I’m sitting across from him at the restaurant. My gaze follows to the wide window at my side, watching the people walk by to whatever other date they’re running late for, ballet flats and stilettos and loafers and sneakers all pattering against the pavement to reach the person waiting for them at a corner restaurant, to meet the person they love, to meet the person they will love, or the person they’ll share a drink with and never see again. He’s already looking at me when I turn to face him. I feel my cheeks warm.

I think my friends, people around me, maybe most my age, are plagued by an all-or-nothing approach to men, dating, love. They walk into a date with a laundry list pinned to their breast outlining every box their date must check. A scarlet letter professing their desperation in the form of expectations for their potential male counterpart. It’s this high stakes game of cat and mouse, chasing this man, only to manipulate him to chase them back, and somehow moulding this human to align with the prerequisites that must be satisfied before a second date, let alone a relationship, let alone a marriage. It’s all a game. And when it ends, it’s over with.

It’s either all in or nothing at all.

I find myself drawn to a reality where a date is consumed with presence. A replacement for looking back at the laundry list, and a spotlight on the person in front of you. A date infatuated with presence. The present is a gift. And it is presence that breeds enjoyment. That brings joy.

I want to go on a date to enjoy each other’s presence. To consume myself in a moment with another person that is void of planning beyond that Saturday night spent at the restaurant on the corner street. My mind is exempt from the infatuation with the future, the second date, the relationship, the marriage. It’s only focused on right now. I want to enjoy someone’s company. And whether it bleeds into parting ways, or blossoms into a friendship, or beyond into a relationship, then that’s wonderful.

All a date should be is getting to know someone and experiencing a moment in their company. At least for me. I don’t want to be someone that is so consumed with the idea of someone that I forget to spend time with what’s right in front of me. Because the former, it stresses me out.

This isn’t to say that I don’t want a relationship, love, a marriage. I do. But I think a systematic reset on the approach to dating is well worthwhile. An adjustment on a societal lean towards dating the idea of someone, and replace it with dating that person as they are. and the way to get there is just by being present.

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It is a Tuesday evening in my childhood bedroom. Dusk just barely illuminates my soft blue linen sheets as I see the last light escape the night sky. My bed sits just beneath a floor-to-ceiling window that looks out to the pine trees outside in the pacific northwest mountains of California. My bedroom has changed a lot over the years as I have changed too. What used to be a crib became a soft-white twin bed which became a heather-grey queen daybed that turned into a cozy couch during the daytime when my teenage self chose to make the bed that day. And now it’s a queen french bedframe, with white linen sheets and neatly stacked throw pillows made every day. At the edge of my bed remains a furry throw blanket I fold into squares for my cat to sit in. Over the past 8 months I’ve spent living at home, that corner of the bed has become her spot.

To save time and eloquence with this next sentence, this past week, this past month, and maybe these past four years I’ve felt insecure in my own body. And it’s only with the most clarity can I describe it as I don’t feel nor look like myself. I look in the mirror and think this isn’t what I’m supposed to look like. And yet, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong and I don’t know what I’m doing right. I don’t know how to get from where I am to where I want to be.

And with that has come weeks upon months upon years of insecurities that have lately materialized into my body language. The self-loathing internal dialogues have bled their way into my physical body. My shoulders shrink together, my posture rounds, my arms crossed in front of my stomach, my eyes narrowing towards the ground. My insecurities have taken over my body. My mental thoughts have now plagued myself and sometimes I can’t even look in the mirror. I don’t even recognize myself.

And the worst part of it all is that I actually take care of myself. I exercise every day. I walk every day. I eat homemade meals of fruits and vegetables and meats. I drink water. I read books. I go outside. I soak in the sunlight in the early mornings. I sleep 8 hours each night. I live in a beautiful home. I have people I love that love me back.

And yet it’s like a puzzle piece is missing, and it’s the biggest piece of the deck. And without that piece the puzzle will never be complete. The puzzle will never look how it is supposed to.

My friend Lea told me how frustrating it is that we live in a world where looks matter so much, when, as she says, looks don’t matter in the slightest.

I disagree.

I think looks are everything.

I think they are everything to everyone else and everything to each individual.

I think in the external sphere of our world, our looks are a reflection of how we treat ourselves. They are a reflection of how well we take care of our body, what we eat, how we exercise. They are the byproduct of our entire lifestyle, on display like a barbie doll in its plastic blister packaging. And in turn, our lifestyle is a reflection of how much we respect ourself and our body. And if we respect it enough, if we care enough to take care of it at all.

In the internal intangibles of our minds, our looks are just as important, if not more. Insecurity is bred on how we feel about ourselves, and our gauge of confidence to show off ourself to the world. Feeling secure in our looks is a direct tether to our confidence. And this isn’t about beauty, it’s about subjective security in our own self. It’s not about comparison to the next girl in the magazine, doting upon an unfulfilled and unrealistic desire to look like a young Kate Moss when you will never be Kate Moss because there is only one Kate Moss. It’s about a comparison with yourself, with your potential, with the best version of yourself you could be.

I wish there was a silver lining to this article, but all I’m left with at the moment is an expansive horizon standing between me and my potential, and having no idea how to get there.

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A few summers ago, pop culture coined the term hot girl summer. Where it was cool to be single. Every girl dared to dream the hot girl summer of hot summer nights with your friends, cute boys at the bar on vacation, and no responsibilities calling from home wondering where are you. It was cool to be single, it was cool to be flirty, it was cool to be reckless.

I haven’t seen an overarching theme for this summer that has taken over the internet. Maybe that leaves it up to me to just find a theme for myself despite not having settled on that either. I’m in that time of my life where everything is slow, and it’s meant to be that way. Mornings are spent sleeping in, days are spent working in an office, and evenings are spent cooking dinner at home and eating it with my favorite show and my cat. If you can’t tell, I’m living at home and I’m single. And while the era of slow mornings are wonderful and healing, and the nights of meals alone are peaceful and quiet, I’ll admit I’m a little bored. It’s not a bad bored, more often than not it’s an enjoyable bored. Because for the first time in awhile, I can do nothing. And doing nothing feels really good.

I don’t want a reckless hot girl summer, but I do want something to define my summer that isn’t a fruitless pursuit lending itself to nothing but emptiness. Like those social interactions that are immersive and full of energy yet somehow leave me feeling drained of all energy I have.

If I were to design my summer - I’d go on a date. It wouldn’t be a date at some bar where the guy asks for my number only to never call. And it wouldn’t be a date from an app that breeds misaligned intentions and disappointing matchups. It would be the dates I read about in a book. It would be wonderful and present. It would be full of joy and fun. I don’t have to fall in love this summer, but I want to have someone to share my summer with. I want to go on weekend trips down to the california coast in his old toyota truck and see where the ocean meets the cliffs in northern california. I want to walk to a coffee shop in the mornings, to sit and sip in silence while we people watch. I want to go on dates to restaurants where we get wine drunk and stuck in a spiral of laughing fits until our cheeks hurt from smiling so wide.

I used to have this inherent barrier when I dated, that can only be described as a perfectionist trait that lended itself to self-sabotage – but in my mind it was self-preservation.

Any love interest, potential date, or male passerby, was immediately categorized into one of two boxes – would I marry him or would I not marry him.

And for someone who’s only had one relationship that was the furthest thing from marriage, I don’t really understand why this was my default logic. Like it was embedded in my brain from all the experience that I absolutely do not have.

Maybe it was because I’d only had one boyfriend, that because the tally count was so low that time was running out, that I had to find the right one next. Because anyone else is a waste of time if the experience does not lead to a future.

“I’m not saying this from a place of desperation,” I told my cousin on the phone, “because I’m actually really content with myself and my life. But I really just want some company.”

I think it was then that I realized I wasn’t striving for perfection in a person anymore, that I just wanted some company. Maybe it was the chronic over-planner in me or maybe it was what I felt like I was supposed to do, but I suddenly don’t look at each prospective man as a potential relationship, boyfriend, husband.

I just look at him as a person, who looks interesting, who looks attractive, who might last a single conversation at a bar, or last a year at my side. But it doesn’t really matter.

Maybe this newfound wisdom comes with my newfound presence in the world – or more my realization that being present is the answer to every problem ever. And maybe all of this introspection is just a result of me not having been on a date since last year (it’s June) and I’ve had far too much time to spend in my thoughts.

I’m also just tired of planning. I’m tired of meeting someone and watching my expectations soar to the stars before they’ve barely walked through the door. I’m tired of getting let down by them shortly thereafter.

I realized recently that one day I’ll be engaged, and then I’ll have an engagement party, and then a wedding, and then a honeymoon, and all of this wonderful excitement will color my life in all of these events. And then it’ll be over, and I’ll be married, forever. And that’ll be that. So maybe I should just enjoy where I am because where I am is wonderful.

It’s not so much a craving to fall in love, because that can’t be forced. I have the faith that it’ll happen when it’s meant to happen. I have the comfort knowing it will happen one day. It’s moreso - I just want some company. Someone to do nothing and everything with. Because it feels like I’ve been doing everything and nothing alone for awhile.

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I saw a quote on pinterest that read “nervous system regulation is a full-time job”.

I saved it.

Because it really is.

I have this haunting feeling that lives at the back of my mind every day that I’ll never be as pretty as I was at 18. I don’t know what was in the water I drank four years ago, but I haven’t felt pretty since then.

And the worst part of it all is that I can’t pinpoint a direct source to this perpetual self-loathe that has rested on my shoulder, growing heavier each year.

Is it that my skin was perfectly clear then, and it isn’t now?

Is it that I was thinner then?

Is it that my hair was longer?

Is it that I was calmer?

Is it that my nervous system was regulated?

Is it that I just need to be tan and it’s snowing outside?

Is it that everything looks better in retrospect?

I look back at photos of myself circa 3-4 years ago and I was drop-dead gorgeous. Tangible beauty aside, I was confident too. Then I went to college and hit a wall of body fluctuations and perhaps losing myself along the way. Gaining weight with the trials of university, hormones bouncing up and down and all over the place, over-frying my hair to make it dead straight for class as if anyone even noticed or cared.

It doesn’t answer why I feel so different though. And it doesn’t feel like anything else will solve it besides the physical endeavors of getting thin, clearing my skin, growing my hair, and balancing my body. It’s like the equilibrium is off and I don’t know why nor how to fix it.

I look at the models adorning the fashion magazine pages, the supermodels, the runway models, even the fragrance ad models. They all look so effortlessly perfect. Like they were born that way and no effort along the way was required for them to be where they are now.

It feels like their perfection is effortless.

And mine isn’t.

Mine feels like a full-time job. And this full time job isn’t even giving me the same results.

So what am I doing wrong.

Everything seems to always circle back to nervous system regulation. The irony with regulating your nervous system is you have to do less, even when you want to do more.

Less is More. Always.

I can’t escape this insecure feeling. It floods through my veins, it rounds my shoulders to keep me from standing tall, it plagues an overthinking mind, it fabricates a veil so that I can’t see what I really look like, because all I can see is a filter over my eyes that relinquishes any beauty in myself. Why don’t I just feel pretty anymore.

And it’s not a comparison to the Vogue models that walk the runway at Paris fashion week, or the models on my instagram feed. It’s a comparison to my past self. It’s staring at the stark gap between where I am and what I know is my potential.

I feel like Megan Fox in Jennifers Body when she stopped eating boys:

The one thing I force myself to turn to is shifting the mindset, because what I think becomes my reality. It’s hard to force a positive thought into an otherwise pessimistic mood. It actually feels impossible. It feels easier to feel terrible, but feels better to feel positive.

It’s more effort to feel positive. But it’s also the only thing that seems to work.

There’s not a revelation at the end of this article that solved all of my problems. This was more a ramble of a 22-year-old who doesn’t know how to find her best self.

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The first book took up the beginning of the month, and it was The Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. My mom gave me the book, selected off the old walnut-wood bookcase in the corner of the living room. The towering shelves full of every book she’s owned, sprinkled in with the few that I have owned, and the many that her mom owned. This was one of my mom’s favorite books, she said as she put the book at the edge of my bed, resting atop the beige linen duvet and fur blanket. It was January, and I could feel the cool winter breeze melt through my bedroom windows.

It was a story of personal growth, a true story of a man finding his connection back into his body, his purpose, and his soul’s path that was clouded over years of misaligned direction. It took me two months to finally pick up that book, and I’m so glad I did. I ended up reading his other book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior, too.

The second book I found at the bookstore, my eyes caught the familiar title as I scanned through the Barnes and Noble aisles, judging each book by its cover. This one was pretty, I thought as I stared at the minimalist white cover, with big black lettering and a photo of a lone seashell laying on the beach. This one’s perfect for me. I thought of my recent pinterest board titled Mermaids, full of artistic photos by the beach and in the ocean mixed with my favorite childhood show H2O Just Add Water.

I feel so connected to myself when I spend time in the ocean, the mermaid lifestyle has regained its grasp on my life after years of dormancy. I went on a surf trip three months ago and fell in love with it again. The ocean, the beach, the surf, the warmth.

Anyways, living in that TV show is kind of my dream.

I read the book on my latest vacation to the islands of French Polynesia in the South Pacific ocean - the latest side quest. Outline by Rachel Cusk. I had seen the cover before, likely scattered across my Instagram feed, the familiarity prompted my interest.

I found myself hitting a wall throughout this book, pushing myself to slip past each page to finish it. I kept waiting for something to happen that never did, waiting for a plot to thicken that never had the right ingredients in the first place. The book wasn’t about a thick plot that leaves you thinking about it for days. The book is about little vignettes into people’s lives. It’s a scattered scrapbook of all walks of life, how we all have a different story and how it’s all in our own perspective. There’s always two sides to every story, after all.

I didn’t really connect to this book. That’s okay. At least I read it, I told myself as I propped it up on my bedroom bookshelf to get dusty.

The one thing that stuck with me is the last few pages, the culmination of this novel happened to resonate.

I think about this a lot, this chronic dependency to talk about what happens to us. The intention to relieve ourselves from the things that happen, or maybe to fill the empty space of silences between two people. We talk about things to relieve the pain of it living in our own brain, as if speaking kicks the words out of our brain, cleaning up the room for the next guest of thoughts to arrive. Except, speaking of something keeps it alive, keeps it existing. Our mind doesn’t know the difference between our thoughts and reality. If you think of something enough, your brain believes it is real.

I always think this is why a positive mind lends itself to a positive life. Because it’s so real that what you think becomes your reality.

Anyways, I loved this quote from the final pages, I think it’s something to hold close. Or hold far. Maybe you don’t like it, there’s always two sides to a story anyways.

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I’d sit on the kitchen counter, to the left of the sink he’d lean over while he peeled the big orange fruit. He would peel the grapefruit wedge all the way, removing the inner opaque skin separating each pink slice. The white skin was the bitter part anyways. He’d carefully peel each slice of fruit, one-by-one handing off one slice to me, and one slice for him. I’d sit there patiently, eating the bitter juicy citrus. My taste buds tinging with each bite of bitter. We’d sit there quietly sharing the grapefruit. One slice for me, one slice for you.

I ate a grapefruit for breakfast today, an introductory bittersweet before my main course of a yogurt bowl. I saw half of a grapefruit sitting on the middle shelf in the fridge, hiding behind the jar of apricot jam and fresh eggs from the chickens in the yard. I grabbed it, and peeled each slice, just like he did, just like he still does.

I forgot I liked grapefruit.

Sometimes I feel like growing up is just the process of finding your way back to your younger self, back to the things you liked when you were young. My teenage years were often lent to a bitter version of me, the one with a grumpy attitude. The sassy 16-year-old me. A version overwhelmed by the pillars of growing up, pillars that felt like they could crash down at any moment with a single misstep. Friends, boyfriends, college, parties, my path, my stress, my body, just life. Growing up means figuring out what works for you, figuring out your formula.

My friend Lea’s formula isn’t going to be the same as my formula. Her formulaic method to approach her friends, men, parents, workout routine, diet, and her entire approach to life, isn’t ever going to parallel my approach, nor my mom’s, nor her mom’s, nor anyone else’s. I guess my point is, life is a trial-and-error of finding out how to live your life. And one day it’s going to click into place, like that last puzzle piece finding its way into the missing center. And when that happens, it’s going to feel really good.

I’m still trying to figure out my formula.

I think being an adult is remembering the things you enjoyed in your youth, and finding those joys again. My mom can always tell when I’m really happy, because my laugh is infused with the same joy and tone as it was when I was little.

I think we grow up just to learn the things that make us happy are the same things from our childhood. Somewhere along the path of aging, those interests and hobbies and joys are kicked into the bushes, and we forget about them. I think finding yourself is the process of digging those interests back out of the bushes, and bringing it back on your path. Even if it’s stuffed in your back pocket, it’s still with you. It’s still there until you’re ready to reach for it.

I watch my mom do this. Where someone else would spend their Tuesday evening watching the latest episode of their favorite TV show, sedentarily immersed in the digital fiction, she spends her Tuesday evenings drawing with watercolors. The blank canvas in front of her, decorated in shades of pinks and oranges and flowers.

Isn’t this pretty? she said and she turned the page to face me.

I love it, I replied, I love all the colors. The page was full of my favorite shades of pink and orange, melting together like a sunset.

I think if I painted a surfboard, she said as she gazed towards her work, I’d paint something more abstract, like this.

I agreed, more-so because my artistic talents are more complimented by an abstract piece than a meticulous ode to a recognizable figure.

I wish I was really good at painting, I thought to myself, I wish I was good at a lot of things.

But how could I be good at something I never do. To which my thoughts drifted their way to - I’m going to do more things like this, because I want to be good at it.

So, I’m going to spend more time on hobbies, because it’s good for the soul, and it feels good to be good at things, and it feels good to learn.

Maybe the answer isn’t something complicated. Maybe I just need to go back to the things I loved all those years ago. Maybe that’s my formula.

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Anyways, for a break on feelings I’m shifting the energy into recipes that are chic for this beautiful week in March. These recipes are nourishing meals to fill your body with love and balance and beautiful spring energy. Because it’s already March, which is basically April, which is basically spring.

1: a yogurt bowl

She is healthy, colorful, nutrient-dense, and always photogenic. She is a yogurt bowl, and she is my breakfast every single morning. A perfect chic way to tailor a breakfast staple to your liking, mix-and-match the colors, the textures, the crunch, the sweetness.

2: hot chocolate

More of an ode to the winter slipping away, but nonetheless a year-round staple. I will always choose a hot drink despite the temperatures rising to 80 degrees in the summer months. A hot drink just tastes better.

3: cinnamon stewed apples with a side of oatmeal

If apple pie was miraculously transformed into a healthy breakfast, it would be this.

4: steak and salad

Because a savory dish can be chic too – and greens paired with steak is a nourishing, nutrient dense, protein-loving meal. Perfect for a dinner at home, a lunch on-the-go, or even a breakfast, why not.

And that wraps up my favorite recipes as of lately, the staples in my diet, and wonderful nourishing meals that keep life sweet <3

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It’s trending on the charts to keep things to yourself, to stay quiet about your life as opposed to the inherent oversharing spirals we all have fallen into.

Maybe it got rooted in the narrative that men undershare and women overshare, but it’s because we’re more in touch with our emotions, as so many like to say. It falls in that stereotype that women talk and men don’t, really. It favors those who can speak through the emotions rather than bundle them in your pocket to save for later.

I think there’s the time and place to share your life, contingent on selectivity with who you let into your little bubble. Being picky with who you let into your little world.

It feels like as I get older, I want to share less. Like sharing something detracts from how special it is to me. In high school and college, it feels like every interaction is shared with your friends, your roommates, your mom. Every date, let alone every sentence exchanged with a man, is relayed to the girls. I’d come home to my college dorm, passing through the faded carpeted halls to sit on my roommate’s twin bed and tell her all about this new guy I met at the library. Then she’d tell me about the three guys she’s dating right now and the latest on her ex-boyfriend and every text he sent that morning. It’s fun when you’re young but now it’s just old. Every slice of gossip is passed onto the next. Maybe that’s why everyone knows everyone’s business in our early years. Maybe that’s how things spread so fast before the great scattering. The great scattering is what we all go through after high school or college, when we all move in different directions, when we enter what everyone likes to call real life.

We scatter in different directions, no two the same, no path parallels another. One follows a finance job to the Big Apple, chasing the penthouse apartment on Wall Street and weekends in the Hamptons. Another follows a boyfriend to his hometown in Northern California, where marriage and children follow soon thereafter. Another ditches the corporate 9-5 for solo traveling through Europe. And another moves back to their hometown, a sabbatical on the real-world to spend time with their parents, enjoy life moving slow, and regroup to figure out what to do next.

I’m the last one, by the way.

The seed got planted last summer. That weird transitory period where you’re not fully over an ex-boyfriend but you are kind of over him. It’s like that weird grow-out stage of a haircut between a bob and medium length. And all you can do is wait for it to grow out.

I was home for the summer. It was June in northern California, where the nights dropped to forty degrees and the days swooned to seventy. I was on a morning walk in my neighborhood, trailing on the bike path that circled the valley. My hands still cold from the remnants of the cold evening waiting to dissipate from the early rising sun. I had spent the morning talking my mom’s ear off about my ex-boyfriend, beating the dead horse until it was so dead that it didn’t look like a horse and I forgot why I was even there in the first place. I walked away from my rant feeling worse than before, counter-intuitive to the logic that voicing your feelings will therapeutically melt them from your conscience.

Something clicked on that walk as I rounded the corner home, my corded headphones there for decoration after pausing my music for the remainder of the walk. I decided to stop talking about everything on my mind. I decided I didn’t need to voice every thought. I decided that talking about my problems actually made them worse.

It’s a shift into a more peaceful mind that isn’t flooded with over-analyzing every thought that comes your way, every interaction that walks through your path. Sometimes, most of the time, it’s nice to just observe the thoughts, the people, the things that happen, and let it go through you instead of staying for the week.

So anyways, try not voicing every thought and interaction that comes your way. It might change your life.

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Every year I write the same goal in my journal, read 1 book every month. For the most part, I’m able to meet that goal, something about writing it down brings that goal to fruition from the tangible page. But life gets in the way sometimes too, and I don’t always make time for that one book. So here are the books I read last year and what I thought. A total of eight books to round out my 2025. And once again I’ve written down read 1 book every month for this new year.

Every book I read last year: 2025

January:

Flowers For Algernon

I read this following a recommendation from a friend. He recommended about ten books, all of which didn’t pique my interest, aside from this one. I wasn’t exactly jumping out of bed to get my hands on these pages. I read it though, and I ended up enjoying it. I did skim the remaining thirty pages to merit slamming the book shut and saying I finished it, but it counts. I still finished it. It’s a fiction book that felt like non-fiction. It was about finding purpose and meaning in life, finding what truly makes you happy from when you have nothing to when you have everything, and then back to having nothing. It was a story of someone’s life woven with melancholy. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but if the back page synopsis catches your eye, then it couldn’t hurt to give it a go on something new.

A Voyage For Madmen:

My first non-fiction story in what felt like years, probably because it was years. Up until this point I was on a strict diet of fiction and fiction only. I found this at the edge of our bookshelf at my parent’s home. Its blue and yellow cover peeking out among the stacks of novels collected over the last twenty years. It’s a true story, about a handful of men who were in a race to be the first to circumnavigate the globe, alone. Just a man, a sailboat, and the entire earth ahead of him. Some died, some won, and some branched off from the competition to seek happiness in life that wasn’t fulfilled from a gold trophy waiting for them at the finish line. About halfway through I found myself skipping more pages than I’d like to admit. The technicalities of sailing aren’t really up my alley, the thrill of the adventure was though.

February:

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

A fiction novel enjoyed in my college apartment while melting into my own month of rest and relaxation. A month melded together with the flu, heartbreak, and too much time to spend in my apartment. I bought this book the year before, gave it ten pages before stuffing it back onto the bookshelf to read another time when I felt like it. It was one of those books that I kind of hated but couldn’t stop reading. I notice that I don’t like a book when there’s no one to root for, no likeable character the keep you turning the pages to see where the plot drives them to. The main character is the closest to it, but she’s so self-destructive that any redeeming qualities are thrown out the window. Her best friend is the last person you’d want to meet, let alone spend eight chapters with. And any other mentionable being is irrelevant enough that I can’t remember their names nor their purpose. It was basically a book of the narrator sleeping for a year to try and heal from her life. It’s entertaining, it’s well written, but it’s kind of depressing.

March:

The Fury

I read The Silent Patient by Alex Michelades the year prior. A book I slid off the shelf at the local bookstore beneath a sign that read Viral Books. To my surprise, it was really, really good. So good that I picked up the next one I saw by the same author. It wasn’t my favorite. Not to the fault of the author’s writing talent, because he wrote a great other book. I guess I didn’t love the storyline. A murder mystery story that dragged on so much that by the time the mystery was solved, I just wanted the book to be over with.

May:

Let Them Theory

A last-ditch audible effort to once and for all get over my ex-boyfriend. I don’t know if it worked immediately, but I’d like to think it planted a seed for some personal growth. I’m not one to lean towards the self-help aisle at the bookstore. But this one’s a good one. Simple advice paired with storytelling. And a reminder to just let things go, be present, things don’t always have to be so overcomplicated.

June:

Normal People

I read this one after seeing half of instagram posting about it. And I loved it. It was a love story with a perpetual loop of meeting back in the same place. It felt like a book about soulmates, about that person out there that’s meant for us and we never realize they’ve been right in front of us the entire time. It was a beautifully written book about two people in love, who frustratingly keep missing each other. Wonderful story.

July:

Conversations with Friends

A follow-up to the previous Normal People, from the same author. This one doesn’t beat the former, but still a nice read. It was hard to fully immerse myself in a book where I wasn’t favoring any of the characters. No one was likeable. Oh well. Still a good read by the beach.

August:

Madonna In A Fur Coat

My final book of the year climbed the ranks to being my favorite book I’ve ever read. It’s a story of life and love and purpose and the ending will surprise you and break your heart and make you love it all at once.

So if you read any of these books, read this one.

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I flirt just like my mom, I thought to myself between laughs at the infectious jokes she made. She’s not flirting with him not really but I like to call it flirting when it’s being your most authentic self, interwoven with humor and banter to attract another person. Flirting isn’t just a romantic endeavour to allure someone, it’s a platonic signal of endearment towards another person. At least I think so.

She and my dad have a loving loyal wonderful relationship. I look at them and I know they’d never cheat on each other. I can just tell. So when she’s flirting she’s not romantically flirting, but it’s a form of endearment to connect with this other person she’s speaking to. And maybe flirting is the wrong word, but it’s the manner in which she speaks where she loves the person, and she’s wonderfully wholly herself. She’s bubbly and magnetic. Maybe flirting is just another word for being magnetic.

I must have inherited her communication style along the way in that respect, because I flirt too. It’s not the pick-me-hitting-on-the-guy-at-the-bar flirting, but it’s an exposition of my bubbly personality to bring a wave of comfort to an interaction. In other words, I’m a lot like her.

Flirting signals comfort. I am comfortable enough around this cute guy I met to be myself, to forwardly express interest into his world. Or maybe it’s just a scapegoat to illusory comfort, because I don’t really know who this person is, but I’m at least comfortable enough to rid the barriers that condone small talk, and bring out a flirtatious banter.

There’s this saying that we can flirt perfectly with someone we like, but the second it’s with someone we really like, we bomb. Because speaking with someone we like means there’s something to lose, something that we really value. The outcome of the former doesn’t matter, after all it’s low stakes. The paradox is that being more yourself is more magnetic to the person sitting across from you.

I went on a few dates with a guy I really liked last year. He was tall and handsome, he read Dostoyevsky between his finance classes and poetry after soccer practice. He thought people who read books in cafes were performative, and that dating in college never required a conversation proclaiming exclusivity and loyalty, he thought that was a given. The first time we met he read a book I recommended to him shortly thereafter, The Picture of Dorian Gray. He was funny, really funny. The kind of person that would turn a conversation into an extended comedic bit rather than drain the room of small talk that frankly no one enjoys.

Our college romance was short-lived, the ending of it attributed to busy schedules and a faint air of incompatibility. The month of dating composed of three dates on three consecutive Saturdays. Saturdays were our day. A golfing date, a brunch date, and a picnic date at the beach overlooking the ocean in Del Mar. I used to trip up on my words with him, a mid-sentence frazzle left him staring at me saying what just happened to you as we laughed at my inability to articulate a sentence around him. I eventually just said I just nervous around him and can’t finish a sentence sometimes. I think he found it endearing. Being that I’m always loaded with a snappy witty response in my back pocket, I wasn’t used to being so rattled by another’s presence.

Anyways, if I’m flirting with you it probably means I’m comfortable around you and I really like you. And if I’m tripping over my words and can’t manage to get a sentence out, then I really like you.

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Act like the person you want to become

I feel like it’s so much easier to follow a diet when you’ve reached your goal, I spoke into my phone with my best friend on the other line. She agreed. The second you see your work come to fruition through results, it’s like it lights up a drive to keep going. Already having it makes it easy to maintain. Which is why starting at the bottom is the hardest part. I saw a quote the other day that said self care like you’re preparing for your wedding, in other words, act like the person you want to become. By acting like her, you’ll become her. Instead of focusing on that end result, focus on the daily habits that compose that wonderful best version of yourself.

Keep promises to yourself

Life is good when I actually do what I said I was going to do. It’s keeping promises I made to myself. Every time you don’t do what you said you were going to do, it reinforces a belief in your brain that it’s okay to not do it. It’s training your brain to be lazy. So, you pick yourself up and do it because it’s not that hard. When I wake up and workout and walk and eat well and follow a wellness routine and read and journal, and do all the things I planned to do, life is good. Really good.

Stop telling everyone everything

I talked about this in my last post, but there’s so much grace and peace in keeping quiet about your life. It comes to a point where oversharing feels awful. I realized how much I love keeping things to myself, and how my life was so much happier. It’s sweet and peaceful to keep your circle small, and to keep things to yourself for the most part. It makes it all the more special.

When I broke up with my first boyfriend, I remember spending the preceding week asking every person in my life what to do. I asked and analyzed and drove my sweet little sophomore soul into the ground until I didn’t remember the distinction of what I wanted from what other people were telling me to want. It’s like the over-discussion of my problems flooded my intuition until I couldn’t figure out what I wanted absent of the advice around me. A few months past the breakup, I woke up on a Tuesday and decided to not talk about it anymore. I spent every day talking about it, about him, I was sitting in the present living in a past version of myself that didn’t exist anymore. And I thought that talking through every single feeling and thing in that relationship would bring a wave of peace. It didn’t. I stopped talking about it that day and realized I felt so much better.

Workout, walk, pilates, diet, fruit, stretch, tea, water, supplements, red light, sunshine, ocean, sleep

Yes, you have to workout a lot and eat well to be hot. There is no other way.

Consume mindfully

Not talking about food here, though the relevance is there, but I’m talking about being mindful of the content you consume. The movies, the videos, the books, the people. Life becomes sweet when you’re conscious of the content entering your life. The digital mediums of movies, tv shows, videos, scrolling, podcasts. The paper mediums of books, articles, news, and writing. And the tangible medium of the people you surround yourself with. Curate a digital and physical garden that you actually want to be in.

Have hobbies

Have things you love to do that aren’t what you need to do like work and exercise, but are what you do need to do for living a beautiful life. Surf, sew, ski, paint, piano, photography, read, write, cook, create floral arrangements, edit documentary shorts of a vacation with friends, bio-hack your wellness like your wedding is tomorrow. Have something that makes you excited to wake up for. Something that takes you away from a phone, something that brings you fully present, immersed in this thing you love.

That’s why I love surfing. It immerses me in the present absent of digital distractions and musings on the past or future. It’s presence. And it’s wonderful. I hope you all find something that makes you feel that way.

Good people in your circle. Only.

Have grace and intention with those that are welcomed into your life. Surround yourself with the right people, the people full of love and light and wonderful things. There’s never any room for otherwise.

I notice as I get older I’m learning to actually trust my intuition. Especially with friendships and relationships that come and go, and trusting my intuition to put space between myself and people I don’t want to be surrounded by.

You become who you spend time with, so choose well.

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1. Life is beautiful

2. Positive thoughts = positive life

3. Life is good when i’m making daily to-do lists

I graduated college two months ago. I’m in that time of my life where everyone asks what I’m doing with the rest of it.

Life opens up in beautiful ways when you’re positive, when you’re keeping the promises you made to yourself, when you’re grateful. It’s like those things put you on this specific frequency level that attracts all of the good things into your life.

I started this substack a year ago when I was going through a break-up. Life wasn’t great but at least my writing was good. Now my life is happy and sweet and beautiful and I’m trying not to bore my readers with positivity when it’s usually the words woven in melancholy that are more interesting.

I’ll have to make it work, because I like life when it’s good.

Having said that, I’ve been stuck on what to write this week, so instead of some hard-hitting introspective thoughts, I’m writing about my February Musings. I did this last month, maybe this is my new thing.

My February Musings

I am happy, and I’m doing all of the things that I said I was going to do. And there are these beautiful doors that open when you keep the promises to yourself, when you do hard things, when you follow the habits that become your dream self.

I’m reading The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway right now. I’m halfway through and I’m waiting for something to happen in this book. I don’t want to speak ahead of myself, I don’t know what this book is about yet. But nothing has happened, and it’s a really great book. Nothing has happened but the simple sweet moments of life. A trip through Spain to fish and eat wine by the river with a close chap, dinner out with old friends and new ones you just met on the street, a day spent at work mulling over the day’s tasks. Maybe it’s just about enjoying the daily things.

I saw a quote today that said stop telling everyone everything. And I loved it. I’ve been doing that this past month, I’ve been keeping more to myself. Maybe that’s why I had such a good month. There’s a lot to the practice of keeping things to yourself as opposed to the endeavour of oversharing, that feeling when you just poured your entire brain and heart to the person sitting across from you at the cafe on the corner street. Your breath catches just a heartbeat or two until you realize you can’t take any of that back. That person now knows all of those things about you. And there’s nothing you can do but finish your coffee and await their response that you don’t really want to hear anyways. Because it wasn’t really about them, you just couldn’t help but share that thing to the point of no return. And it’s okay and it doesn't matter, let anyone think anything. But it’s really peaceful to keep quiet about your life.

Awhile ago I learned not to talk about my problems too much. There’s the fine line here, the line between needing to lift that weight off your chest to your best friend, your mom, your sister, lay it all out and work it though so you can breathe again. And then theres the other side of the line where you share the same situation ten times with your best friend, five with your mom, and three with your sisters, and then the problem is all you think about until you can’t escape this winding spiraling problem of a storm. Talking about your problems too much makes them bigger than they are.

Maybe that didn’t make sense, but it’s just peaceful to have intention with what I share.

February Consumption will be composed of books, movies, writing, and sports. It’ll be absent of the fruitless scrolls that squeeze the hours out of my day and it’ll be abundant of things that make the days feel longer, or at least feel like the day was full of life and not drained of energy. I want to read more, write more, throw in the occasional movie, they always inspire me anyways, and surfing, because I love watching that.

In eastern beliefs, the new year doesn’t start until February 17, 2026. The year of the horse. Last year was the year of the snake. The year of the snake was a year of finding out who you are, your goals, your beliefs, shedding an old skin and finding the new one that feels more you.

The year of the horse brings those things into action, it brings movement. Its a fire horse, putting a fire to fuel the vision of your new self.

I don’t always lean into those things, but I like this one. It feels nice, and it feels right.

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I think about that a lot. How we are all made up of people we’ve met. How I laugh and tell stories like my mom, with her bubbly demeanor that sometimes gets lost along the way but eventually lands on the finale. I flirt like my mom too, I noticed this last week. I can’t remember what she said, something to my dad that was a touch of sass embedded in a charming rebuttal, but I thought to myself that’s exactly how I sound when I’m flirting.

We become who we spend the most time with. I remember reading somewhere that we, as humans, will naturally emulate someone’s voice and mannerisms. We do this so the other person feels more comfortable around us. It’s entirely subconscious and inherent in each of us. We become who we spend time with.

Every song I listen to ends up being one I grew up with, the 70s rock rumbling through the speakers on my dad’s toyota truck in the early 2000s. Every time Bob Dylan or The Rolling Stones or the Eagles pop up on the radio, I know every word without realizing it. It’s like that song unlocks a memory that’s been hidden for ten years, and somehow I already know every word to Southern Cross by Crosby Stills and Nash. His music tastes of my childhood embedded in the corners of my brain, the rock and roll with a grip on my own taste now.

You’re a product of who you spend the most time with. So choose wisely. And be picky.

Every time I go on a date I think about what my life would look like if I dated that person, and married them. I think about whether I’d want my life to mirror theirs, if I’d want to live where they live, if I’d be happy living that life. It is a pretty great strategy when I’m knee-deep in indecision on saying yes or no to a second date, or even a first date. The right side of my brain tells me to go on the date, be present, and just have fun. To enjoy the experience, and it’s not that serious. If anything it’ll be a good story. The left side of my brain says it’s pointless to waste my time on someone I wouldn’t see a future with.

There’s so many different versions of my life that could exist.

I could move to New York City and be the fashion-forward city girl dating the finance bro on Wall Street, spend my summers stretched on the dewey green grass of Central Park, and winters bundled up in fur layers as I walk through the Upper East Side. I would spend my mornings drinking black coffee at the corner coffee shop, reading the latest issue of Vogue while my breakfast bagel steams in swirls on the plate in front of me.

I could move to a small island in Fiji, and live out my days in the sun and the sea, surfing all day living a sweet simple life where phones don’t exist and dinner is caught in the ocean. Every day would be spent barefoot in a bikini, sleeping in until the sun warms the room, with nowhere to be and all day to get there.

I could live in Southern California, married to a boy I met in college, living in a quiet home walking distance from the beach, where evenings are spent surfing at the beach break in wetsuits, and mornings are spent driving to my favorite coffee shop on the way to work.

There’s a lot of different versions of my life, I just have to decide what I want.

Marcus Aurelius once said Do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life at once. It’s something to hold on to, being that sometimes I do imagine my whole life at once. Even the next year. And the most peace I’ve found is focusing on each small habit that makes up my day and not the 12-month-plan that dictates the course of my year.

How you spend your days is how you spend your life.

My newest dream job is to be a substack celebrity and make this my job, because that would be a dream. I’ll tack on social media because I love doing that too.

This time a year ago, I wanted to now be living in New York City. A month after graduating college. I wanted the city life, I wanted the concrete jungle, with a cute studio apartment overlooking central park, walking distance to my corporate job in shiny-brown high heels and a trench coat that fell beneath my heels. I wanted to be far away from home, far from the mountains and the ocean, I wanted the city.

It’s now a year later and that is the last place I want to be.

I guess I’m evolving.

And I know that’s a good thing, so we’ll leave it at that.

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He was one of the greatest surfers ever, a life abundant of success along with a grappling addiction that ultimately ended his life. I watched his documentary when it came out, 8 years ago. I just watched it again. And every time I come back to it, it roots me into an emotional epiphany of how beautiful and wonderful everything and everyone is, in life.

There are a few films that do that for me, that push me beyond my own bubble to feel something real and emotional and inspiring. That move me.

I went on a trip this past holiday. Two weeks spent on a heart-shaped island in the South Pacific ocean. Tavarua is a little 29-acre island off the coast in Fiji. A private island where everyone is barefoot, surfing daily is a non-negotiable, and the people make the place. I went with my parents, my two sisters, my brothers-in-law, and their kids. I saw people I haven’t seen in six years, and I met some really wonderful people.

The people make the place.

Sometimes I feel like we are always chasing something only to revert back to the things we had in the beginning. We chase a 9-5 corporate job because our university tells us that’s the answer when you graduate, and you’re failing if the Wall Street finance job isn’t lined up by the time graduation rolls around.

Tavarua is a surf-resort. Being that the day revolves around water sports, there are always boatmen on staff. Think of it as a live-in-lifeguard, there to be the surf guides and the safety leash when shit goes wrong. Somehow I ended up spending most of my time with the boatmen on the island, I was one of the boys and it was the most fun I’ve had in a really long time. I laughed more in those two weeks than I had in a long time.

I thought a lot about male versus female friendships, and how different they really are. Women talk about their lives and men talk about what’s in front of them. When women hang out, we talk about our life, your life, and everyone else’s lives. Who I’m dating, what my boyfriend did, what that girl in high school is doing. With every relationship, there are the good ones and the bad ones. The good female friendships are vital to our lives. We need each other, we need the debrief, we need the best friend to listen to us re-tell a story of a guy we’re dating ten times. The other side of the coin is the toxic female friendships, the ones that drain the life out of you. It’s still the same dynamic. But this one is to avoid. That just comes down to the reality that there are good and bad people in the world, and to be conscious of those you surround yourself with. Not everyone is meant to have access to you.

I have the most amazing wonderful best friends. They’re beautiful people inside and out. I grappled with the right way to articulate this, the best I can come up with is that there’s the good gossip and the bad gossip, so find the good ones. And yes this is largely a generalization, but I believe there’s a lot of truth to it. In essence, when men hang out it’s full of presence and void of gossip. I guess what I’m trying to say is, men are a lot better at being present than women are, and it’s reflective in their conversations, which are reflective in their behaviors, mindset, and quality of life. Maybe I can’t speak for all women, but it feels inherent for me to overthink everything. To the point that it causes more harm than good. Men are more surface level, in the good way. I told one of my friends this, and he agreed. He made sure to add that there are the occasional deep talks, but for the most part, it’s true.

I had so much fun being one of the boys, because every time I walked away from spending time with them, I was uplifted instead of drained.

There’s a lot of value in having both in your life, male friendships and female friendships. This isn’t meant to be interpreted that one is bad and one isn’t. But more-so that I can learn a lot from how men interact with their own friends. Their presence, their absence of drama.

Before Sunrise is a favorite film of mine. A story of two young strangers meeting on a train, spending a day together in Vienna, and parting ways. It’s a love story, a story of finding what makes you feel alive, what makes you happy, bringing you out of your shell, your comfort zone, and experiencing anything and everything special.

I believe that everyone I meet, I was meant to meet. Whether they last a chapter or the rest of my book, things happen for a reason. The chance meeting someone 5,000 miles from my home, on a little island, who happens to live just minutes from my home. It’s like your minds think alike, enough to bring you together in that one moment, to cross paths.

I’ve always believed that island in Fiji is special, and I have yet to articulate why that is. But it’s a magical place that changes my life every time I go there.

But when those one-in-a-lifetime experiences happen, it’s just so special. When you meet people that change your life, find those wonderful connections, find things that make you happy, you find your way back to yourself. It’s a reminder to have perspective on life, and to take you out of your own bubble to see life for what it is. Maybe that’s just what traveling does.

Anyways, my time in Fiji changed my life and I feel wonderful. I really believe 2026 is going to be a wonderful amazing year, it’s already been amazing.

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Happy 2026, I had the most wonderful holiday and part of me feels like a new person while part of me feels stuck in a rut, a rut composed of post-grad and post-vacation blues all at once. My instagram feed is flooded with reminders that come February 17, it is the year of the horse, the fire horse. A transition from the year of the snake, where we will shed the old version of ourselves into the grounded and powerful horse, carrying movement and opportunity into our new year. I hesitate to lean into those more spiritual revelations, but I like the idea of a year resonant with grace and energy. And I like the idea of a shift in energy and habits and interests that come with a new year.

These are my recent musings, what I’m interested in, what’s on my mind lately.

Surfing, Ocean, Traveling

I spent two weeks in Fiji over the holidays. Two weeks spent on a heart-shaped island in the south pacific ocean. Two weeks of surfing every day, wearing a bikini absent of shoes at all times, meeting some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met, and spending time with my favorite people in the world. I don’t say it lightly that this trip was the best two weeks of my life. It was special, I’ll leave it at that.

Shia LaBeouf

Don’t ask why I have a major crush on an actor I barely know, but I have a major crush on Shia LaBeouf, this one’s partly me being funny and partly just an appreciation for his films and interests. Watch his episode on hot ones, that youtube channel where celebrities eat progressively spicier chicken wings and you’ll fall in love too.

It’s not just that he’s cute, well when he was younger, it’s something about his personality. He’s likeable, he’s charismatic, he’s an artist, he’s inspired, he speaks with passion and grace. From there I took a deep dive into his work in films. Maybe it’s just that I always get enthralled when I find someone truly passionate in the arts. It’s that feeling after watching a wonderfully cinematic film, you don’t know whether you want to fall in love or travel the world or create your own film or watch the film again. I love that feeling, it’s being inspired, it’s being excited, and it’s wonderful.

He’s also unapologetically himself, a book we could all take a page out of. Anyways. He’s married. And he’s too old for me. But he’s great. And now I’m down the rabbit hole of watching pretty and wonderful and inspiring films, which I always love.

Religion

An interest in religion that was born out of an obligation to read the Five Books of Moses from a university course this past semester. I didn’t grow up under a religion, and now I want to pour all of my energy into reading, learning, and growing more into it. Part of me grew up resistant to the thing I didn’t grow up with. I leaned into the rationalization that because I didn’t grow up with it, I’ll never understand it. But I really like it. I think there’s a reason that religion has been around for so long and continues to do so. The foundation of our country, of our morals, of our family dynamics were built on principles of religion. And it’s pretty wonderful. So I’ve been reading the bible and it’s great.

Health

2026 is the year that I balance my hormones, clear my skin, and be the most beautiful wonderful stunning healthy amazing version of myself. Sometimes I feel like 18-year-old me had it all figured out. I had my diet, exercise, skincare, truly my life all dialed. I figured it out. Somewhere along college I fell off and I feel like I haven’t gotten back to myself since. And that’s the most uncomfortable place to be. Knowing there’s somewhere else I want to be but not knowing how to get there. Not having that go-to protocol to get to that place. Instead falling into a trial-and-error path of figuring it out. Which means patience and consistency, and more patience. Patience that I don’t really have but have to scrape out of me because I have no other choice. Anyways, health and wellness and hormones and pilates and skincare and the best version of myself is the path for my year.

I’ll leave it there, being that those are at the forefront of my pursuits, my interests, my mind. Now that vacation is over, I’m back to the regular scheduled programming of posts on here.

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And I’m really stressed out.

It’s three monumental changes stacked on top of each other like a fresh stack of pancakes on a Monday morning that hit you like a truck and before you can catch a breath of fresh air there’s thick maple syrup permeating your pores, soaking each crumb of your being until the stress becomes unbearable.

These past five days have felt like that and I feel like I won’t be able to take a proper breath for a while.

I’m not sure what you’ll get out of this piece other than it being a journal entry of my deepest thoughts this week that have so far only seen the light of day through phone calls to my mom for hours each day. Bless my mother for dealing with my perpetual dialogue on the newest stress of the hour.

I’m graduating from college this month. A mid-year graduation that does track to be on time to conclude my undergraduate career. I’m also moving away from a city I’ve lived in the past four years, San Diego. I’m also moving out of my apartment, my sweet studio just blocks from the ocean. I’m also moving back home. And I’m also leaving a job that I really loved but knew wouldn’t make me happy in the long-term.

I love that job I really do, I was a news writer for a broadcast news network. I basically got paid to read the news and write about the latest in national headlines, politics, and international relations, with the occasional light-hearted story like the 2025 word of the year or a 100 year old veteran makes his dreams come true as a published songwriter. I love that job, and the people I work with, which is why choosing a path forward felt so paralyzing. I don’t know what to do, but I do know that the only thing that feels right is to go home and regroup. But I did like it there which makes it all the more counterintuitive.

Anyways after I broke down crying to one of my friends today in the halls of the business building at my university – I felt better.

Everything is better when I feel inspired by something, when I break free from a perpetual loop of a mundane routine to find something I’m interested in. And more often than not, it’s something I've always held an endearment towards. But those little inspirational bits will stay dormant from being stuffed down by life, and they don’t really need to be. I forget I like to do things because I’m too busy doing other things.

I just watched thirty minutes of Shia LaBeouf interviews and he’s my new celebrity crush and I feel a soul connection with him after watching his interview on Hot Ones where he charms the camera with charisma as he eats progressively hotter chicken wings whilst answering interview questions from the host. On my YouTube rabbit hole while entertaining this newfound affinity for this actor, I found a music video he starred in, Elastic Heart by Sia. It was art. It was someone creating something expressive that they were passionate about, and passionate enough to put that feeling into something tangible that ended up on my computer screen. When I corner my brain into these moods it’s like I want to do everything, read every book, watch every film, and do something with this feeling even if I don’t know what that is.

For now, I funnel the feeling into writing. As one of my writing professors so graciously put it, “don’t forget to tell a story”. More often than not I find myself standing in front of a writers block. Overcomplicating it all when it’s not that complicated. Sometimes I just need to go back to the beginning, untangle the unnecessary complications, and just tell a story.

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He picked me up at my apartment on Saturday morning, at 10:00 right on time. I walked outside to see him leaning against the side of his car holding the passenger door open for me. That’s sweet I thought to myself.

We drove 20 minutes to the green as they call it. It was 10:30 when we arrived. I wore a black lululemon mini-skirt, well a skort actually. A golf skort. And a matching black tank top, with bright white tennis shoes and white ankle socks with a ruffle trim. If I failed at golfing, I thought, at least my outfit was cute. We left the car and walked to the first hole. He gave me a brief rundown of Golf 101. The night before, my mom told me to study up on some golf etiquette videos so that I know what I’m doing. I didn’t.

He was speechless at my golf abilities, having never golfed before in my life up until that day. Apparently I scored two bogeys, whatever that means. I busied myself with trying not to swing the golf club at him, or someone’s window, or the other golfers nearby. I felt so awkward holding that golf club, the driver. I couldn’t get past my inability to keep my left arm straight as I swing the club to the right and it’s okay if I hit a little bit of grass and keep my feet hip width distance apart and use my body rather than an exaggerated swing for power and keep my eyes on the ball and follow through with the swing and keep my right pinky and left index finger interlocked as I grip the club.

I managed to hit the ball in a straight line on the first try. Surprised that I even hit the ball myself, I turned to see his speechless expression that I hit the ball at all, let alone in a perfectly straight line.

I smiled and stood up a little straighter after that.

He was very good at golf - being an avid golfer himself. I giggled every time he got frustrated at an imperfect hit. It looked fine to me. I was impressed, really. My mom warned me that men love to get upset when playing golf - each imperfect hit a little sting to their ego.

It was a private golf course, each hole walkable distance that warranted the experience to be absent of a golf cart. I liked walking around. The sky was full of clouds with the sun straining to peek through the overcast. It was warm. It was nice.

We left to a coffee shop after seven holes and four lost balls. One of those being mine, three of them being his. He held the door open for me again.

I ordered an iced latte with almond milk. He ordered a cold brew coffee. Time passed into two hours before realizing we had to leave, he had work at 4:00. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember I couldn’t stop laughing. He was funny, he thought I was too.

Our second date was the following week, Saturday. I suppose Saturdays were our day. He picked me up at my apartment at 10:00, opening the door to his car for me. We drove the five minutes to my favorite coffee shop in San Diego. I mean really my favorite place. I come to this coffee shop so much that all the girls know my name and my order, we’re friends now. They asked about him when I left our table outside to grab our drinks. Where did you meet him? He’s so cute. I told him that when I returned to our table beneath the blue-and-white striped umbrella outside. He laughed.

I got an iced matcha and a breakfast burrito, with eggs, bacon, and avocado, and no hashbrowns and no cheese. He remembered my order and ordered for me at the register. I lost my ability to speak when it was my turn to order my matcha. That was so cute, I thought, that he remembered the order. He got a cold brew coffee, a breakfast burrito as is and a lox bagel.

He might have loved this place even more than I do, if that’s possible. I giggled that he ordered a burrito and a bagel. That’s actually an understatement, I fell into a laughing fit at the register when he went on a monologue of our breakfast orders. I don’t even know why I was laughing. I started laughing and I couldn’t stop. The girl taking our order found my hysterics infectious and she was laughing too. I managed to somewhat recover so that I could tell her my matcha order. An iced matcha latte, with almond milk, and ¼ sweet. “I’m giving you your matcha for free, just because you made me laugh”, she said as she wrote my order in sharpie on the plastic coffee cup. I looked at him and smiled again, that was sweet. And funny. He ordered his cold brew and we enjoyed it all outside. It was warmer out today, not a cloud in sight. The sun shone bright in the mid-70 degrees, with a soft ocean breeze reaching us. After breakfast we walked down the bike path that hugs the coast.

“So what do you want to do next Saturday?”, he asked.

I guess Saturdays were our day.

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It sparked from a conversation about my friend and the guy she’s been seeing for the past month.

“She’s really excited,” I said as I told him about the weekend they’re spending together, a romantic trip in the city of Chicago, “she thinks he’s going to ask her to be his girlfriend.”
“Really?” he said. “I think women are terrible at reading the signs. They overthink the things that aren’t actually signs, and then the actual signs fly over their head.”

I thought about it for a moment, the words sinking in. “I think you’re right.”

The topic slipped from the grips of our conversation for the next couple hours, flying out the window on the interstate. We drove to a park that overlooked the beach in Del Mar. Hanging onto a thread from our busy weeks, we were both exhausted. A date spent lying on a blanket at the park was a dream.

On the drive back to my apartment, the conversation sparked once again when I asked him about how many relationships he’s been in. I guess I’ve always looked at the protocol for relationships in a very black-and-white way. The first stage is the talking stage, which lasts anywhere from one to three months, on average. This stage is succeeded by the conversation that goes something like:

“Will you be my girlfriend?”
“Yes!!!!”

Then you are dating, you are boyfriend and girlfriend. And this lasts for however long it is meant to last, which is then followed by getting engaged, being each other’s fiancés, and then marriage. With this being my worldview, you can imagine my surprise when he said he finds the “girlfriend-boyfriend conversation” to be pointless.

“What do you mean, though?” I asked, struggling to understand despite my disagreement.

He explained it like - relationships come to a point where there is a mutual understanding that you both are in it, you both are together. It’s an unspoken understanding that is gained through being on the same wavelength, matching each other’s energy.

“I understand that,” I said, “but why wouldn’t you have the conversation instead of leaving it up to reading each other’s minds?”

“It’s not reading your mind, it’s that mutual understanding, like you both know,” he replied.

He explained that a lot of the time, people attach so much meaning to that conversation. They use that conversation as an indicator, a tangible proof of devotion. Like it’s the conversation that gives reassurance of commitment. To which I said, “yes, duh, that’s the whole point isn’t it?”

His argument was that the conversation itself isn’t what creates the connection, it’s not the thing that establishes the relationship. It’s the feeling, the understanding that you both match each other’s energies. It’s the relationship not the conversation.

“If you have a question, just ask me. Girls so often just sit around wondering ‘when is he going to ask me to be his girlfriend’. Just ask.”

My brain sank into a pool of confusion. I understood what he meant but I didn’t.

We pulled into the driveway of my studio apartment in Pacific Beach, his car perpendicular to the white parking spaces. I gathered my things into my brown leather handbag while he opened the passenger door for me, lipgloss, phone, glasses, keys, I think that’s everything I thought to myself. He kissed me goodbye.

“I’ll see you Monday?”

“See you Monday,” I replied as he walked back to his car, headed for work.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my own confusion about the conversation. I understood it but I didn’t. The clock read 2:05 when I opened the door to my apartment, the air was stale with the AC turned off. I called my mom and told her about my date, all good things of course. I told her about this conversation that left me at odds with my own understanding of the dating world.

To my surprise, she agreed with him.

“Your dad and I never had the boyfriend-girlfriend conversation, we just didn’t need to. We just knew,” she told me. “It’s kind of middle-school to have that conversation. I think it’s very grown-up for him to have said that honey, I respect him a lot for it.”

Maybe it was the dots starting to connect or the reassurance from my mother that this was normal, but it started to make sense. Why is it that we attach so much meaning to that conversation? If you really like someone, and if it’s really meant to be in your life, you and that person are going to inevitably share a mutual affinity for each other. Your energy will match, you will connect, things will just make sense. The reassurance of the legitimacy of the relationship doesn’t have to be reliant on a sit-down conversation about what are we.

Now there’s a fine line with this one - because there are plenty of frat boys in the world that avoid the what are we conversation to ends of commitment issues. Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time understanding this outlook, because it’s so foreign to me. My brain is trained to think the absence of that conversation equates a lack of commitment - akin to the douchebags who string a woman along and never commit to her.

Maybe this is what a mature man’s brain looks like and it’s throwing my brain for a spin.

For now, I’m going to think on it more. I’m going to let it simmer.

And if this turns into a real relationship, well, I might not be able to give up calling him my boyfriend, anyways.

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As someone who didn’t grow up under a religion, as I grow older I’m finding my interest drawn to the thing I’ve known nothing about. The absence of knowledge drives the curiosity of the unknown. I always thought that because I didn’t grow up with it, I’ll never fully understand it the way those that did. Like how the patterns from our childhood stay wired into our brains - whether we so like it or not. Maybe that was my way of writing it off without making time to learn more about it.

Religion gives individuals a moral compass. A moral compass to guide the wheel of the decisions they face in life. We see the 10 commandments as justification for the judicial laws that exist but it is those commandments themselves that were the foundation for those laws. Religion seems to be the foundation of humans.

In reference to the Old Testament, a central distinction in the book of Deuteronomy from the other four Books of Moses, is the belief that loyalty to God will result in blessings, while disloyalty to God will result in punishment. The belief is what drives the outcome. The faith is what ensures a fruitful existence. It’s as if having faith in a certain version of your life will ensure it becomes a reality. While lacking that belief will ensure your existence doesn't parallel those ideals. Your loyalty to God results in abundance of blessings.

I see this in the Law of Attraction - the Laws of Manifestation more broadly. Though that concept is plagued by connotations of illegitimacy and, a little too “woo woo” for most tastes, I think there’s something to it. There’s something to the concept of believing in a version of your life to the point of it jumping off the page and coloring your entire reality. The foundation of this law is to act as if you already have the thing you want. Rather than painting this concept as delusion - I think there’s something there. By believing you already have the thing, you will act accordingly. By acting like you have the thing, you are living the lifestyle that would embrace the thing. So that by “already having it”, you then attract it. Like attracts like.

I don’t know how I feel about religion. I want to learn more. I want to study it from a realm of curiosity, to find understanding in why it exists and what it means to people.

Religion isn’t something you go to for advice on. Someone is going to tell you how essential it is as a puzzle piece in your life, and someone else is going to write it off as trifling. Part of that speaks to our need for selectivity when seeking others for advice, meaning, be careful who you ask for guidance. But part of that is also, you can’t really ask someone else to make decisions for you. There comes a point, I’m beginning to realize, that you just need to make your own decisions. Maybe it’s maturity or just chronic independence, but learning to make your own decisions might be the most valuable thing we can do.

Indecision is human but it shouldn’t be crippling. Life goes on anyways, so I just have to make up my mind and find peace in each decision I do choose. Whether it’s a relationship, employment, moving cities, or which shade of blue jeans do I want from Reformation. (That did happen. I bought the shade “Colorado” over “Pelican”. Cute jeans. Love the brand.) I’m coming to realize that I almost always have the answer in me anyways, the pang of intuition at each crossroad. I just have to make it a habit to trust it.

And maybe that’s just leaning into belief. Maybe that’s all religion is, the power of believing in the most wonderful version of your life and yourself possible.

It’s the belief that drives the blessings.

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I have written since I was little, those little stories with stick figure illustrations to accompany an elementary tale about me. Maybe my mom would pin it to the fridge. I’m sure it now sits at the bottom of a dusty bin of her old keepsakes. She holds onto those sweet tangible sentiments she can find, a reminiscence of my childhood. As I get older I’m noticing my growing affinity for the sentimental. I’m usually the opposite. I crave minimalism, the feeling of space, the beauty of the bland - but I don’t see it as bland. It’s a clean space to me. I wear a range of neutral colors with an affinity for a white tank top paired with blue jeans. I’ll grab the classic black leather heels over the ruby-red patent leather. My jewelry shimmers in real gold and seldom will I wear something outside of my daily accessory lineup.

I love a routine but sometimes so much that it’s to the point of unnecessary isolation. An inclination to the predictable routine rather than messy spontaneity. My ex-boyfriend was the first person to ever show me that it’s okay to deviate from the routine. The world won’t end. He held my hand through unbearable discomfort as I trudged through spontaneity, unorganization, even rest.

I love to write. Perhaps it is the creative outlet that is most endearing to me, that I hold the highest affinity for. I love the arts. I could listen to music all hours of the day, with an emphasis on 70s-80s classic rock, of course. I love films, so much. I have a list of my favorite films on the notes app on my phone that grows longer each year. I love to walk through museums and stare at the artwork on the wall, getting lost in the story on the canvas in front of me. Of all the mediums of art that exist, writing is the only one that I do myself. I don’t want to say I’m not good at other mediums of art, but I’m really not. I have never made the time to practice and hone my skills in those other forms. That doesn't detract from my appreciation and affinity for it, but I just don’t do it.

That’s why I love writing, because I can do it. It’s my chosen form of creative expression.

I was on the phone with a friend a few days ago. He always tells me to write, even when I don’t feel like it. Write about the highs, write about the lows, write when I don’t want to and write when I do. Part of that is because he knows I want to integrate writing into my career path, and part of it is an ode to a favorite figure - Matthew McConaughey. He introduced me to Green Lights, McConaughey’s memoir. It’s a wonderful book, full of his entire life from start to present. It’s full of beautiful storytelling, highs and lows, heartbreak and happiness, and little bumper stickers of wisdom woven throughout his tales. He has written in a journal since he was 15, and used all of those tangible memories on paper to craft this memoir. That’s why writing was so important to him, not only for the present moment therapeutic effects, but for the nostalgic experience of revisiting old passages from last month or 10 years ago. It's a keepsake of your life.

With that said, one reason I love to write is for the nostalgic purpose, the tangible record of my life on paper that I can look back on. Retrospectively, I think human memories are terrible. We end an inadequate relationship and 6 months later we miss that person so much because our brain erases the negative emotions. We only remember the good parts when we miss someone.

Within the past year, I have really leaned into writing. Part of it is attributed to my newly desired career path and the classes I take in college. And the other part I attribute to seeking comfort and understanding amidst the end of a relationship. My first and only relationship ended in January of this year. At present moment, I’m healed and happy and completely moved on. I can say with grace and confidence that it was a wonderful relationship but it just wasn’t right for me, or him for that matter. But at the time, it was one of the hardest things I’ve gone through. I turned to writing to make sense of my emotions and find some understanding through it all. It was a space for me to spiral into oblivion in my throes of overthinking - a tendency of mine. I am learning to detach from my habits of overthinking, though. Writing was a way for me to channel my energy into something I was good at. I could create something out of that negativity I was feeling. Which lended itself to personal satisfaction. I felt good about myself, despite the raw wounds of rejection that lingered for those few months.

I think writing is a form of therapy for me. A way to take note of my patterns for self-reflection and improvement. But it’s that right there, the self-reflection through writing that has allowed me to grow into myself. Grow into the best version of myself, the most confident person I can be. It’s not just writing that does that. It’s my daily habits, who I surround myself with, what I consume both literally and figuratively. But writing is up there, and it’s a wonderful thing.

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