The currency of life

A different type of spending

Dear Kula Diaries,

Hello dearest friends, and Happy 2025! I’m so happy to be back and to have the opportunity to share more words with you as we start the new year.

I’m going to be honest with all of you: I was really exhausted at the end of this past year. Somehow, I had packed in 3 musical performances… multiple events… running a fulfillment center during the holidays… writing excessively… and attempting to maintain my ‘normal’ life… all in between November and the end of the year. To be completely frank, it was a stupid plan. I really suffered as a result of it — and in the type of way that nobody (except for me and my husband) would see. I’ve got an uncanny knack for consistently being able to show up with 150% effort at all times … until I crash and burn on my weekends and spend several days lying in a heap, trying to figure out what I’m doing. What was very clear to me is this: this is not sustainable, nor is it how I actually want to spend my life.

It’s weird, because when you are doing what you love, it’s hard to say no, and it’s so difficult for me to distinguish between ‘work’ and ‘fun’ and I often feel guilty about not doing things. Does anybody else feel like that? Because you feel like you can’t possibly turn down any opportunity? Because you’ll be hurting your business and your life if you say no to something? Because you’ll be missing out?

Well, guess what? It’s a hard nugget to swallow, but when you say yes to far too many things, you are also saying no to something else… and, most often, that’s your own well being. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that I have a threshold that I call, the quitting threshold. When I start to fantasize about quitting, I know that I’m pushing myself too hard… I know that I’m being completely unrealistic and that I’m very quickly approaching the ‘too full’ marker on my imaginary overflow line.

And so, over the past few weeks or so, I took a good hard look at the things that I was doing, and I spent time doing the things that I love and that I had neglected for a long time. I went on a lot of walks outside… and I started painting watercolors again. Do you want to hear something that I found very sad? I opened up my watercolor notebook and I discovered that I hadn’t painted in my little book since November of 2023 — which, I might add, is when the cluster unfolded. I didn’t realize how long it had taken me to truly find my footing again after that happened. In so many ways, I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming challenge of so many aspects of operating a business — because, quite frankly, nothing can really prepare you for that … especially if it’s something you’ve never done before. As I have mentioned, it isn’t the specific tasks that I perform that are particularly challenging — instead, it’s the mental exhaustion that wears me down.

Last year, I wrote down three guiding principals that I wanted to include at the heart of most things in my life:

There is nothing to fear.

Let go and have fun.

Don’t take things too seriously.

If I’m doing an honest self-reflection on these guiding principals, I will admit that I did a mostly good job at following them.

And yet.

And yet, I did get sucked into the realm of overworking, overwhelm, fear and doubt… on many occasions.

And do you know that? That’s OK.

Because at least I know that it happened. Because at least I know that it’s an imaginary place in my mind that isn’t actually real. Because at least I know that I have a choice to create something else.

Aaron and I on a Christmas day hike behind our house.

As we start 2025, I genuinely don’t know what’s coming. I have some hopes and dreams for my personal life and for Kula, but I don’t have a detailed map on how to get there — and I’m OK with not knowing. I do know that I need to be a lot kinder to myself, and I need to be more relaxed and less rigid. I need to loosen up a bit… and not hold myself to such a ridiculously high standard. As a kid, being perfect was how I got validation… it was how I stayed out of getting in trouble. When I was perfect, I felt deserving of love. Anything less than perfect was unacceptable, and it’s a ridiculous standard that I’ve continued to hold myself to for most of my life.

Here’s the thing, I’m entirely not perfect. I am no different than any other human on this planet. I cry a lot more than you probably think that I do. I worry a lot more than you could possibly imagine. I am often exhausted. Sometimes I fantasize about quitting my own business… and getting a job as a mixologist (seriously). I get really annoyed and frustrated a lot and I get especially frustrated at myself when I know that I’m ‘in my head’. I create a lot of imaginary stories in my mind, but I’m getting a lot better at not reacting to them. I have a bad habit of leaving cabinet doors open in our kitchen — on any given day, you might walk into our kitchen and think that you were in a poltergeist scene from The Sixth Sense. I hate folding laundry. Sometimes I spend my entire meditation feeling annoyed at how much I’m annoyed about my meditation.

The bottom line is this: we are all trying our very best to figure life out, and we can’t have all the answers. What we can do is trust, in some way, that we are exactly where we are supposed to be — for reasons that we might not even know. It’s so easy to want to be somewhere else. It’s so easy to feel like we’ve gotten the short end of the stick. It’s so easy to feel lost… and not sure where to turn next. But here’s the thing: we don’t need to know. All we need to do is just take the next breath, and trust that it’s going to be there. And then take another one, and notice that one is there too. Here we are… breathing… and that means that more is going right than wrong in this exact moment.

The map to where you want to go does exist, but it’s not the type of map that could ever have specific directions, because that would mean that there’s only one correct way to get somewhere. And there isn’t…because there are infinite ways to get somewhere. So what can you do to reveal the directions on your map? That’s where beingness becomes important. The more that we can open our hearts — the more that we can be creative, connect with nature, find gratitude, share love… the more that we will start to nudge ourselves along down the path. Stuff has a way of falling into place, and it’s really tempting to need to know how it’s all going to work out. Sometimes it feels like you’re just suspended in space — with no real direction. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that if we just try to focus on everything we don’t want, that we will somehow fix it… but I’ve learned that doing that just creates more and more discomfort and suffering — and ultimately, it makes nothing better… ever.

I was proud of this and wanted to share… a shirt I designed for Aaron for Christmas!

So, as we move into 2025 — I’m letting go of needing to know how things are going to work out, and I’m going to really try to be easier on myself. I’m going to acknowledge that there are an infinite number of mysteries that I don’t understand in this universe and that I can’t possibly know all of the answers. I want to be part of the mystery. I want to be a part of the great unfolding. As I trust the current of life, I surrender to the freedom of allowing it to carry me — not the other way around.

I think that’s been my biggest struggle — I bought into the narrative of my self-worth being defined by what I do, not who I am… and when one amount of work didn’t solve my problems… I piled on more and more and more. Maybe someday, I think to myself foolishly, I’ll do enough to deserve what I’m looking for.

But that’s where I’m wrong. Because love isn’t given out based on deeds done, but rather on being who you are — for no reason other than you were born into this world, and took your first gasp of fresh air.

It’s up to each of us to decide how we want to spend our breaths and heartbeats. You don’t need a brand new year to make a different choice. In each moment, each breath, each beat, we can start anew.

Friends, thank you for being here. Thank you for reading the things I write and, most importantly, for being who you are. You are unduplicatable and your dreams and ideas matter so much. This year, let’s let go of the shoulds and the coulds… and keep our hearts open to the infinitely beautiful things that can happen.

Sending you all so much love today, and all days.