

I stopped fighting with what life circumstances had given me in 2025, I saw the battle with the inner perfection. I was never at war with life, but in deep violence with myself.

My aroma faded so that I could re-embark on a new passage to my origin of incense.

Once the smoke dissipates, you are left with your truest essence.

My personal smoke (or drug, I suppose) of all my 20s was the fume of instability.

This week, I am moving into a new home, a new city, a place that will act like the most genuine taste of stability that I have ever had in my adult life.

Looking back, I had cloaks of shame becoming my winter layers for any summer or spring that I’ve danced in. I secretly always cringed at how fluent I was with living in this place here and then moving there, borrowing money (again), going days on airplane mode, and performing in a million plus one jobs.

There’s now a different level of appreciation, beauty even to my inner archive that I’m gaining admittance to once more.

I love the 23-year-old who left the fanciest meditation tech-startup job to spend a whole year eating burritos in a beach studio (just to recover). The 25-year-old who moved to Portland and instantly felt trapped by gray skies. The 28-year-old who started her own business only to keep failing, pivoting, and actually succeeding the entire time.

Stability could have only been graced by all my sheer moments of instability.

Loved on. Kissed. Laughed with. Played.

Her instability is now touched with the fragrance of…affection.

If life by happens to feel unstable to you in this very moment, please (trust me) give it the intimacy it deserves. There’s a plethora of negative messaging around instability on the earthly sphere, but the way I see it, finally accepting it doesn’t mean you are succumbing to it.

It means you are finally ready to let it go.

I hope you become as fragrance-free as you are erotically fragrant.

Tokyo recommendations ______ ꩜

A month ago, I frolicked in Japan with dear friends as our hearts unfolded at a delectable retreat in Japan hosted by no other than 〰️

(( film photography provided by & pictured by ))

⌇ two spirits, I am lucky enough to call friends in human form ⌇

• kitade tacos

• WINEBAR

• film coffee & things

• paddlers coffee

• loft (a department store that has an entire level of stationery heaven)

• coffee country

• bio c’bon (my favorite organic grocer, please pick up some individual packs of kimchi for me!)

• natural lawsons (another organic grocer that has the BEST grab-n-go ice cream)

• shoyeido incense

• meiji jingu (for the nature)

• cosme kitchen (chef’s kiss of natural skincare)

• ogawa coffee

• puzzle (wine bar)

• ahiru store (wine bar)

• dolce tacubo (dessert)

• casica (antiques and nourishing meals)

• kakimori (stationery & craftsmanship)

• saten japanese tea

• nagi ceramics

• mustard hotel (shimokiazawa)

• reload (shopping mall)

• matcha passport

• gather pastries

• curry planet

• FALL (ceramics and trinkets)

A new workshop ____ SWIRLY MAPPING ｡𖦹°꩜.ೃ࿔

The workshop for the ups & downs of your creative swirl & how to actually make sense of it all. This is for the multi-passionate who is tired of hearing surface-level advice of going niche-less or niching down.

Your swirl is a creative house that needs architectural bones to keep it structured, yet open. Today, we’re going to treat all your passions like material samples on the table - touching, sensing, combining, intuitively arranging.

Swirly Mapping is a cozy 45-minute workshop + private podcast that helps you trace the deeper patterns behind your swirly brain — so you can stop overthinking and start composing a creative direction that actually fits.

You don’t need another formula.

You need a process that reflects who you are — and gives you the space to find structure without shrinking your swirl.

!! A couple of weeks left to sign up

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That forgotten voice memo that still gives you the right message even through a distance of time and space. Dreams of caterpillars inviting you for tea. Moss. The audacity of stars shining no matter their life expectancy. Smooth jazz that you repeat for the 5th month in a row. That sweater you can’t get rid of because it smells of her. The scent still lingering from a version of you that had no clue, but she was still alright anyhow. Oh, how I want to be her again.

The feeling of a hand-crafted pen that makes writing just a bit more exquisite. The mere thought that you enjoy exquisite things. Crying in showers that leave you red. A peaceful sigh in saying “I don’t know.” The last sip of your tea before re-pouring. Dissappearing into a bookstore for hours on end. Going on airplane mode while flying into uncharted territory of yourself. A card in the mail. The shiver of synchronicity. A good Pinterest board.

The somatic touch of wind chimes in your lobes. The caress of linen that makes you remember gratitude for your mattress topper. A home. A space to call your own, even if you feel direly homeless. I’m homeless. Oscillating between an external abode and running away from my true home, me. A sailboat at 3 in the afternoon. The mid-century piece you don’t need on Facebook marketplace. Your thumbs miraculously holding a mug.

Organs filled with chi. A gardening apron that holds lavender in its minuscule pocket. Free shitty mints at the restaurant. That one password being automatically saved. Women giving birth. Making playlists for museums. Pancakes. Spending your last dime on a matcha. Make it unsweetened and in 8oz because you’re not fucking around right now.

I’ve been certain that there is no net this season.

Funny how certainty is just another word for belief.

Beliefs are only accurate if you give them that duty.

Becoming a commander-in-chief of your life only leads you to giving everyone and everything roles. What role are you playing?

When I zoom out, I see a speck of myself on a planet that is somehow spinning, yet standing so painfully still inside me.

Gaia has no net, but here she is, held by forces that are still magical to me, no matter how much studying has been done around her gravity.

My gravity is feeling depressed.

She has atomic waves of feelings.

I give her time to grieve, and in return, she carries me, even when I don’t believe she is going to come through.

I’m an astronaut projecting convictions onto an inner world that is crumbling.

My own Earth has had enough of me.

I’ve burned her with the idea that she is falling.

No universe to hold her. No trust in her ability to continue swirling.

Isolated without a galaxy.

She rebels against every piece of this.

She knows there is a net, but not if you are damn well fooled that there isn’t.

This spring is my reclaiming of the net.

To tell you the truth, I’m afraid of being caught.

There’s an irrational comfort with having no one or no thing there to carry me.

Feels too familiar.

I am utterly aware (deathly aware) of how I’m materializing this belief so it can confirm as evidence in my intestinal globe.

Digesting it is like forcing myself to take that childhood synthetic cherry medicine that I have no conscious interest in. The resistance is not in the flavor, it’s in myself.

Fine! I create my own reality!

The inner child is proclaiming.

She believes in me.

Do I?

This is a turbulent ride, this: everything is going to work out okay, and I’m breathing thing.

If you hopped on the one-way ticket to trust falling this season, my God, you are not alone. I’m sitting right behind you. Two movies in and 9 more hours on the map to go.

I believe that if we purchased the fare, let alone sat in our seats, we have created some sort of alchmey that will travel with us to that unseen knowing.

What in the soul contract is this about?

May we never know in this earthly body.

The heavens fill me with clouded peace to keep going.

Attempting trust is an act of kindness to your older self.

It’s a relationship.

It’s a garden.

It’s bravery.

May you tend to your lillies, snapdragons, and root vegetables with a badge of trust.

I’m afraid I won’t be able to give it to you personally, but the delight of you giving that to yourself is a farm-to-table experience that could only be eaten through your tastebuds.

Your tastebuds deserve trust.

They deserve the sensation that yes, your soil is always fertile, no matter the bloom or decay.

xoxo

sierra

Don’t be afraid to try new things on Substack. A few weeks ago, I published my first fiction piece here, and now I’m in the midst of making lists as a form of writing.

I’ve been on this platform for almost 3 years now, and it’s given me the permission to write in a way that feels healing, unconventional, and of course, offer me the opportunity to write even when I don’t fully see myself as a writer.

No rigidity exists here. If you would like to infuse more inspiration, liberation, and minerals into your own Substack, I invite you to watch the 2-hour workshop on All About Substack. My dear friend & I lubricated this space for you.

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꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜ ꩜

They mold you in ways that become definitive at best- an organic characteristic of their species.

They speak for you.

Careers have never learned to let you determine your meaning. They are moms who want to claim ownership over your success and never let you feel what was yours to begin with- autonomy.

Tell me who I am on Linkedin. Approve of me in digital landscapes, in bios, in the deep seat of folderless PDFs.

I produce; therefore, I am.

Careers offer you the safety of the grave but don’t allow you to compost in the soil.

They coddle your bones -resting through dissociation - assured you won’t touch the ground once more. That mycelium network is too dangerous. They won’t understand who you are without the casket giving it meaning. It’s something to hold.

The grave explains everything you’ve done and what you were able to accomplish in a timeline. The soil inquires about your favorite snack, what you think about during sunsets, and how your body recalibrated after your first heartbreak.

You graduated from this school, you took this role, and you continued in this position. It all feels like echoes in the cave of your Divine Plan.

“Who goes there?”

”It’s me, your identity.”

Darkness evades and it swims all around you. Whispers of titles and achievements stuck to the walls like ancestral storytelling- careers are their own lineage. They exist as solitary family trees and keep secrets between the limbs.

Careers have no shame.

They relish in pride and prefer ketchup over mustard on your job hot dog. They’re bold and they prove a point. They dance with exclamation marks and demand attention in a room full of periods.

They give you a name.

Don’t ask how I ate alone in a stall in 6th grade.

I rather know your KPIs from Q1 to inform me of your essence instead.

Careers are dead.

They seek to offer you a beating heart, but you wind up restless from catching validation in your dream catcher above your head.

You grow tired.

Linear as you pretend to be, career melatonin becomes your role in this life, replacing the role of being alive. Your body gives up and falls fast asleep.

It’s in our silly little dreams that we are awake as our true selves.

You can’t possibly be the secret poet who simply can’t bear monetizing a passion, so you must simply be the electrical engineer (as that is what you told me when I first inquired, no?).

Careers seep into insidious IVs that hydrate you in spaces of new people, ready to give you the internal juice to keep going when someone asks what you do for a living.

Well, for starters: you read Substacks on a slow Sunday morning, you collect receipts and parking tickets to put into junk journals because tangible memories are a passage of human joy, and you dare to eat pasta with unshakable reverence for parmesan cheese. That is what you do for a living. But I must be mistaken, I asked “What do you do for a living?”

Well, if I truly must know: you turn your phone on airplane mode at the coffee shop just for the thrill of being temporarily exiled. You’re watching Sex and the City for the 4th time on the projector to soothe your 30s (cold plunge/sauna intervals could never compare). You’re up late at night YouTubing “How to Build an A-Frame” with no intention of ever truly doing so. But forgive me, I asked, “What do you do?”

Your career at this point is internally boiling to the zenith degree and begs of you to exclaim what is is you do precisely and you say, “I live.”

That is what you do for a living? You live?

Daunting, isn’t it?

Careers are dying and you are living to tell the tale.

Congratulations.

Your skin is shedding, your brain is creating new neural pathways, and you are living outside of your career’s destined life.

I couldn’t be more proud.

x

If exploring who you are outside of your career (!) feels enticing on an atomic level, I invite you to explore the art of Substacking with me & in our workshop: All About Substack.

Emmie has been a long-time inspiration, muse, and linguistic center to many of my personal quakes. Together, we have come to co-create again to find solace in a world of fast-food content creation. In this workshop, we are calling all creatives, writers, non-writers, non-creatives, and humans of all kinds to build a slow social refuge on Substack. The place that is a true exhale amongst Wim Hof Style platforms.

And no, this isn’t about algorithms or clickbait or keeping up. It’s about writing as a practice, about finding readers who resonate, about creating in a way that feels sustainable.

If you would like to ((gently)) unearth your dopamine addiction/hunger for content validation, this is your sign to be replenished in a very nutritive way. You won’t want to miss it if you’ve been feeling the nudge to return to the era of girl blogging.

Accessible, intimate, and oozing with untapped potential. This is the All About Substack Workshop hosted live on March 25th at 11 am AEDT. A replay will be sent out for those who can’t attend live ______ see you there ꩜

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My whole adult life was directed towards killing my swirl.

Having a swirly brain and a business, a vision, or a dream never seems poised, pretty, or ideal.

I never once saw empowerment around being a swirly human with a swirly life.

I only digested the swirl as unprofessional, unacceptable, or even worse… fraudulent (!) Oh, the terror of being a fraud. I can’t help but smile at this word now.

If being a swirly human who has a business is deceptive, then I am the one who lives in the deepest illusion. I love being a fraud to the programming that tells me I am a fraud. For: calling myself a true entrepreneur even when I want nothing to do with SEO or spreadsheets or taking on another Zoom call because being booked out means something to someone else.

The biggest deception in this creative, business, work, project, lifestyle is that you have to have it all together. Please hold this inside your spiraling brain and grounded heart space.

You have to get more serious. You have to reject the aspect of you that isn’t the take- brand- photos- in-the-blazer. You have to erase the organic labyrinth of your multitudes to be a single, understood digestif.

Your swirl isn’t fragmented or wrong- it is nulceraly whole.

This year’s memoir: “I stopped looking effortless because it was too much effort.”

No effort is required when you accept that your swirl is complete. It has no beginning, and it has no ending. Your swirly brain is the representation of the universe coming together to pour a heartbeat into a river and a sunset that makes you forget all of your towering expectations.

Your swirl is nature itself.

When you deny, reject, or suppress the spiral of your being, you are eradicating the Earth through a mycelllium network of internalized shame.

This planet is one of pivots, furls, and oceanic ripples.

This breathing biosphere is you.

Don’t stop it from spinning the way it does.

Structure is healing for the swirly brain.

Structure is what holds you when gravity feels a little too heavy on your day-to-day swirl.

I solemnly believe that fellow swirlies aren’t looking for another permission slip (well, yes, always) but are secretly looking to relax. Structure makes you chill tf out.

Join my free Notion training to start exhaling into your swirl instead of shaming it.

Studies have found (the study is me) that implementing this platform into your swirly life will give you more spaciousness, less anxiety at 2 am, and expansion beyond belief in your work.

Notion has saved my multitude of lives beyond measure. I hope you can find solace in this platform as much as I have.

An exclusive freebie from the subliminal shift orbit that lands in your inbox for a few days. No tech-savviness needed. Enjoy it 〰️

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