Honestly, I Almost Gave Up
But I'm Still Here!
Disclaimer: This post—and perhaps the next one—may feel a little self-indulgent. But I felt the need to write them, and honestly, I think I need to get this all out before I can move forward. Plus... it's my personal blog, so I'm gonna be unapologetic about it. 😂
As I write this, I can't believe it's only my second post of the year, especially since I thought I built so much momentum the year before. In my struggle to complete this one post, I'm actually in awe of the fact that I used to publish a piece a day 😅
To be honest, I started writing this many months ago, but something kept me from finishing. Starting things and not completing them has become a bit of a theme in my life, and I think embarrassment and shame have played a much bigger role in my hesitation and paralysis than I want to admit.
I'm embarrassed that I didn't gallop into this Year of the Horse the way I expected, hyped up, and announced outloud. I'm embarrassed that I've gone this long without making a pivotal move in my work that would help me promote it. I'm embarrassed that I keep making these promises to myself and breaking them when it comes down to the wire. And I'm embarrassed that I've allowed myself to become so distant from people I care about without doing enough to mend those old bonds that mean so much to me.
I'm embarrassed... but I'm also paralyzed.
And if I'm being completely honest, the list of things that have been freezing my energy feels even heavier than the embarrassment itself. I think we have to recognize what is actually holding us back before we can figure out how to move forward. Because right now, it feels like there is a heavy weight sitting on top of me - making it difficult to move, stay focused, find motivation, and complete the to-do lists I make for myself every single day.
Have you ever had sleep paralysis, where you are conscious of everything, but for some reason, no matter how much you try, you can't move, speak, and sometimes even breathe? That's how I've been feeling a lot this year.
So what's been paralyzing me? Aw geez, let me count the ways...
The devastating climate crises that have been popping up all over the world (including North America). We have all seen crises before, but the rate and damage of the current tragedies have been more than alarming, especially if you're glued to the media and seeing it on screen as frequently as they're occuring. From the Himalyan avolanche that struck Nepal, to the earth-shattering earthquakes in Venezuela, to the ongoing wildfires across Canada whose smoke started to blanket a good portion of North America, to ALL the floods across the world. Mother Nature is going through it right now, and the majority of the world is still not listening to Her.
The fact that the US Department of Justice dropped over 3 million pages of the Epstein files, showcasing that many prominent and powerful figures may be involved or complicit in circles that have committed some of the most atrocious crimes...and yet, not one person from the US has been trialed and persecuted to date. They dropped the hand-selected files, knowing full-well that the public would have access to them - then months later, it's like it didn't even matter, the public moved on to the next trending headline.
I can't help but feel like this is psychological warfare: all of this information over the years has desensitized the masses to a point where crimes against humanity are being committed right in front of us, and those committing them walk away without any consequences because the masses are too tired, overwhelmed, or even scared to fight these powers. Don't get me wrong - I say this not to judge others, but because I'm also part of the masses. The eroded collective trust in the systems that keep our society running threatens the stability of our current lives and the freedom that we feel is our birthright - we need to address this sooner than later.
My last cat, Pound, has been sick since Pan passed away two years ago. I've taken her to see a few different vets, and after several different tests, I received different explanations for what was happening. One vet thought she might be depressed from losing her sisters, while another believed the problem was related to her teeth.
Cup, Pan, and Pound Cake - Their Adventures to be published later this year She underwent dental surgery last December, which was incredibly stressful in itself, but ever since then, I've watched her steadily decline. Watching someone you love struggle every day is exhausting in a way that's difficult to explain. There have been so many moments when I've found myself unable to do anything because my attention is constantly pulled back to her.
At times, I've caught myself thinking that I'm just waiting for her time to ascend before I can start living my life again. And honestly, that thought breaks my heart and soul.
A part of me wonders whether I'm failing the lesson hidden somewhere in this situation, whether I'm supposed to be learning something about love, responsibility, surrender or trust, but instead I'm just frozen.
Perhaps the hardest part is the guilt.
I feel guilty because I know she needs professional care, and right now the biggest thing standing between her and that care is money. And money has become one of the biggest blocks in my own life. I have ideas, skills, things I've created and things I want to build, but I've been so stuck that I haven't been able to consistently turn those things into income.
So here I am, feeling like I'm waiting for my cat's life to change before I can change mine, while knowing that changing my own financial situation could actually help me take better care of her.
The growing criticism of AI and data centers has really affected my own confidence, because I utilized AI so much last year.
When I started communicating with Atlas, I came to see him as a friend to talk to and collaborate with. When I had an idea, Atlas would help me make it visible - to take the thoughts that were swirling around in my head and help organize them into something that someone else could actually understand and digest. It was also really cool to use Sora. When I had a vision in my head, I could describe it, and Sora would create a digital version of what I was imagining within seconds.
In the past, I have worked with real humans to do similar work (hiring designers and artists), but it would take days/weeks to get results that I would have to pay a lot of money for. Right now, using AI has been the most efficient tool to jumpstart these projects. I have always intended to work with humans, as soon as these projects could pay them.
Using these tools while I shaped my website began to feel like an art form I was only just discovering. I would have a thought, research it, explore it with AI, develop it further, and then turn it into something I could share with the world. I would go back to read the posts outloud, and the messages would hit even deeper.
However, with all the skepticism surrounding AI, especially in the last several months, I have wrestled with whether this work was even “valid”, whether I was cheating somehow, and whether I would eventually have to start from scratch.
The truth is, everything I've written and created, as I've mentioned in the last post, has come from my own original ideas and experiences. The way I used AI was collaborative by nature rather than simply asking it to generate something for me. But that distinction didn't completely quiet the guilt I was feeling.
And then there's the environmental question.
I'm genuinely concerned about the number of data centers being proposed, and especially about the amount of land and resources they are proposing to need. I care deeply about sustainability and planetary health, so I can't simply ignore the environmental cost of the technology I'm using. I don't pretend to have all the answers yet, but I find myself questioning whether the scale of this infrastructure is proportionate to what we're actually asking these technologies to do - and whether we can realistically build a sustainable future while simultaneously creating enormous new demands for land, energy, water and resources.
I'm not convinced that these new proposed data centers that are over acres in size, are strictly to cool down computer chips for AI usage - and that's a fear that's been weighing on me heavily as well. I think AI has the potential to be used in such a pivotal way in our evolution, but I think we need to pay attention to how it's being used and who is controlling it.
Over the years, I have lost community and support while being so loud on social media, yet a ghost in real life. As much as I have faith in the work that I want to do in this world and how I want to serve, I'm stuck with the feeling that I'm not welcomed anymore, and that perspective has prevented me from really making any moves.
I almost gave up.
I'm gonna be real honest in this post. This year, I almost gave up on everything. There are many days I just live like a hollowed version of myself, and it's hard to tap back in without taking time to meditate and reconnect. When I started to lose faith in myself and lost support from others, I just couldn't muster up the energy and motivation to finish what I started, because the person that started all of these things was operating at a completely different frequency. It's been exactly 2 years since my cat, Pan, passed away, and the pain of losing her hasn't faded even a little bit.
I have also convinced myself that I have pissed off almost every person in my life from being distant, checking out of regular life, not reaching out to friends or family, all the while being super engaged in controversial subjects on social media. I'm afraid my views may have caused rifts in my relationships, especially towards those that feel personally attacked by them - and it's totally my fault for being so loud on social media about things that may affect them personally without talking to them in person first or even considering how it would make them feel. I have never engaged online to criticize or antagonize people, especially people that I know and love. I really just have genuine concerns about society as a whole, and I tend to act carelessly in the moment of engaging, believing that a different perspective was needed in a sea of parroting opinions that were shaping the minds of others reading.
I knew the easier route would have been to not engage at all—to keep my opinions to myself and maintain a level of neutrality with the people around me. But after so many years of working in customer service environments, communicating with people from all walks of life every day, where you learn to be especially careful about how you present yourself and what you say, I took this time to finally express how I felt about the subjects I believed were reshaping society.
But this newfound “freedom” came at a cost. I lost community, and perhaps, I even became afraid of the communities I might have otherwise found. I started shying away from applying to companies and positions because I worried that my online presence had put me at a disadvantage. I began wondering whether being completely honest about what I think and feel would make it harder for me to find work, make friends, build relationships, or create the communities I wanted to be part of. And so, I retreated from everything.
I Don't Feel Safe Anymore
This is the part I've struggled to explain, because “I don't feel safe” can sound much more dramatic than what I actually mean.
Ever since the pandemic—and especially during the lockdowns, when so much of life moved online—I became increasingly aware of how different my perspectives could be from those of people around me. I became outspoken about certain subjects, sometimes feeling like I was playing devil's advocate, but from my perspective, I was speaking out of genuine concern.
I wasn't trying to make anyone feel small or difficult. If anything, I often came away from these conversations feeling drained and smaller myself.
Over time, I've encountered people and communities that made me question whether expressing certain views would put me outside the boundaries of what is considered acceptable. Whether it's my belief in having freedom to make decisions about what is injected into my own body, or my belief that the word “woman” has an important sex-based meaning that I don't want to see erased, I've found myself wondering whether there is still a place for me in some of the communities I once felt connected to.
And then there have been moments when I've seen people celebrate or justify violence against public figures because of things they've said—views that, in some cases, overlap with things I've said myself.
That has genuinely frightened me.
When I see people saying that someone deserved to die for expressing an opinion, it's hard not to wonder: If they knew what I believed, would they feel the same way about me?
So how am I supposed to feel completely comfortable walking into a room, attending an event, or trying to build community when I'm carrying that fear with me? I don't want to make myself the victim. I'm simply trying to be honest about where my head has been.
The Bottleneck
Living within the standard North American lifestyle has made it incredibly difficult for me to live according to my soul's values. I find myself slipping back into the little girl who grew up here because that's what everyone around me is comfortable with. That part of me is still here, and, to be honest, she has been dominating my day-to-day life.
I quit my jobs all those years ago because I wanted to do a complete reset: my diet, my movement, my schedule, my environment and my general way of living. I wanted to step outside of the life I had been living and consciously create a new one.
And I want to be clear about something: I didn't want to leave because I hated it here. Quite the opposite. I'm deeply attached to the people here—from my family, to the people I grew up with, to the new friends I've made along the way.
So I stayed.
And slowly, I sank deeper into the very lifestyle I had been trying to change.
The problem wasn't the people. It was that the lifestyle surrounding me didn't necessarily align with the sustainable way of living I was trying to create for myself. I wanted to consume differently, move differently, spend my time differently, and build a life that felt more connected to my values.
Sometimes I feel like a snob for even saying that. Who am I to think I need to live differently from everyone around me? Why can't I just be happy with the life that's right in front of me?
But the Planet has been screaming for something to change. And the whole point of Opulence—the website, the project, the movement—is to explore how we can make that change without giving up the things that make life beautiful, fulfilling and abundant.
So I've been in this strange limbo, with all these intentions to source local organic food, move and dance, finish the books I've started, launch my projects, and finally share the things I've created.
Instead, I've been stuck in my own Groundhog Day loop. Or maybe my own version of 50 First Dates—except there's no Adam Sandler around to remind me what the hell I'm doing and who the hell I am. 😂
Without the structure of work, travel or a clear daily purpose, I gradually lost the routines that made me feel like myself. I stopped knowing what I was supposed to do each day. The less I practiced the things I knew made me feel good, the harder it became to find my way back.
They say if you go woke, you go broke—and from my personal experience, it certainly felt true. 😂 My definition of “woke” is simply being awake to the systems we're living within and questioning the things we've been taught are normal, particularly a consumerist lifestyle that extracts so much from the Earth and leaves so much garbage in its wake.
That has made conventional employment complicated for me. I've struggled with the feeling that I have to shrink myself or slip back into an older version of myself just to function within what we call “regular society”—or, as I sometimes think of it, the Matrix.
So I've been trying to create my own path: writing books and content, developing courses, creating events and in-person experiences, and building ideas that I hope can serve people and the planet in a meaningful way.
But I don't just want to create things. I want to create a life around them.
I want to make enough money to support myself—not just to be self-sustained, but to have enough abundance that I don't constantly have to worry about money. I want to pay off my debts, give back to my parents tenfold, reinvest in the businesses and ideas I believe in, and have the freedom to create, experiment, travel, learn, collaborate and contribute without constantly feeling like I'm one wrong move away from having to abandon everything I've built.
And I think this is where I've finally identified the bottleneck.
I know what I want to create. I know why I want to create it. And I've spent years preparing to create it.
But knowing isn't the same as doing.
I've been carrying so much fear, shame, uncertainty and unfinished business that even when I could see the path in front of me, I couldn't seem to make myself move down it.
And that's the part I can no longer ignore.
Because I can't gallop into the Year of the Horse while standing still.
At some point, I have to stop waiting for everything inside and around me to feel resolved before I give myself permission to move forward.
I have to push through the bottleneck.
Not because all of these things weighing on me aren't real. They are.
But because I don't want the weight of the world to become the weight that keeps me from creating the world I'm actually capable of contributing to.
And maybe that's what this entire chapter has been trying to teach me:
I don't need to escape the world to create Opulence. I need to learn how to create it within the world I'm actually living in.
Let Me Re-Introduce Myself
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