(un)fortunately, i will stay the same

While you’re all busy writing down your 2025 goals, I’ve decided to stay the same. Yes, I know—that sounds downright insane coming from a mid-twenties, personal-development-obsessed ex-wellness girl who loves all things basic like $7 iced strawberry matcha lattes and insists on having a vegetarian dish at Christmas dinner. I probably should be prompting the journal prompts I saw in an Instagram carousel earlier, or arranging all the pictures I’ve either downloaded from Pinterest or screenshotted over the past 12 months in a pretty collage, so I can prime my mind for my bright future whenever I look at my phone and by that I mean every second of my life. This is what I should be doing right now, but instead, I feel guilty for dreading the empty pages of my journal and have turned to the closest thing to therapy—aka my Substack newsletter. Maybe now is the perfect time to mention that signing up for the new engine of culture is probably the best thing that happened to me this year. I’m not exaggerating when I say this year has thrown a lot at me (please refer to this piece: Rock Bottom Summer), but no matter how low I felt, the comfort of knowing I can—and will—curate entertainment in the form of essays out of my misery never failed to boost my confidence. 2024 is the year I found my voice in the online world, and (un)fortunately, that voice includes phrases like “fucking,” “hell,” “fuck,” “shit,” and “fuck that shit up” more often than people are comfortable with. As a recovering people-pleaser, I’ve come to realize that I actually enjoy the thrill and unfamiliarity of having people dislike me—and my unsolicited opinions on absolutely any topic you can think of. That being said, I will proudly continue to trauma-dump on this newsletter in the hope of likes, fame, and because I can’t afford therapy. Another aspect of my personality that I’m very proud of—and fully intend to carry into 2025—is my inability to take anything seriously. Yeah, I know that’s kind of the whole point of this newsletter: to remind the human species that nothing really matters. But it goes much deeper than that. To help you understand, I should mention that my spiritual journey began with a 200-hour yoga teacher training in Bali last October—and ended approximately seven days later. I tried so hard to stick with chanting mantras at 5 a.m. and cleansing my tongue first thing in the morning, but I knew I was fucked the moment I skipped this perfectly curated routine once. And I was proven right. I lost my spiritual routine—and with it, my newfound life goal of having an out-of-body experience. However, it all came full circle when I visited Ikaria, a Greek island, this summer (refer to my famous article: Dump your Matcha and have a cigarette, Bitch). In this piece of the world that I would downright call heaven, I realized over cappuccino freddo and cigarettes that the most spiritual people aren’t the ones setting their alarms for 5 a.m. to chant in a bathrobe from northern India. They’re the ones who spend their days sitting on a plastic chair in the sun, smoking cigarettes, and ordering their third coffee. (Yes, wellness girlies, I mean a normal fucking coffee—not mushroom coffee.) Needless to say, I’ll proudly carry the greek-grandma attitude into 2025. Lastly, I’ve realized that the only thing I should be taking seriously (but not too seriously, ya know) is making sure my ambitious dreams eventually turn into reality. I’m still finding the balance between detaching from any outcome (a virtue from my studying Buddhism era that lasted for like a week) and making things happen for myself—not because I want to prove anything (although I do), but mainly because I like to imagine myself as an 80-year-old lady with smudged lipstick, sitting on a plastic chair somewhere in the Mediterranean, knowing I didn’t waste a single second of this life.

So yeah, I genuinely love what this year has made of me and, (un)fortunately, I will stay the same.

me in my natural habitat (a bean bag in Bali)

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL YOU BEAUTIFUL AND INCREDIBLY TALENTED HUMANS, I LOVE YOU!!! <33