Writing, when it’s not boring, is dangerous. Writing is exposing ourselves. Our lives, our loves, our relationships, our despairs, worries and hopes. Good writing is dropping the wall in front of the heart and peeling back the scars, leaving the reader nodding, “me too”. More on that, soon, here.

My writing has evolved and grown and changed in recent years, but one format I like coming back to is a simple email. That’s where I want to stay today.

I make my life transparent in these letters to you. Often with more ease than one would expect, but not always. I write candidly about the way I try to meet the gaps in my care as a child, I reveal aspects of my lifestyle that are often unmoored, and I wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to my romances. I’m also particularly interested in the fascinating tension between destiny and free will, investigating how much of our lives and future we can consciously design. Somehow, all these topics weave together.

Oh! It’s started raining! Perfect. Perfect start to the day, which I had planned to spend the first half of in bed writing. Nothing makes me happier than the sound of rain onto the terracotta clay tile roof above me while I write.

The rain lightens and a notification lights up my phone signalling that my breakfast bagel is here. I jump out of bed in my striped cotton hot pants and old Urban Outfitters t-shirt that I slept in and go to the front door, letting the drizzle softly cover me. The foster puppies are nipping at my ankles, and just as I open the garden door, the delivery guy pulls up on his scooter and hands me a cardboard box, before wizzing off again. The puppies have run off towards the kitchen willing me to give them breakfast but it’s not time yet.

I make my way back into bed with my hot bagel of eggs, melted cheese, soggy tomato, lettuce and crispy bacon, and eat half before returning to these words. The other half can be saved for lunchtime. The rain starts to press down harder again. I am dry and warm and happy.

build your body of work with me

Sometimes people ask what it takes to live the way I do, and beyond consistent courage and trying again and again and again, and trust in self and life, it’s something I’ve only been able to name recently: building a body of work. A way of moving through the world and giving back to it that is mine and only mine.

My friend Anne recently texted me, writing, “I loved what you wrote about adaptability and how we can flourish moving forward in ’futureproof your life’. I have journals full of concepts and connections, and I can finally see how they all weave together, and there’s a certain direction.” This is true for so many women. All our lives, unwittingly, there is a pull towards building this body of work. The niche is you. The audience is the people you love.

I first tested out Practical Dreamer as a 1:1 experience for my private clients late last year, and when it sold out twice in a row, it was clear that this process was needed. I spent the first few months of this year refining it into a group programme:

practical dreamer: a three month mentorship for women ready to build their body of work: click here to learn more

Over twelve weeks you will excavate what you know, clarify what you want to build, and make something real: a body of work that is owned entirely by you and offered generously to the world. You will leave with something to say and something to give.

Access is only through application, and applications close at the end of May.

PRACTICAL DREAMER ☁️

I’d like to do another q&a with you!

Please bring all your burning or ordinary questions of any kind and enter them anonymously here. Hopefully it’ll be less dramatic than last time, where I could feel in my bones that something was wrong. I was so tender I cried during the q&a, and the next day my boyfriend abandoned me in nyc.

ASK VIENDA ANYTHING 🦋

latest letters you might have missed:

The rain has stopped since I started writing an hour ago. The sun is spilling in from between the leaves that shade the entry to my chamber. Last week, the weather started becoming a little cooler, a little drier. I don’t have to shelter in the stale air-conditioning of my room in the middle of the day quite so much anymore.

Even here, the seasons tell of change, of untold stories and unknown futures that lie ahead. I think about the question again. “What does it take to build a life that is truly, honestly who we are?” It takes love. Love for yourself, for your potential, for your desires.

One of the most painfully devastating things I see women do is pour their love into the potential of someone else, where it is taken for granted and wasted and squandered away because they do not love themselves. I’ve done it too. That’s how I know. Ultimately, the only person we owe that kind of investment into is ourselves.

It takes delusional dreaming and trying and failing and letting yourself be seen in process in public. It takes patience and presence and hope. It takes letting yourself be seen. Letting yourself be perceived and judged. And since we are doing it anyway, why not put on a show?

WORK WITH ME

It’s Sunday morning. Our foster puppy is scratching at my bedroom door, whining to come in. Scooters are whirring by on the road outside. There’s a half-eaten breakfast bagel crumpled in foil on the bed next to me, and an empty mug that I used for my morning “healthy hot chocolate” — raw cacao powder stirred into hot water, topped with raw milk, a sprinkle of sea salt, and a heaped teaspoon of raw honey.

Oh no. She's found someone's shoe that she's now enthusiastically destroying.

I am writing in bed — my favourite way to start a day — and a recent rarity. Who would have thought that I’d move to a tropical island and life would get busier and fuller than ever?! Not me.

Two and a half months ago I arrived here having only just scrambled the edges of my existence together into a coherent heap of a human after the f*&ckery of a year 2025 was for me, and now it feels like that version of myself is dead and gone.

I am someone completely new. Braver. Clearer. Happier. More myself than I have been in years. Which means I’m remembering what I’m actually about, now that I’ve been freed from the clutches of survival in a social ecosystem that was so foreign to me.

I think and live and write a lot about living as close to the nexus of your soul as possible. A life that feels, in the deepest and most cellular sense, like an extension of your own heart, your own rhythm, your own soul. And while I often focus on what you do with your life — your work, your purpose, your gifts, the way you spend your mornings, the people you choose, the risks you take, the dreams you refuse to abandon — it also includes how you live your life. The little details of beauty and luxury and lifestyle that align with who you are.

One thing I find so fascinating is that when you live close to the nexus of your soul, the innermost, truest point of yourself, you tend to do less. Need less. Want less.

All your beauty rituals become so much more meaningful and also so much less expensive.

Living in this way is rebellious because it makes you unmanipulable.

Uninterested in the trends and forces that charge our modern consumer world, because you’re whole. You don’t experience a gap between who you are and who you should be. So you see things for what they are.

True beauty is so much more accessible than we’ve been led to believe, and not only because it starts within. I mean that structurally, not sentimentally. Beauty is relational. It’s energy before it’s aesthetics. It’s why we can look at someone who is, by every conventional measure, physically attractive, and feel nothing — or worse, feel a low-grade repulsion — because something in their presence doesn’t match. Because the exterior and the interior are running different programmes. And it’s why a face that contains none of the features we’ve been culturally trained to identify as beautiful can be so magnetic, so endlessly interesting to look at, so alive. Because whatever is happening inside that person is leaking out through their eyes, their expression, the way they hold themselves in the world.

Beauty, at its most real, is the coherence between inner and outer.

So, what makes you feel most you? Most beautiful? Most enigmatic? What beauty rituals reflect the nexus of your soul? There are no right or wrong answers here, which is what makes it so unique!

Here are 8 of mine:

Read more

I went on a date last night1. He was not my type, but the conversation was interesting enough. At one point, while explaining his startup, he leaned forward and said:

“It’s 2031. Imagine a woman. She’s thirty five. She’s a lawyer who worked her way up to junior partner at a top firm. She has a beautiful house in Sydney, a second holiday property somewhere else, a life that looks exactly like what people say it’s supposed to look like. She did everything right. And then AI becomes so good that it can do her job better than she can.”

He paused.

“She loses the job. The income. The partnership. The status. She spends six months trying to find something equivalent but nothing exists anymore. She gets two thousand dollars a month in universal basic income, has to sell the house, give up the second property, downsize her life. But more than that, she loses her identity. She doesn’t know who she is without any of it. She becomes angry. Aggressive. Unstable. She needs help.”

Then he smiled.

“That’s where my startup comes in.”

I took a sip of wine.

“What a beautiful opportunity to create a more meaningful life.”

He looked at me like I hadn’t understood.

“She’s suffering,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Obviously.”

I told him he was making her sound one dimensional.

“She is not her job. Her career might be an expression of her, for a season, but it is not the entirety of who she is. She’s a human being. She has instincts, contradictions, private curiosities, old dreams, unfinished parts of herself, talents that never made it onto a résumé, desires she may not even have admitted to herself yet. She is an ecosystem. Not a title.”

He looked at me for a moment and said, completely seriously:

“So… she has hobbies?”

I stared at him.

“No,” I said. “Don’t belittle her.”

And suddenly I could feel myself getting fired up.

“I mean that she is a living ecosystem. A psyche. A body. A nervous system. A soul. A woman with instincts and contradictions and unfinished parts of herself. A woman with ideas she hasn’t followed yet, gifts she hasn’t fully developed, parts of her that have never had the chance to come all the way alive because she’s been too busy being useful, successful, productive, good.”

He stayed quiet.

“Her career might have been one expression of who she is for a season. But it was never all of her. It was never supposed to be.”

I thought about how many women I know who have already lived some version of this.

Women who became mothers and realised the identity they had built no longer fit.
Women who left marriages.
Women who moved countries.
Women who got sick.
Women who burned out.
Women who fell in and out of love.

This isn’t new.

Human beings have been dying into new identities for as long as human beings have existed. The difference now is that many people have built almost their entire sense of self around institutions that may not exist in the same way ten years from now.

If the structures most people have built their identities around start disappearing, whether that’s because of AI, redundancy, motherhood, illness, divorce, burnout, heartbreak, relocation, grief, or simply waking up one morning and realising you can’t keep pretending your life fits when it clearly doesn’t... then the people who will suffer the most won’t necessarily be the least intelligent, or the least educated, or even the least prepared.

It will be the people who got very good at becoming who the world rewarded, but never got particularly curious about who they actually were. The people who built careers, networks, reputations, maybe even entire lifestyles, without ever developing the self-awareness, individuality, or courage required to discover what was genuinely theirs.

Let’s say, for a moment, that his version of the future is real. Let’s say that in the next five or ten years entire industries begin disappearing. Fewer people sitting in offices pretending to work while answering emails that no one really needed to send in the first place. Let’s say that the careers our parents and grandparents once built entire identities around become increasingly unstable, increasingly automated, increasingly… optional. Let’s say that the pace of change really is that fast.

Then there are, as far as I can tell, two things you can do now to prepare.

One, as you already know if you’ve been walking through this 8-part series on how to change your life with me for a while, is to become intimate with uncertainty.

To stop treating the unknown like a threat, or a punishment, or evidence that you’ve made a wrong turn, and begin relating to it for what it so often is: the place where your next identity is quietly forming. The people who are going to navigate the next decade with the most grace will not necessarily be the smartest, the richest, or the most technically skilled. They will be the ones who have already spent enough time in the void to know that losing one version of yourself does not mean losing yourself altogether. The ones who have sat in enough silence, enough heartbreak, enough reinvention, enough endings, enough in-between spaces, to know that identity is not something fixed, but something living.

The other is that you become more than the bare minimum.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because maybe you’re not actually meant to build a “business.” Maybe that word is too small, too transactional, too loaded with internet bro energy and passive income fantasies and funnels and logos and launch strategies and all the other things that have made so many deeply intelligent, creative, sensitive people decide that entrepreneurship isn’t for them.

Maybe what you’re actually here to build is a body of work. Something that doesn’t begin with market research or niche positioning or “what problem do I solve?” but with curiosity. With obsession. With the kinds of questions that keep following you from city to city, relationship to relationship, season to season. The kinds of ideas that wake you up at three in the morning, not because they are commercially viable, but because they feel alive. Because they feel like yours.

A body of work, as I’ve come to understand it, is the accumulated evidence of what happens when you take your curiosity seriously for long enough.

It is what begins to emerge when you stop asking what people want from you and start paying much closer attention to what life keeps trying to draw out of you. It is the trail of essays, conversations, experiments, offerings, questions, photographs, frameworks, teachings, retreats, communities, products, philosophies, and perspectives that begin to form when you stop trying to fit yourself into existing categories and start allowing your own way of seeing the world to become visible.

And from what I can tell, after more than a decade of writing online, building businesses, burning out, reinventing myself, moving countries, changing identities, falling apart, starting over, and paying very close attention to the women who seem most alive… a body of work tends to grow from three things.

1. Depth.

And by depth, I don’t mean expertise in the traditional sense. I don’t mean certificates or credentials or another weekend course you can add to your website. I mean the depth that comes from paying attention to your own life with enough honesty to notice the patterns that keep repeating. The conversations people always seem to have with you. The themes that have followed you since childhood. The books you can’t stop buying. The problems you’ve had to solve the hard way. The pain you survived that, over time, became wisdom. The questions that won’t leave you alone no matter how practical you try to be. Depth begins the moment you stop consuming other people’s ideas compulsively and start observing your own life as if it might actually contain the raw material for something important.

2. Difference.

Which sounds obvious, until you realise how much of adult life is spent trying not to stand out. Trying to sound more professional, more polished, more digestible, more hireable, more marketable, more… normal. And yet the irony is that the very things most people spend years trying to tone down are often the exact things that make them unforgettable. Your intensity. Your sensitivity. Your strange combinations of interests. Your contradictory opinions. Your way of connecting seemingly unrelated ideas. Your obsession with human behaviour, or design, or healing, or language, or food, or systems, or beauty, or whatever it is that lights up your particular nervous system. The parts of yourself you’ve been trying to smooth out are not the problem, but the point. Your weirdness is not something to overcome, but something to study.

3. Devotion.

Because a body of work is rarely built in public at first. It’s built introspectively. In notebooks. In half-finished drafts. In long walks. In voice notes to yourself. In years where, from the outside, it looks like nothing much is happening. It’s built while other people are waiting for permission, waiting to feel ready, waiting to know exactly how it all turns out before they begin. It’s built when nobody is clapping, nobody is paying, nobody fully understands what you’re doing yet, and you keep showing up anyway, not because it makes sense on paper, but because something in you knows that this… whatever this is… matters.

I suspect that in a future that becomes increasingly automated, increasingly optimised, increasingly efficient, the people who thrive will not necessarily be the people who can do what everyone else can do, only faster.

They will be the people who took the time to become themselves unmistakably.

practical dreamer: a three month mentorship for women ready to build their body of work

~ using Stanford’s Life Design framework,
you go on a journey to build something meaningful ~

WE BEGIN JUNE 1

If you’re serious about building a body of work, not just a career, not just a personal brand, but something living, something that could hold your identity through seasons of reinvention, loss, growth, motherhood, relocation, heartbreak, abundance, obscurity, success, and all the versions of you still waiting to emerge… then this is where I would begin.

Not with a business plan. Not with a niche. Not with a logo, a website, a strategy, or an Instagram bio.

I would begin by getting radically honest about who you actually are beneath all the roles, all the conditioning, all the places you learned how to belong by becoming more convenient, more agreeable, more impressive, more useful.

Take a notebook. Go for a long walk. Sit somewhere quiet. Pour a wine / kombucha / cacao. Light a candle. Turn your phone off for an hour. And sit with these.

— your relationship to belonging.

How much of your identity has been built around a group, a community, an industry, a friendship circle, a family system, a culture, a profession, a political ideology, a version of womanhood, a place?

And more importantly… does it still fit?

Does the life you’ve built around belonging actually reflect who you are now, or who you had to become in order to be accepted there?

— your belief systems.

What do you actually believe about how the world works?

About money.

About love.

About ambition.

About beauty.

About freedom.

About what a good life looks like.

About how people should treat each other.

About what success is.

About what is worth your precious life force.

And how much of that did you arrive at through lived experience, hard-won wisdom, and deep reflection… versus quietly absorbing it because it helped you fit somewhere?

— your relationship to being different.

Not performatively different. Not “quirky.” Not aesthetically unconventional.

Actually different.

Outgrowing people.

Being misunderstood.

Being underestimated.

Being judged.

Being ahead of your time.

Being too much for some people and exactly enough for the right ones.

How have you learned to exist as an individual within the collective?

Have you been paying the cost of being fully yourself…

Or finding increasingly sophisticated ways around it?

Because, in my experience, your body of work begins the moment you start becoming unmistakably yourself.

It is raining. When the monsoon season ended, weeks of sunshine followed, and I became complacent about sunny days. People think monsoon season means constant rain and dry weather means none, but neither is true. The downpours are sudden and daily during the monsoon, but enough gaps exist to go about everyday life. Now, in the dry season, sunshine is steadier, but the thunderstorms roll in every few days and cover everything in a moist drizzle that smells like soil and something green and alive.

For the last week, it has rained every day.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

I write about the weather because it influences place. I think about place a lot. I think about it the way other people think about money or love, with a low-grade obsession, a need to understand something that keeps slipping out of reach. And when I think about place, I also think about belonging, and home, and whether those two things are the same.

Bali has been home for two months now. A place that acts as a liminal hinge for me. A place that holds multiple futures in suspension.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

The last time I was in Bali I was in a relationship with a man I loved completely. We had been together for three years by then, the kind of shared life mostly on the road that compresses time and manufactures intimacy, makes you believe you know someone because you have navigated bus stations and food poisoning and beautiful sunsets together. I remember the particular quality of the light. The way the rice paddies held the dusk. I remember being in a restaurant with cheap plastic chairs and somewhere in that evening a decision getting made, the way decisions sometimes happen.

We moved to Canada. He had grown up there, in a small town a few hours east of Vancouver, in the beautiful province of British Columbia, where the winters are brutal and the summers short-lived and often filled with smoke from the wildfires. I believed I could make any place work. I had already lived in so many places by then — Salzburg, Florence, Cairns, Barcelona, London, Abu Dhabi, San Francisco, LA, Chiang Mai, Byron Bay, Nelson — and I had found the magic and the beauty of any place so easily. I believed this was a skill I possessed. A kind of portable contentment.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

Within weeks of arriving in Canada, I started waking at night with unexplainable panic attacks. I would cry and shake, and my man would patiently hold me until they subsided and we fell back to sleep. I dismissed it. Blamed the transition, the cold, the adjustment. I had the optimistic perspective that all it takes is time and grunt and magical thinking.

Then came headaches. Ever present. Then the exhaustion that was eventually diagnosed as adrenal fatigue. I would spontaneously begin to cry. Unloading the dishwasher. Driving to yoga. Picking flowers in the garden. Ordinary, beautiful moments coloured by what felt like a psychic rejection happening inside my body.

I noted that every time I left this place — a trip to Vancouver, a weekend away, anything — every physical ailment disappeared. And as soon as I returned, they came back with full force.

I gave that place everything in my being for thirteen months.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

I left the place and the relationship and moved to Mexico to counteract the cold and grey. In Mexico I healed, blossomed, thrived. I didn’t fully understand why. I still don’t, entirely. But I knew it in my body the moment I arrived, that particular sensation of a place receiving you, of the air fitting your skin like it was made for it.

In hindsight, the relationship was also not for me. I loved this man deeply, but I was blind to all the ways I twisted and contorted myself to fit what he wanted, completely abandoning myself in the process. In hindsight I wonder: how much of the rejection was the place, and how much of it was my soul saying, quietly and then louder and then in full-body revolt — no. Not this.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

After Canada and then Mexico, I move to the UK, which I have used as a base for most of my adult life. I moved there at nineteen, it is the only place I have ever done any official paperwork and it’s where I pay tax, despite the endless cold and wet and the culture’s general cheerful pessimism. The UK is a neutral place for me. Neutral places make me soft and lazy and bored. I hold an extra two or three kilograms there, some kind of padding I don’t fully understand, as though my body is insulating itself against something. I don’t thrive there. But I feel safe there, like some comforting ancestral memory knows this island as home.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

Mid-pandemic I drove through France and Spain with my cat to Mallorca, which I had heard many nice things about. Mallorca was the second lesson that not every place is for everyone.

Once we got off the ferry and I settled into the hotel I had booked for three weeks while apartment hunting, I walked outside and let the air touch my skin and looked at the hibiscus grazing the sidewalk and felt… nothing. I could cognitively see that I was surrounded by beauty. But instead of feeling moved, all I felt was anxiety.

It was a weird time in the world, we all had a myriad of reasons to feel anxious, a cross-continental trip during a pandemic is no small feat, so I dismissed the feeling and focused on the practical efforts of making a new place home.

I was lucky. I quickly found a beautiful apartment with Mediterranean views at a great price. I made friends. I was generously invited into new circles. On paper everything was perfect.

But inside myself, a war was waging.

No part of my body wanted to be here. Despite the beauty, the perfection, the luck, the friendships, the Mediterranean, the safety, the abundance and goodness. My body could not find peace. I started getting sciatic pains pulsing through my back so debilitating that sometimes I couldn’t move.

No amount of practitioners or exercises or adjusted belief systems improved it. There was an ever-present purring anxiety that made every moment and interaction feel tense and precarious, and I could find no logical reason for it. My body could not find peace.

Again, relief arrived the moment I left the island. Every time. In disbelief I couldn’t accept that this was true. That a place could have such a total, encompassing negative impact on me. That no amount of trying could alter it.

Almost two years later, defeated, I left.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

After that I tried Ericeria in Portugal = neutral. New York City = love, love, love (but couldn’t stay for logistical reasons). Mallorca again = same as before. Paris = neutral. India = for healing. And now, by absolute chance, Bali.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

I had a terrible time in Canada and remember being in Bali, where I decided to move there as a sliding doors moment, where every decision I made contained a multitude of futures. Now, as if time has folded in on itself, I am back a decade later.

Bali is unrecognisable and so am I.

I consult my astrocartography chart, which affirms what I am feeling to a startling degree. It points at this island as a place of deep homecoming. I find this useful as one small piece of the map, not the whole answer. The whole answer, I suspect, does not exist in any single framework. It lives somewhere between the body and the sky, between biology and mystery.

What I know is what I feel.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

This place is far from perfect. Away from the sanctuary of my home it is overstimulating. So much traffic, the beaches sometimes covered in washed-up rubbish, the relentless commercial sprawl of what Bali has become in the decade since I was last here.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

What makes a place right for a body? I have been asking this question for years, have offered myself as both researcher and subject, have moved enough times to start to see patterns, if not yet fully understand them.

Some places I feel the signal clearly: yes. Some I feel it clearly: no. Others are neutral, which is its own information.

What I notice is that the body knows before the mind catches up. In Mallorca I felt the no within hours of arrival and spent almost two years arguing with it. In Canada I felt it too, and spent thirteen months trying to override it through sheer optimism. The body, it turns out, is not interested in optimism. It is interested in truth.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

What I know about place is also what I know about self: that there is very little separation between them. The places I have not been able to stay in are also the times I have not been able to stay in myself. Canada was the first lesson that there are some shapes I will not fit into, no matter how desperately I try. The question I could not ask then, but can ask now, a decade later, is whether the place was wrong, or whether the life I was building inside it was wrong, or whether those two things were always and inevitably the same.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

Here, again, at this particular hinge of my life, in this place that holds multiple futures in suspension, I feel the most alive, regulated, supported, safe and happy that I have probably felt since I left it a decade ago.

The mosquitoes still find me every morning. I still stand in the half-dark waiting for the water to boil. It rains, and then it stops, and the air smells like something I cannot name but recognise. Like the inside of a memory. Like somewhere I was always going to come back to.

I don’t fully know why this place and not the others. I’m not sure knowing would add anything. And that is enough. Right now, this place, here and right now, is enough.

notes from my office

there are some parts of the human experience. unnamable supernatural things. that can only be experienced and felt. they can not be explained. we’ve all had them.

they’re so subtle and piercing and whole-making and inconceivable that we don’t speak of them. spiritual in nature but not fitting into the spiritual paradigms that we have created to make sense of them. they happen in slow ordinary moments. they happen in nature. they happen when we are still enough to experience what is. they exist only as an inward expansion.

in a sense these are moments of ecstasy. moments we yield to and yearn for even though we cannot make sense of them or explain them to ourselves or others. they exist as a secret, a mystery, a private encounter with the trifecta of living, life and the cosmic cosmos.

we are all aware of mysterious forces at play that we have no control over. in fact, the incessant clamouring for control is probably the major thing that stands in the way of our lives naturally unfolding

there is a part of us that wants this experience all the time. but we cannot exist in this heightened presence all the time. life pulls and tugs at us, and we sweep in and out.

there are ways to prolong it. movement, meditation, and music are some of them.

A final reminder: Applications for COWORK starting in May close this weekend. you don’t need more strategy, advice or ideas. you need support to do what you need to do and space to do it in. More here.

I’m sitting on an airport floor next to a charging point, simultaneously charging my laptop, phone and writing these words to you. it smells bad here. there is nowhere else to sit and I wish I didn’t have to sit here but the need for electricity coursing through my gadgets is higher than olfactory pleasantry.

I didn’t bring my adaptor, not realising the plugs would be different and stubbornly resisted buying yet another technical item I would eventually have to carry around, so I made the power in my laptop and phone stretch across two days of work and life until I made it here.

there are stains on the blue and green 80s-zigzag-patterned carpet that has been stretched hastily, leaving bumps along it. and people’s hair and bits of, idk, food, and threads falling loose from clothing. I’m grateful my clothes exist between me and it. I’m on my way home. I can’t wait to return to my little green villa and tiny puppies and daily rituals.

I think a lot about how any decision you make at any time can change your life. it’s a game of roulette. you make hundreds of thousands of decisions every day, and every now and then, you make one very similar or even the same decision you’ve made before and everything changes.

you talk to a stranger. maybe you’ve spoken to dozens of strangers over the past week but this one stranger changes everything. you get on a bus. in a plane. you eat at a specific restaurant. you stop and linger someplace just a little bit longer. decision roulette.

what makes one decision different from another? not much, really. we can’t control these things. it’s another one of those unnamable supernatural things. but I do think that you can increase your surface area of luck through the quality of your decisions.

a decision made in a moment of total presence takes on an entirely different life and quality than a decision made in autopilot. it becomes a living entity that has a will of its own.

this form of devotional presence, where half my attention is inside my soul looking out at the world observing the lived experience, and half of it outside my body responding to my current moment-to-moment environment, is the closest I can get to living in the mystery of the human experience.

and when I make decisions from that place: intuitive, illogical, kismet, they lead me to moments that can only be explained by there being some kind of unknown mysterious forces at play.

that’s the high I keep chasing. the human experience as half mystical, half physical.

“I am the most low-key type-b business owner… apart from that being my default personality… It’s because I value ‘living’ over ‘working’ ~ I believe work is an extension of life and my contribution to life, but it’s not everything. It’s not my whole life. Nor do I want it to be! So I thought I’d share with you the key habits that I have as a type-b business owner.”

Enjoy!

Timestamps:

0:00 Why I value living over working
0:41 Habit 1: Morning routine
2:30 Habit 2: Calendar system & the energy of the days of the week
6:01 The brain dump to-do list
6:48 Habit 3: The 10 minutes per day method
7:21 Habit 4: Choose the most fun and easy thing first
7:52 About Cowork — my six-week program
8:34 Habit 5: Know your effective hours
9:07 The future of work & getting paid to be yourself
10:15 Habit 6: Rest, play, and pleasure as nutrients
11:22 How these habits keep me relaxed as a type-b business owner

music: Can’t Swim by Noah

More and more women are going to lean into business and entrepreneurship as the world changes because the need for conventional work will disappear, and what will be needed is people sharing their unique gifts and experiences. The vehicle for self-expression and contribution is business. Getting paid to be who you are at both a practical and essential level.

If you want to work on your business and bring it forward in a meaningful way and with support, this will be helpful: COWORK with me this May & June

review COWORK

If you’re not quite there yet, my lovechild, Practical Dreamer, will help you get there. I’m softly accepting applications for this June, July & August.

check out Practical Dreamer

“I’m tired of trying so hard” is a sentiment I’ve explored before in half-assed. But something that we all seem to struggle with is this tension between ambition and surrender. We all have desires. Sometimes even enormous ones. Desire is good.

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Sunday

3:02 am

Phone ringing wakes me up. Sleepy and confused I get up walk over to my phone. Always turn my phone on airplane mode at night. Must have forgotten/been too sleepy. It’s a guy I met in India1. Mute the phone, turn it off, go…

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Sitting under the shade of a gazebo, my best friend from university (college for my American friends) asks me if I remember how we used to talk about uncertainty. About how we didn’t know what we wanted to do after we finished… My mind blank, I don’t remember, but I believe her. There are seasons in life that return us to this place over and over again. We have to decide who we are now and how to change direction.

I weep when I first see her, the tears welling behind my eyelids threatening to submerge me in a combination of joy and grief. We haven’t seen each other in 12 years and only loosely kept in touch, our lives taking on very different trajectories. Quickly, though, we fall into a familiar rhythm, and I find myself grateful for the easy intimacy that comes from sharing some of the most formative years of our lives.

Last night, on my return home while watching the sun set in bright yellow hues across the sky, I think to myself about what we had said.

It takes a great deal of strength and self-trust to say to yourself, “I have not been living life in a way that is my truth and aligned to who I really am. Who I really am is
[ ].” The dreaded response may come back, “How do you know?” And, of course, you cannot absolutely know until you’ve changed direction and tried it, lived it. There is just this dream, this feeling, this urge, this desire.

I want to defy the idea that you have to know what it is that you want, who you are and what your gifts are at any given moment.

You can reinvent yourself over and over again. You can change direction and choose a new version of yourself, a new pathway, a new way of existing and engaging in the world as many times as you need or want. Perhaps every form of your soul’s expression is just one piece of the journey. And when one part completes itself a new one can begin.

Not knowing and making moves anyway is the only real way to change direction. You have to just do things.

But first comes the sense that something is wrong. That you’ve somehow fallen down a path that is not actually yours and you don’t even remember having chosen it or how you got here. The desire to change direction comes from the feeling that you and your soul have outgrown the container your life has become.

It’s a restlessness that I am very familiar with. A sense that you’ve been living slightly outside yourself for too long. A sense that the life you’re living doesn’t quite belong to you. According to Jungian psychology, these moments, where life doesn’t quite fit, are pointing quietly and insistently toward the life that would.

So the first thing to do isn’t to find direction. It is to acknowledge the discomfort, the in-the-wrong-skin feeling that is humming in the background. And then, once you’ve acknowledged it: don’t wait.

When something has genuinely caught light in you is the moment to act. It inspires you to act differently. There’s an enthusiasm to it, an aliveness. Being able to take advantage of that feeling when it arrives — to respond to it rather than file it away for later — is one of the most satisfying things you can do for yourself.

You will never be fully ready. There will never be a perfect time. The version of you who has it all figured out before she begins doesn’t exist, and waiting for her means the thing never gets made, never gets started, never gets tried. It’s not about the right time. It’s about doing things before you’re ready just to have them exist.

Again and again, when something has worked in my life, it came down to this: I just did it. Imperfectly. Without certainty. I just prioritised getting the thing done over getting it right.

Small steps have a way of setting off chains of events you couldn’t have predicted or planned. One tiny thing done today can be the beginning of something that looks, from further down the road, like it was inevitable.

If you’re in this place right now — feeling the hum, sensing the edges of a change in direction — I’d love for you to come and do things alongside me.

2 things:

Cowork is a six-week program for people who are building something and need the structure, the company, and the gentle pressure of actually showing up to do it.

apply to join COWORK

Penpal is a brand new free letter-writing community, a place to think out loud, to track your own becoming in writing, to have honest conversations with yourself and others who are doing the same.

find your penpal

I created both of these because I know the power of a) not doing things alone and b) not waiting until you’re ready to begin.

On Wednesday, I moved into my new home and immediately fostered two puppies. I don't know why I did this. That's not true. I know exactly why. I have a deep and apparently unshakeable belief that the right time to do something is simply when you want to do it, and I wanted to cuddle cute baby animals for a little while.

Moving house and taking care of puppies is all-consuming in a way that temporarily dissolves every other problem you have, which might also be why I did it.

Plumbing issues meant I couldn’t flush the toilet for two days. The plumber had to wait to get the parts that needed replacing. Dust and debris from the previous tenant irked me spiritually. The cleaner couldn’t come until Friday. Puppies are a full-time job. I forgot about how needy they are.

It feels comforting to have a place to call home for the foreseeable. As I rebuild my life this year, there are a few key things I am focusing on: relationships, work and home. In that order.

Right now I’m exploring my new local area as much as I can. The idea is to filter out everything I don’t like so I can build my daily routine around the things I do like. So far, I’ve found the dreamiest yoga studio, a pilates class, three cafes I like working from, a favourite supermarket, a favourite farmers market, and I’ve made friends with two of my neighbours. On my left, an Australian guy who is far too flirty but strong and has helped me lift heavy things around, and on my right, a German-Vietnamese girl who has generously invited me to three local events.

These are the granular, unsexy parts of rebuilding. Finding out which coffee shop has the right vibe. Introducing yourself to the person next door. Getting the number for the best local plumber and learning which days the rubbish collectors come to your street.

After taking a few days off during the week (one of my favourite parts of working for myself), it is now the weekend. I’m sitting in a co-working cafe called ‘Gathering Space’. There are a group speaking French, Croatian and English in hushed conversation behind me. We all have laptops propped up in front of our faces.

Back when I started working for myself, which was over a decade ago now, I had no savings and no experience. I had a lofty dream. A vision that there was a way to contribute to the world in positive ways, and absolutely not at the expense of my values, beliefs and soul. It was scary, but I had nothing to lose. I had already failed by refusing to get a ‘normal’ job. I did fail, many, many times. I tried things that didn’t work and worried that I’d never make enough money to support myself. Two years in, and every year after that, I did. But the fear of failure never went away. It just shapeshifts into bigger and grander things.

More recently, my fear of failure is manifesting as a desire to hide. If no one can see me, then they won’t witness when I fall flat on my face, which I invariably will because failure is literally part of the process, and my fragile ego just can’t handle that kind of self-inflicted humiliation right now.

I know that we all fail; the people I most admire are evidence of it, even if I don’t see it publicly. Yet there’s this voice in my mind that says not having immediate, obvious, measurable success at everything I do means that there is something wrong with me.

Who decided it’s a bad thing to fail? Who decided that we have to always present as perfect, cohesive, flawless?

The more I think about it, the more I realise fear of failure is just a way to protect ourselves. No magic in the world will protect us from getting hurt. To do anything meaningful in life means we willingly let our most tender parts be fragile, visible, vulnerable. It means we let our lives fall apart over and over again. The nature of having a creative, authentic, alive experience is to let ourselves be reshaped by the things we do.

As I rebuild my public identity to match the major life shifts that I have experienced within me, I am going through the discomfort of being seen in the messy process and trying things I’ve not done before and letting what lands inform the way I move forward. It means that I keep showing up even though I’m afraid to fail.

The correct response to the fear of failure is to just do things.

COWORK WITH ME

I am evidence that you do not need a strategy or a plan to have a successful business. Success in a relaxed, fulfilled, and gentle way that I aspire towards. But you do need to be willing to be seen. There are a few things that help me.

Read more

one of the things that became really clear to me last year when my life completely blew up and I experienced deeply painful amounts of loss and grief…

was how far away from my central line I had let my life move. I had lost sight of who I am at my essence what I need to thrive and let myself get swept away by the world in a way that no longer felt coherent or meaningful to me

it was like the loss of all these external markers in my life highlighted a far greater loss. the loss of my deep trust, belief in, and devotion to myself.

which was far more painful to come to terms with. and so I did a few things:

I fully let my life fall apart in whatever ways it needed to. I stopped putting my time and energy into places and people that didn’t feel like they were able to meet me in my deep loss, grief and pain. And I focused on my physical wellbeing. I knew that my mind was only as resilient as my body and my body was so fragile and depleted that there was no way I could start rebuilding without taking care of the physical foundations first.

And then… only more recently, in the last few weeks, have I been able to start reimagining what kind of life is the truest experience and expression of my essence.

This process requires tremendous patience. And kindness. As well as mental discipline. The discipline of being the observer of thoughts, beliefs, and patterns that are a repeat of my old life, and intentionally choosing new thoughts, beliefs, and pragmatic ways of responding that start to build the new life.

Thank you for being here. It's so lovely to see this community grow.

Lots of love,

Vienda 𓂃 𓈒𓏸 𓇼

hello ོ☼𓂃

It is nyepi today, for those who observe: the national day of silence. Which means the whole island has shut down and nothing is open and everything is silent and it’s literally the loveliest thing. It’s also new moon and the start of the astrological new year (the real new year imo), which all feels some kind of dialled-up level kismet.

Life has been so… everything lately, that I don’t even know where to start. Maybe the best start is: we are here, and we are living, and that is enough.

Since being fully revived from the depths of despair after the frickin’ snakebite of a year that was 2025, I am rekindling my mojo. Mojo! A word I scorn!

The only time I didn’t work for myself was when I worked for a public speaker and author while I seceretly built on my business on company time who fancied himself Australia’s Seth Godin, which to be fair, he kind of was, bald egg-head and all (and, might I add, a very kind employer, probably as good as they come) who loved to talk about losing and finding one’s mojo which he obviously must have had plenty of experience with since he wrote an entire book about it.

Anyway, I digress, here I am using the word because I can’t think of a better one.

Other words might be: my enthusiasm, charm, joie de vivre, appeal for life. Anyway, I feel more alive now than I have in a very, very long time, and I am grateful. So damn grateful. Even grateful for the shitshow that went down. All of it is just so good and fine and perfect.

Amongst it all, I was reminded why I have devoted my entire life to learn about applying psychology, epigenetics, and the power of our consciousness to our everyday. We literally can change the entire trajectory of our lives by changing our minds. It’s wild. It’s so beautiful. What a gift.

I spent the past 6 months doing exactly that. Lots of unpeeling, facing uncomfortable truths and discipline were involved. I was hard and I did not enjoy it particularly, but it worked, and that’s all that matters.

Back when I used to send these newsletters more like personal letters, I felt freer to include all of my invitations to my work more unprohibitively, but the last couple of years, that’s changed, and it’s… I don’t know… just felt different. But you know what? I am taking my power back.

TWO INVITATIONS FOR YOU

ONE

If you’ve been feeling the pull to go deeper, to have someone genuinely in your corner as you navigate what’s next, April is a good time to work together.

I’m offering a limited number of 1:1 mentoring packages this month at a special price. If we’ve worked together before, think of this as your next chapter. If we haven’t, this is a beautiful place to begin.

The April Mentoring Package
4 weekly 1:1 sessions
Email support between calls
A clear, focused approach to wherever you’re ready to move
€550, for April only

A few words from people I’ve had the privilege of working with:

“At 59, I discovered it’s never too late to transform.” — Annelie

“For the first time in a long time I felt the true potential of my business — and all of a sudden it felt EASY.” — Kate

“After just one session, I felt a deep shift. Right after our call, I got an email from what turned out to be one of my biggest clients.” — Gina Marie

“She helped me strip back the noise so I can see my essence more clearly. Before we started I felt drained, scattered and stretched thin. Now I feel so excited.” — Stephanie

These spaces fill quickly. If you feel the yes, reply to this email and we’ll take it from there.

email me

TWO

The Free 6-Day Clarity Challenge
Thursday 26 — Tuesday 31 March

This is the third time I’ve run this challenge, and each time it surprises me how much can shift in just six days. If you’ve been sitting with indecision, feeling like you’re at a crossroads, or simply craving a clearer sense of what you actually want, this was made for that.

Each day you’ll receive a short audio lesson and a reflection exercise, delivered straight to your phone via Telegram. The community that forms around it is, genuinely, one of the best parts. Last time, 100 people joined us.

What past participants have said:

‘Vienda’s reflections on stuckness were immediately helpful and deeply inspiring. The journaling exercises brought so much clarity, I’m already seeing things differently.”

“I loved the first audio note so much I shared it with my partner straight away. The whole experience felt thoughtful, generous, and genuinely impactful.”

“My biggest breakthrough was realising the new identity that’s been calling me. Through the journaling, it became so clear—and it felt really, really good.”

“This challenge helped me see a limiting belief I didn’t even realise I was holding: that I have to do things like everyone else. Choosing a different story feels incredibly freeing.”

It’s free. It starts in six days. It goes for six days. And it might be exactly what this season is asking for.

join the clarity challenge

Ok, back to story-time.

Girls (and guys, yes, I need you too, especially you!) I went on a date last night! Then I accidentally friend-zoned him! I need input! Wait, this is where we paywall because we are not spilling secrets to the public anymore. Nope. No, we are not.

Read more

“When the sun rose the next day, people in the village found her naked, half alive and half scorched outside her home. After what must have been a terrible fight, she had been doused in kerosene and set alight by her husband. They came to fetch me, and I took her to the hospital, where I was told that there was nothing they could do. She would not survive. But the baby, I begged, save the baby. Please save the baby. What I did not know is that if you burn a woman on the outside, it burns the baby on the inside. That was the day I devoted myself to my work.”

Our small group drew ragged breaths over empty metal plates from our wooden tables and chairs in the communal dining hall, the air thick with stunned silence from the story. It was the seventh of fourteen days at the ayurveda centre, where I had come to soothe the delicate electricity of my mind.

She was a Catholic nun in her 70s who came every year for a week to recharge and have a little holiday. With her was a small entourage of elderly German women1, donors to the 72 orphanages the nun founded across India.

Ok, wait, I started at a particular point of the story arc, so let me quickly give you some context. For ease, let’s call the nun Sister.

In her early twenties she was living in a convent in South India when a young pregnant woman came to the door late one evening, begging for somewhere to stay. But the nunnery did not allow visitors, however much she pleaded. She had to turn the woman away.

The next morning the villagers found her.

After that day she made a private vow to herself that she would never again turn someone away when they asked for help. It was a decision that did not go down particularly well with the rest of the sisters, who were her only family. She had taken vows of obedience. There was no structure, no funding, no plan for what helping people would actually look like. But her devotion ran so deep that she was willing to be ostracised to follow it.

She began asking for help. She told the story to anyone who would listen. Slowly, with the generosity of strangers and the support of a few brave allies, she managed to buy a small piece of land and build the first structure on it. Over time her fellow sisters began to support her. Donations grew. The work expanded. Five decades later, that ramshackle beginning has helped thousands of women get off the streets and out of bad marriages, and their children to be educated across the country.

Listening to her recount the story, there were plenty of moments of self-doubt, fear, desperation, and uncertainty. There were obstacles and disagreements and years where progress felt impossible. But underneath all of it was one thing: devotion.

Years ago someone suggested to me that it might be more useful to think in terms of devotion rather than discipline, and the idea lodged itself into my life where it has remained ever since.

Discipline is one of those virtues modern culture practically worships. It conjures images of control, grit, people forcing themselves through routines with a kind of stoic determination. The language around it has a specific tone and feeling. Discipline your body. Discipline your mind. Do the thing whether you feel like it or not. It belongs to athletes and soldiers and productivity systems and the entire industry built around optimisation and self-mastery.

NB: I do use discipline from time to time. For example, sometimes I need discipline to integrate a new habit, but once the habit settles into my life it often softens into devotion, an act of care for myself or for others. More on that soon.

Devotion lives in an entirely different part of the emotional vocabulary. It belongs to religion and art and care. We speak of devotion in the context of prayer, or lovers, or the quiet fidelity someone has to a craft they have practised for decades. A devoted person returns to something not because they are forcing themselves but because they feel drawn back to it. There is a softness to the word, but also a kind of gravity. You don’t white-knuckle devotion. You move toward it gently, with care.

What makes the distinction interesting is that from the outside the behaviour often looks identical. The disciplined writer writes every day. The devoted writer also writes every day. The disciplined person wakes early, takes the walk, practices the craft, repeats the ritual with impressive consistency. The devoted person does exactly the same thing.

The difference is almost entirely internal. One experience feels like compliance, with the faint threat of punishment. The other feels more like participation in something you love.

Discipline does have its place. There are moments when you need a little structure to introduce something unfamiliar into your life, the way you might gently guide a plant in the direction you hope it will grow. But once the habit settles in, once it becomes part of your days and life, the effort often softens into devotion. What began as discipline slowly becomes an act of care, something you return to not because you must but because it matters to you.

Which might also explain why discipline works beautifully for a while and then, for many people, begins to collapse under its own weight. Force is an effective motivator in short bursts. You can push yourself through a surprising amount of resistance when the stakes feel high or the reward feels close enough to touch. But force inevitably creates friction, until the thing you’re doing starts to feel strangely heavy.

Devotion behaves a little differently because it isn’t really about force at all. It’s about relationship. A gardener doesn’t return to the garden each morning because they have mastered the discipline of gardening. They return because tending the soil feels like participating in something alive. We feed ourselves and the people we love not out of discipline but because we want to nurture something. The act already holds its own meaning, which makes returning to it feel less like effort and more like a natural continuation.

Seen this way, devotion quietly reframes the entire idea of consistency. Consistency in the language of discipline often sounds mechanical, almost industrial. Maintain the streak. Don’t break the chain. Do the thing every day. The energy behind it is urgent, tense, as if one missed day might undo the entire effort. Devotion feels different. Less like maintaining a system and more like tending a living thing. You come back to it not out of fear that something will break, but because the relationship itself is still alive.

Discipline asks how do I make myself do this.
Devotion asks what do I care about enough to keep returning to?

Thinking back on that meal in the dining hall, the thing that moves me most is that Sister never once spoke about discipline. She didn’t talk about perseverance or resilience or the endless challenges it took to build all those orphanages across a country. She told the story of a single moment she could not forget, and the vow she made to herself afterwards.

Everything that followed has grown from there. Not from force. From devotion. Which is perhaps the simplest way to understand devotion. Not forcing yourself to do something every day. It’s finding the thing you care about enough that you keep coming back and facing whatever it takes.

It finally happened. I pooped myself in public this morning. Wait. It’s not as bad as you think.

I was at the beach for the first time in weeks. The monsoon rain finally stopped and I got up early and walked down to the black sand and got a coconut at a shack on the edge of the inlet, then wandered along the shore until I found a spot where I could sit in the sun and watch the surf lifesavers train in the water. I had only just settled in. Towel laid out. Coconut balanced on a piece of driftwood. Clothes off so my skin could finally see daylight again in a teeny tiny bikini after weeks of monsoon rain. And then I felt it. A rumble in my stomach. A familiar urge, but more urgent than usual. I had only been sitting there for about thirty seconds and already I knew I didn’t have much time. Panicking slightly, I started packing up my things. If I can just make it to the nearest toilet, I thought. But the nearest toilet was not really that near, and my body, it turns out, had very little patience for dignity or logistics. I dropped everything and ran. Not toward the cafés but toward a fishing boat a few metres away, ducked behind it and squatted down. Just in time.

I knew yesterday, right after I ate the fresh vegan spring rolls, that something was slightly off. The evidence was now undeniable. I tried to clean up and cover my tracks with some leaves but honestly there is only so much one can do in a situation like this. What can one do but get on with things? I casually strolled back out from behind the fishing boat hoping that no one would need to use it for at least a week, looked around satisfied that nobody had seen me, picked up my towel and my coconut and started making my way home. Home was a twenty five minute walk away. I knew I needed to get clean and I needed to be near a toilet for the rest of the day.

And then.

The next nearest café didn’t have an easily accessible restroom but the one after that was part hotel, part café, and happened to be the exact place where I had eaten those damn spring rolls that caused the predicament in the first place, which frankly made the situation feel a little bit like their responsibility. I felt like they owed it to me to recitfy the situation. I confidently strolled past reception like I belonged there, which is really the only way to enter a place when you are about to do something you technically shouldn’t. I found an unlocked vacant hotel room, walked into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet to relieve the remains of whatever turbulence was still unfolding in my stomach. Then I stripped naked, got into the shower, washed myself thoroughly, shampooed my hair with the tiny hotel shampoo, dried off, got dressed again in everything except my now retired bikini bottoms, and strode back out onto the street feeling, if not proud exactly, then at least reborn.

When I got home I peeled off my clothes, put them in the washing basket, rinsed under the shower one more time just in case, pulled on an oversized t-shirt and got into bed, which is where I will remain for the rest of the day. Close to the toilet.

The funny thing is that when I decided on the title of this article — what can no longer be postponed — it was before all of this happened. My idea at the time was far more high-brow. I wanted to write to you about all the things in life we put off because of this that or the other, when actually the things we are avoiding are often the very things that move us closer to ourselves. But it turns out the title still works. Because this morning on the beach something very literal happened. My body made it abundantly clear that there are moments in life when postponement is simply no longer an option.

A few days ago I asked on Instagram: What needs to be claimed? (Excuse the ‘why’ in place of ‘what’ typo. Here are some of your answers:

I look at these beautiful heartfelt answers and think about what it means to claim them. What it really means. In ourselves. In our daily lives. Claiming something rarely happens in a single moment of self-realisation or readiness. More often it requires a shift in behaviour or energetics. A choice we begin making over and over again. Something that, at a certain point, can no longer be postponed if we really want what we say we do.

Take self-love. Claiming self-love doesn’t mean reaching some mythical state where you love yourself twenty-four hours a day and never struggle again. It means that in the moments when you are tired, disappointed, ashamed, or convinced you are not enough, you choose the loving action anyway. You rest when you would normally push through. You speak to yourself with a little more gentleness than you feel you deserve. You stop participating in your own internal bullying.

Claiming abundance is similar. It isn’t just about learning how to receive more. It’s about noticing all the subtle ways you have been telling life that you are not worthy of what you want. The ways you downplay your gifts, undercharge for your work, apologise for taking up space, or quietly assume that other people are allowed to live well but somehow you are not.

Claiming health is not simply about giving the body time to heal. It is about being willing to listen to the reasons the body fell out of balance in the first place. Illness has a way of pointing, sometimes quite bluntly, to what is no longer sustainable. The pace that needs to slow down. The stress that cannot continue. The truth that has been quietly sitting in the background waiting to be acknowledged.

Claiming work you love is rarely neat or linear either. It usually requires you to do things that feel uncomfortable, unexpected, and occasionally inconvenient. You stretch yourself. You try things you are not yet good at. You keep showing up before you feel fully ready. The love for the work often grows through that process rather than appearing fully formed at the beginning.

And claiming romantic love… That might be the most confronting one of all. Because claiming love often means letting go of the ways we have protected ourselves from it. The strategies, the stories, the old disappointments we have been using as quiet evidence that it might not work out anyway.

You have desires and you ask for things in life. And suddenly there you are. Standing in front of something that can no longer be postponed.

*
I’ve opened up my books for a few 1:1 mentoring spaces across the month of March.

If you need to untangle this next step in your life → book here.

If you want to start your own writing journey on Substack → book here.

If you’re ready for creative strategy infused with intuitive intelligence → book here.

for everything else click here

*

A few nights ago I had the strangest dream.

I kept trying to take flight. In the dream I knew, with total certainty, that I could fly, but every time I tried to lift off it felt like something heavy was pulling my body back down again. There were all these reasons why I couldn’t. People telling me I shouldn’t, even wrong, to want to. I kept waking up and then slipping back into the exact same dream again and again, each time attempting the same thing from a slightly different angle. Trying harder. Trying softer. Scheming. Adjusting. Negotiating with gravity. Until finally, toward the end, after many false starts and failed attempts, something shifted and I lifted cleanly off the ground. And the feeling, when it happened, was ecstatic.

It felt strangely indicative of the inner journey I find myself on right now.

Lately I’ve been asking myself the same questions over and over again. In a world increasingly fragmented by things like social media and AI, what actually feels meaningful to me? How do I want to contribute? Not just in ways that are productive or visible or strategic, but in ways that genuinely feel good and do good.

More and more I feel drawn toward creating things that last. Things that are genuine and whole. Work that doesn’t feed on the low-grade panic or outrage that so much of the world now runs on. I know instinctively that whatever I create next won’t come from strategy alone, or from information, or from reacting to whatever the algorithm seems to want. It is comimg from reaching inward and pouring from a place inside myself that none of those external forces can really access or touch.

Remembering how to do that seems to be the journey I’m on right now. One that is revealing itself slowly, almost reluctantly, from within. One of my greatest gifts is helping other people find that place within themselves too.

Yesterday my friend and I had a conversation that stayed with me. She told me she’s become increasingly convinced that one of the truest acts of rebellion available to us right now is to stop endlessly consuming the news and instead start becoming and creating what is actually true and authentic to us.

It can sound a little like spiritual bypassing. It can even feel slightly uncomfortable to say out loud. But her point wasn’t that we should ignore suffering or pretend the world isn’t complicated. For all the darkness we see in the world, she said, there is also immense goodness. And if you find yourself struggling to see it, sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do is become it.

I’ve been wrestling with this quite a lot lately. I’ve found myself hesitating before sharing things publicly. Wondering if it’s appropriate to talk about beauty, or creativity, or joy when the world feels so noisy and heavy. And yet, deep down, I still believe that the most meaningful contribution many of us can make is to focus on the things we genuinely value. To build and nurture the things we want to see more of.

Perhaps that is what so many of us are feeling right now in different ways. I suspect this is where the question of what can no longer be postponed becomes important. Because eventually something in us grows tired of waiting. Tired of negotiating with the parts of ourselves that are afraid or cautious or endlessly trying to behave appropriately for the moment we are living in.

Eventually the body runs for the fishing boat. Eventually the dreamer lifts off the ground. Eventually something inside us realises that postponing our lives isn’t actually helping anyone. Not the world. Not other people. Not ourselves.

Rosie Spinks is the author of the bestselling Substack of What Do We Do Now That We’re Here, an exploration that asks how to live a meaningful life in a chaotic and unstable world. Rosie and I first met when she was an ambitious and successful journalist who fulfilled her dream of writing for The New York Times, until she realised it wasn’t what she wanted at all and pivoted her entire life. She is now writing a book entitled How To Build a Village, which will be published in 2027. I’ve always wondered how someone so type-A (the opposite of my type-B approach to life and business) makes it all happen, so here we go:

What’s on your to-do list today?

The short answer is way too many things. But chiefly: some interview outreach for my book, promoting a Substack Live I’m doing for paying subscribers this week, doing some research/reading (this book is fascinating), and hopefully striking a couple of things off of an unending list of admin tasks that I never get to the bottom of.

What’s one thing you’ve already crossed off?

I’ve done a good amount of outreach for one of the final chapters of my book, which is a relief because I’d been avoiding that by writing another, more pressing chapter. I only have seven weeks left before my deadline so there is no time for avoidance now! I also read some of my book and managed a walk in the woods this morning after my son went to nursery, which was a good way to start a Monday.

Do you write lists on paper, in notes, in your head, or not at all?

I love this question because I have a pretty elaborate approach to lists. My spiral-bound reporter’s notebook is my security blanket. I buy them in packs and have been using the same ones for years — it’s almost always on my person. This is where I write my daily to-do list (always with these Muji pens!) as well as any notes from calls, or other random thoughts or lists I need to write down related to my work. I aim to write tomorrow’s list before the end of the day prior, so it’s ready in the morning. In addition, I love those big yellow legal pads that, for some reason, you can only buy in America. I also buy packs of those and use them for my weekly to-do list, which is separated by: Work, Admin, House/Garden, and Misc. I try to write this weekly list every Sunday. If I start Monday without the weekly list written, I feel a low-grade panic until it’s done, which probably isn’t healthy.

In addition, I keep more haphazard lists in my Notes app. But the more serious I am things getting done, the more they need to be written on paper.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

I have a three year old who wakes up very early, so my mornings are the opposite of aspirational or calm. This morning I dealt with a toddler bathroom drama (I’ll spare you the details) and cleaned up the remnants of a dismembered mouse my cat proudly brought in last night. All before the sun was up! The only silver lining is that my partner and I trade off mornings, so tomorrow it will be his turn.

What’s always on your bedside table?

I do not sleep with my phone next to me, and I can’t believe that some people do! My nervous system can’t handle it. I have a dim light for reading, my glasses, tissues, a glass of water, and then I have a dedicated bedtime bookshelf which I really recommend.

How do you like your mornings to feel?

Right now I am counting down the days until my son turns four, at which point I will feel like it’s not neglectful parenting to let him go downstairs by himself and watch TV when he wakes up. So ask me this question again in roughly 5 months. It’s been a long four years lol.

What’s in your mug or on your plate today?

I typically write in the library and I always bring a thermos of tea with me. It started as a way to be frugal — one less thing to spend money on — but now it’s a kind of writing ritual that I love and keeps me hydrated. I alternate between Pukka’s Vanilla Chai and the Three Mint. I’ve also been meal-prepping breakfast burritos (eggs, black beans, peppers, and maybe some cheese) because I am bad at eating like a grown up in the mornings if it requires any effort of me. I wrap them in foil, freeze them, and then heat them up in the air fryer before I leave. I’m always very pleased with my former self when I manage to do that.

Something you’ve stopped doing and don’t miss?

I no longer feel stressed out about failing to text or DM people back. The expectation to be reachable 24 hours a day in every time zone by everyone I’ve ever met is not something I ever consented to! I text people back where it matters, and if we’re making an IRL plan I will text you back promptly. But I do let a lot of messages slide, and I just decided to switch off the part of my brain that feels guilt over this.

What are you working on that excites you right now?

I’m working on my first book! It’s called How To Build a Village and it is about how to regain the physical, in-person support and kinship that our ancestors expected to have by default, but the age of convenience and modernization has systematically drained from our lives. It comes out in 2027, but the final manuscript is due in early April. I am working like a mad-woman and can barely think about anything else.

How do you know you’re in alignment in your work?

This is an interesting question because my work has taken so many forms over the years. I think if any part of my work — paid work, unpaid creative work, or something in between — makes me feel genuine connection to other humans, then I’m doing something right. Writing to an engaged audience is an obvious way to attain that, but I find it via interviewing people as well. I’ve really been enjoying that aspect of working on my book because it’s been a while since I was a working journalist who was speaking to lots of experts, interesting people, or academics about their work. Sometimes you do an interview where you really connect with the person on an intellectual level — where there’s this mutual appreciation of how the other person is thinking. I absolutely love that feeling.

How do you rest or recharge during the day?

Hmmm, I wish I had a better answer here. The reality is that when you’re a parent with extremely limited free time, you very often are choosing between rest/downtime and all the other things you could be doing to make your life nourishing or functional: working out, cleaning your house, prepping healthy food, seeing your friends, hobbies etc. When I do have free time, it’s a constant battle of really asking myself the best way to spend it. Sometimes that may just be lying in bed and doing nothing, but it doesn’t happen often enough. I’m sure other parents will relate.

How do you like to end your day?

My brain becomes completely inert the moment my child goes to sleep (which, blessedly, is around 7:15pm) so I stop looking at my laptop and phone completely around that time. I usually watch something with my partner, and then I try to read a little bit before bed. I stopped reading work-related or cerebral non-fiction books before bed, and it’s nice to unwind with something that has no relation to my life or work. I also turn on my heating pad to pre-warm my bed, because that is true luxury. We force ourselves to do lights out by 10pm to survive the early starts.

What’s currently on your desk / playlist / altar?

On my desk at home I have this print of the English folk wheel, which I learned about from Chloe George’s Substack. I love the idea that every six weeks the wheel of time is turning, no matter how frustrating and stagnant life can feel sometimes. I often need the reminder, especially in late winter.

Thank you for sharing your list with us.

Last question ~ what links can people find you at?

You can subscribe to my Substack here. And I’m on Instagram here.

This is a perfect moment. I got out of bed, turned on the kettle, pulled back the curtains and opened the sliding door to hear the monsoon rains fall outside, poured the hot water onto a green tea bag inside a small hotel-room cup, and pulled both my laptop and the cup back into bed with me. I could not want more than this, right now, I thought this morning.

I love wanting. I love the heat of it, the ache, the way it stretches you toward something just beyond your current life. Desire works to not only fuel our creative practice, but to define our lives. It is the engine. It is the reason you rearrange the furniture of your days. It is the reason you leave and the reason you stay. It is the pulse beneath every decision that later gets dressed up as logic.

To want is to risk humiliation. To want is to expose the soft underbelly and say, here, this is where I am tender. Which is why so many of us, particularly women who have been trained to be palatable and self-sufficient and chill about everything, learn to dim our wanting. We pretend we are above it. We call it being realistic. We say we are protecting ourselves from disappointment.

But when you distance yourself from your desires, you do not become safer. You become flatter. You begin to live in a narrow corridor of what is acceptable, reasonable, likely. And there is a particular suffering in that, the suffering of being cut off from your own aliveness.

The real work is not in wanting1 more. The real work is in discerning which desires are actually yours. Which ones rose up from your own body and which ones were installed there by a culture that confuses sameness with success. It takes time to tell the difference. It takes sitting still long enough to feel the flicker of envy and ask whether it is pointing toward something true or merely something popular. It takes a willingness to disappoint the imaginary panel of judges who have been scoring your life from the sidelines.

We are living in an era of terrifying homogeneity, where everyone wants the same morning routine and the same apartment aesthetic and the same calibrated ambition. Desire has been flattened into algorithms. And when everything looks the same, it becomes harder to remember that you are allowed to be specific.

Do you know what you want? Not what would look good. Not what would make sense on paper. What you want. Let’s talk about that.

If you are feeling your way through it, if you are scattered and sensitive and a little tired of your own overthinking, that does not mean you are failing. It means you are in the first, awkward, necessary stage of coming back into contact with yourself. Clarity is rarely sharp at the beginning. It is fog that slowly thins. It is learning to trust that the quiet tug in your chest is worth following.

I began writing this morning with the earnest intention of tying together a series of private and unfinished thoughts, only to realise that they refuse to line up. They arrive as fragments, like shells washed up at different hours of the tide, so I am letting them remain fragments. There is a kind of integrity in not forcing coherence where there is none yet.

This morning, I yearn for connection. I want to make small talk with you, while being honest about the complicated feelings that life brings.

Oh, yes, the grass is lovely. Have you talked to the trees lately? Have you lain on the ground and felt your atoms vibrate? When you listen to music, do you ever feel as though you are remembering a self that predates this particular body?

I want to talk about the weather and whether you have tried the new café, while also admitting that sometimes I wake up with a strange ache in my chest that feels like homesickness for a place I want to call home.

This morning, I want to ask you a sincere question. Across the past 4 months, I’ve loved introducing you to the most beautiful and creative women I know, love and admire the most in a series called ‘on the list’ (read them all here). I find myself genuinely curious whether you want more of those glimpses into other women’s worlds or more of my own interior wanderings. Please let me know.

When I was in Hampi, my film camera was damaged in the crush of moving suitcases. Yesterday I carried its small, wounded body into a repair shop.. Nothing could be done except to force it open and retrieve the film. Twenty three grainy, imperfect photographs emerged, small dark windows into the past six months.

After my first 10 days in India, more than a month ago, I moved myself into a rustic cottage for a few days, complete with half falling down sink, a padlock to close the door and the two most uncomfortable pillows I’ve ever slept on and no wifi that steps out onto the sandy shore with the ocean lapping against it 10 metres away. It was uncomfortable. It was heaven. It was exactly what I needed.

I mostly just think and feel and be and walk and lie in the sun and dip in the sea and listen to audiobooks. East of Eden, There Are Rivers In The Sky, and Brooklyn play in my ears. I eat masala dosas for lunch, smoothie bowls for breakfast and salty tamarind cardamom ice cream for dinner during my sunset walk.

On the second night, I go sit on my porch to watch the sunset. The boy (man?) in the hut next to mine sits on his porch. Can’t tell how old he is because I find it hard to guess ages, and also because I am myopic and can’t see him clearly enough to know. He gives me late 20s vibes.

We speak in the tentative, curious way strangers do when there is nowhere else to be. He tells me he is coming down from the high of a 10-day silent meditation retreat he just did. I tell him that I remember that fragile clarity that makes everything feel both significant and meaningless. I am a little envious, but can’t find the 10 days to do one between my client and commitments.

Someone walks past with a spliff, and I smell it and wish I were inclined to get high another way, but I don’t like smoking much. He tells me he’s 30, and when his brother calls, he says he has to answer. On the phone, he tells his brother in German that he’s with a beautiful woman and cannot talk but misses him dearly. I hide a secret smile at that and realise how often I’ve mistaken my desire for human connection for romantic potential. We go for dinner, exchange life stories and build a firm yet fleeting friendship.

I decided on this next step, made the plan, and booked the flight while I was mid-stream in Ayurvedic treatment, lying on a hard wooden table slick with warm sesame oil, staring up at a ceiling fan that has seen many women arrive unravelling and leave rearranged. There is something deliciously unhinged about making life decisions when I am horizontal and slightly cracked open.

The two weeks of panchakarma2 shifted something tectonic in me. Emotionally and spiritually, yes, but also in the granular. I came to realise that my own self-judgement was my biggest block, but so deeply sutured into my cells that I couldn’t access it from the mind. I had to dig deep into my body to remove it. The physical cleanse pulled the poisons of my own mind to the surface and allowed me to finally own and release the ways I was causing havoc to my own system.

This has resurrected my passion for epigenetics and why I got into this line of work. Our consciousness is so powerful. It can decide how bogged down we are with events, memories and trauma. And it can decide to let it all go and be free in the now moment.

The stories we tell about what has happened to us are not inert. They are biochemical instructions. Consciousness is directive. It informs inflammation. It influences repair. We can choose to rehearse injury or we can choose to reorient toward possibility. That choice does not erase history, but it does alter how history lives inside us. The body is listening all the time. We are so flexible and pliable, able to receive life’s greatest gifts if we choose to. What a responsibility. What a miracle.

And yes, aesthetically too, because I refuse to pretend that the surface does not matter. My skin, normally dry, has softened into something almost unfamiliar from the twice-daily sesame oil massages. Even my stomach, where time and stress had etched their quiet signatures, has firmed and grown supple. Time has not reversed so much as been renegotiated.

I promised myself I would continue the ritual and have already broken that promise because I have yet to locate sesame oil. There is something very human and humbling about being transformed by a practice and immediately failing to continue it. Still, I will find the oil. I will return to the altar of my own skin.

While I was undergoing treatment, suspended between purging and replenishing, two desires stood plainly in front of me:

The desire to root and build community.
The desire to contribute to the world in meaningful ways.

Before I get more personal, I’m putting a paywall here.

Read more

When I first wrote about running a business as a type-b woman, I was trying to articulate that some of us do not thrive under relentless urgency. That adopting someone else’s tempo in the name of ambition often leads to something other than success. What I did not fully articulate then is that rejecting hustle culture does not absolve you from understanding how business works. In fact, the absence of urgency forces a deeper reckoning. Without adrenaline to prop you up, everything that isn’t clear starts to show.

I am increasingly convinced that starting a business is a form of personal development work. You think you are building an offer, or a brand, or a website. What you are actually building is your capacity to be seen. Your tolerance for uncertainty. Your ability to metabolise rejection without collapsing into self-doubt or defensive superiority. Your willingness to make decisions without perfect information and live with them.

Building a business will surface every tender place you have around being seen, not being enough, self-betrayal, rejection, and failure. So the deeper invitation isn’t to use business purely as a means to make money, but as a place of becoming. What if the deeper purpose of your business isn’t just a livelihood but the legacy of who you become while building it?

Over the decade that I have run my business, there are 3 lessons I had to learn to run a relaxed and intuitive business.

1. it’s about value and impact, not effort or time spent

I had to dismantle a surprisingly persistent belief that effort itself was meaningful currency. That if I laboured long enough, cared deeply enough, refined endlessly enough, the world would respond in kind. This belief is emotionally intuitive and economically useless. The market is not sentimental. It does not reward devotion or sincerity or how much of yourself you poured into something behind the scenes. It responds to value. Specifically, to whether what you offer creates enough impact in someone else’s life that they are willing to exchange money for it.

A relaxed business, for me, emerged the moment I separated effort from impact. I could work fewer hours and create more value if the work was precise. I could work constantly and create nothing if the offer was vague. No one owes me attention, success, or access just because I show up and try.

2. my community is always telling me what she needs, if I’m willing to listen

She has always been telling me what resonates. In the pieces she shares. In the lines she quotes back to me. In the questions she asks again and again. Listening means loosening your attachment to what you want to say and paying attention to what is landing. It means distinguishing between boredom and misalignment, between the desire to pivot because something is wrong and the desire to pivot because consistency is less stimulating than reinvention.

When I became less reactive, I saw what was happening as information. If something was not generating leads or sales, it was not because the universe was withholding. It was because something was unclear. The problem was too vague. The solution was too broad. The woman I was speaking to did not recognise herself in my language.

3. the work becomes sustainable when it is about service

This is the lesson that continues to unfold, mostly because ego is excellent at disguising itself as passion. There is a version of building a personal brand that is essentially self-expression with a payment portal attached. I say this without judgment because I have done it. When my business is organised around my identity, it becomes fragile. Service rearranges the entire emotional economy of the work.

When I orient toward service, the centre of gravity shifts away from me. The questions change. What does she actually need right now. Where is she stuck. What would make this clearer, simpler, easier to access. How can I remove friction instead of adding layers of cleverness. Service means placing myself accurately within the equation.

Focusing on service has made me more relaxed. When my business is not a referendum on my worth, I can tolerate its fluctuations without spiralling. When I am more invested in being useful than impressive, decisions become cleaner. Marketing becomes communication. Offers become bridges between someone’s present reality and something more spacious.

A relaxed and intuitive business is clear about its value, attentive to feedback, and grounded in service. It allows me to build in a way that matches my rhythm. It allows me to be a type-b woman who still takes business seriously. And that combination is far more liberating than choosing one at the expense of the other.

I’ve partnered with my favourite person to do online business with, Claire Baker, and BSchool, to bring you $1,427 work of bonuses. This offer ends on Friday, February 20th, at 7pm ET. Learn more here.

5 bonus rapidfire questions

How did you build a stable business, and what business model or offer suite helped you?

I built stability by not locking myself into a model that didn’t fit my actual life. My business moves between 1:1 mentoring, group programs (live or self-study), and occasional corporate clients. The mix changes depending on what my clients need, what I’m noticing in the market, and what I personally have the capacity for. I don’t force launches because a calendar says I should. I respond to what’s alive. For example, right now I don’t have a permanent base, so running a live group would be logistically draining. Instead, I’m focused on private work. That’s the spine of my business. It’s steady, high-touch, and deeply customised.

I have a few private spaces opening in March. If you’d like to explore working together, you can reach me at studio@viendamaria.com.

Consistency: I don’t know how to keep going when the surge subsides (I’m a mani in HD)…

I think we over-romanticise motivation and under-value devotion. If you genuinely like what you’re building, you don’t need to whip yourself into consistency. You need a relationship with it. Some days I don’t have energy to be visible. Fine. Then I’ll do backend work. Strategy. Admin. Thinking. My rule is simple: ten minutes a day. Move the needle, even microscopically. Momentum compounds. And if you consistently don’t want to show up? That’s data. Either there’s resistance to examine, or you’re building the wrong thing. Revisit your values. Coherence is more powerful than hype.

The struggles of running a self-funded business — any tips on funding?

I’ve always self-funded. I like owning my decisions. External funding can be useful, but it also introduces other people’s timelines, opinions, and pressure. I prefer to start small, make money immediately, and let the infrastructure grow around actual revenue instead of projected ego. Build publicly. Sell early. Keep overhead low. Let the business prove itself before you inflate it.

How do you approach managing income and money as a Type B businesswoman?

I’m very analogue about money. I track all income in a notebook. I know my minimum monthly baseline. I forecast ahead to make sure it’s covered. My income fluctuates — anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 in a month — and I’m emotionally neutral about that. In strong months, I save. In lighter ones, I don’t panic. Also, I like money. I don’t pretend it’s spiritual to be indifferent. I enjoy earning it. I enjoy moving it. That relationship matters.

My will is big, but my ideas aren’t clear. Is it worth starting in confusion?

Yes. Clarity is a byproduct of action and movement. You don’t get a pristine blueprint and then begin. You begin and the blueprint reveals itself in fragments. There will be moments of sharp clarity along the way, but they don’t last forever. The straight line from A to B is a fantasy we use to delay starting. Start where you are. Let the next step expose itself.

I open the wooden door to the darkness and step into cool air that feels like silk against my skin. Birds are in full chorus. From somewhere to my left a flute threads through the dawn from the temple down the road. The sky is turning a milky grey that makes everything look suspended between worlds. It’s 5:48 am in Kerala, South India. I am on the 10th day of my Ayurveda retreat.

True to form, I did very little research before arriving. I did not know I would be drinking increasing amounts of ghee on an empty stomach for mornings in a row and mostly fasting with just a little rice porridge to sustain me. I did not know this would be followed by a full day of purging from every angle. I did not know how disorienting it would feel. Nor how holy and good. The containment is medicine. Every day is structured. Wake. Drink. Rest. Treatment. Eat. Walk. Yoga. Philosophy. Silence. My only task is to release what my body has been carrying and allow them else to hold the perimeter.

Something begins to soften. I feel joy, ease and humour flicker again in small, steady ways. I came here to heal. To restore the severe depletion and imbalances caused by the last few years of living in a world that I no longer recognised or felt held by.

It’s working. It’s working!

I go outside and sit in the dark on the wicker chair on my porch, watching the sky lighten. My early morning “medicine” — a concoction of herbs to help with stress, sleep, and hormone balancing, mixed into hot water — will be arrive soon. Through the silvery dawn, I watch a figure walk from room to room delivering each person’s morning elixir. When mine comes, I wait until he leaves and then hold my nose so I don’t gag from the smell and gulp it down in two parts.

We are in the season of imagination. Of letting your dreams reveal themselves to you so that you can put plans and actions in place. If you let yourself lean into the stillness, enough quiet to touch into truth, to dream up what big life you have yet to live.

I love this dreaming phase. It’s hazy and romantic. Not yet rooted, it floats, so I go up to meet it and see which ones I can pull down to myself. Some dissolve. Some thicken. My dreams are not made of things I want to have, but ways I want to feel. I love the dreams that ripen with time, with warmth, with love. Letting something flower from within me, my most private corners, honeyed ideas trickle from my heart into the mind. Eventually, some of them make it past that imagination, to drip from my fingers and into the world.

In between sesame oil massages, herbal treatments, yoga, meditation, philosophy lessons, and simple meals, I find a gentle rhythm. I take a few client calls. I work lightly on what needs attention. I read with focus I haven’t felt in months. I walk through the rice fields and watch water lilies move in the wind. I gather fallen frangipanis and place them in a bowl of water beside my bed. Space brings imagination back online.

None of what I am doing now would be possible without the business that I have built to hold me. Even though I’ve pulled back and am working less for the first two months of 2026, I’ve maintained my income due to the systems I have in place. As I shared recently in running a business as a type-b woman I learned how to do this when I first started through Marie Forleo’s BSchool.

Enrolments open for BSchool today, as of right now, and I’d love you to join me. More information on what that looks like and means (including a $1,427 worth of gifts):

HERE

Maybe you are in the same space as me.

I am in the imagination stage of my life. Both in my inward-facing life (personal) and outward-facing life (business). The business side is where I tend to need the most structured systems to hold the flexibility of the work that I do, which is where BSchool comes in. As I reimagine the ways I moved forward, I pair my dreams with practical actions that I continue to source from this course 10 years later. Learn more here.

If you have questions about running an online business that you want answered plainly and well, reply to this email, and I’ll fold my best responses into the next essay.

Most of my energy right now is in my private practice, and I have a few spaces opening in March. I tend to work with women at inflexion points, the kind where something looks fine on paper but feels misaligned in the body, or where a life or business is ready for its next iteration, and you can sense it asking more of you. The work is intimate, strategic, psychological, practical, often all at once. The nature of our sessions is customised for each individual. If you would like to have a call to explore the possibility of working together, get in touch: studio@viendamaria.com

Katie McKnoulty is an Australian photographer, writer and freelancer based in the Marche region of Italy. She writes The Travelling Light on Substack, a newsletter for self-employed dreamers and nomads. We finally met in person in Paris last year, after having been virtual friends for over a decade, and the vibes were amazing, so I knew I had to introduce her to you as someone to watch, carving her own path in a very ‘her way’ style. She’s literally done it all, and now is hatching the biggest project of her life: a baby girl, so we have a real pro on ‘on the list’ today. Let’s see how she does it all…

What’s on your to-do list today?

Finally finishing a guide to Ubud for my Substack that’s taken me FOREVER, lining up logistics for a new mentoring client (an Australian graphic designer-turned-photographer) that’s booked in with me... oh and being heavily pregnant I am cooking very particular meals and snacks (cooked berries with coconut yoghurt is my new favourite) all day long in-between tasks.

What’s one thing you’ve already crossed off?

Going to the post office in my tiny Italian town (I’m Australian but live in Italy) to send some film off to be developed in Milan, pick up a registered letter (possibly a speeding fine eek) and pay my water bill!

Do you write lists on paper, in notes, in your head, or not at all?

I write lists EVERYWHERE because I am a bit scattered in general, total type B. So I have a task list on Notion mapping out my to-dos monthly, weekly and daily, then I usually write the day’s tasks by hand in my notebook with a rough schedule for the day as well. My Notes app is full of various lists, too. Without this complex system, I would likely fall apart.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

Greet my beautiful little Yorkshire terrier who is always waiting patiently by/in our bed, so excited to see us when my husband and I have finally woken up. Then I sip a hot lemon water and eat some prunes and raisins I have soaked the night before, that’s my morning cleanse!

What’s always on your bedside table?

My Kindle, last night’s tea, aromatherapy spray I haul all the way over from Brisbane, Australia, from Perfect Potions, a few crystals and candles too for pre-bedtime meditation.

How do you like your mornings to feel?

Ideally, not hurried and not rushing to a meeting or shoot... everyone wakes up quite late in Italy anyway, so I feel less guilty for not being a morning person by nature. I try to schedule my meetings for after 11 am or even in the afternoons as I take a long time to wake up and get with the program... I often don’t sit down to work until 10-10.30, and now I’m pregnant, it’s more like 11! I’ve become even slower. I love the feeling of taking the morning off, or having just fun kind of work to do that morning, like working on my Substack.

What’s in your mug or on your plate today?

On my plate today, I made a vegan zucchini, leek and spinach pasta “sauce” with coconut milk and buckwheat rigatoni, topped with avocado and lemon. My Italian husband was not home, but would have seriously raised his eyebrows if he’d seen this concoction! It was delicious but definitely not traditional Italian. I would not make it at a dinner party for Italians, let’s just say. I am cooking and eating mostly Ayurveda-friendly dishes right now during pregnancy.

Something you’ve stopped doing and don’t miss?

Sometimes I get into a real habit of watching TV and movies most nights after dinner, but I just haven’t had the time or mental energy lately to do this, and I have to say I’m not feeling like I’m missing out. It’s really nice to just sit around, do nothing for an hour, read a random book, chat with my husband on the couch or take our dog for a walk. I don’t need to spend even more time staring at yet another screen after work!

What are you working on that excites you right now?

As I’m about to give birth in less than a month and will then go on a short maternity leave, I’m kind of just holding on for dear life work-wise and trying to wrap up a bunch of things before I have to step away from the computer/camera for a month or two. I continue to be super excited about my Substack, though and the freedom and connection that brings me. When I come back from leave, I want to start pitching some new travel (writing and photography) stories to some media outlets, so I’m excited about dreaming those up right now.

How do you know you’re in alignment in your work?

I think when I’m excited to sit down and do it! Sometimes that excitement can be masked by fear, though if it’s something where I’m pushing myself beyond my comfort zone (often a new kind of photography job or something with a lot of pressure). In that case, I know I’m in alignment because I walk away from the job feeling like I had the best time, I loved interacting with whoever I worked with, and feeling like I did a really good job... fulfillment I guess I’d call it.

How do you rest or recharge during the day?

I take my little dog for hour-long walks in the countryside mid-afternoon around our town, hopefully in the sunshine. That is always really recharging for me. I don’t really take my headphones anymore, so it’s just me and my thoughts, my dog, the birds, the breeze. That really connects me with something bigger and revives me to finish the work day in a good state of mind for the last few hours.

How do you like to end your day?

Ideally, I like to end the day with a 20-minute silent mantra meditation with a little incense lit in the quiet of my house, or a warm bath. Then I’ll read in bed for the hour or so it takes me to fall asleep (I go through a lot of books). I suffer from insomnia so I have to be pretty strict about my end of day/pre-bedtime routine!

What’s currently on your nightstand / playlist / altar?

On my altar... is The Empress tarot card, an energy I’m trying to embody and believe in for myself! I had a photography mentoring client tell me that she pulled this card before we started our program, and she felt it represented my role in relation to her. I was so touched, and really want to grow into this Empress energy – sustainable creation and beauty, rooted abundance, guiding others (and myself!) to bring things into fertile form – more and more so I keep it there as a reminder. The card also seems to have this Mother kind of vibe, so that’s quite relevant to me right now, too.

Thank you for sharing your list with us.

Last question ~ what links can people find you at?

Substack

Instagram

The Light Studio

TLDR: How I started building and running my own online business 13 years ago, when I realised it was the only career option for me, when I thought my type-b personality could never, ever run a business, but it turns out I actually, totally could, and can and do, which has turned into one of the greatest joys of my life.

I am on my second masala chai. There is a giant bowl of mixed fruit in front of me, papaya, banana, pineapple, pomegranate seeds, with muesli and curd, that I will spend the next three to four hours luxuriously eating while I work. I love fruit. I have always loved fruit, but fruit in the tropics tastes inexplicably better. I do not know why this is true. I do not make the rules.

It is Monday, and it is a workday. I have emails to write, marketing tasks to tend to, Zoom meetings to attend, and a private client session in the evening that was rescheduled from last week when the wifi went out for an entire day. Unreliable wifi is probably one of the highest stress factors of my very type-B, self-employed life.

A year ago, I thought I would have my feet firmly planted in one place, building a life rooted in that place. And then life decided that this was not the life meant for me. Instead, I am in India, sitting in a cafe overlooking the Tungabhadra River in Hampi, the lost city of gods. I am slowly weaving my way south to go to an Ayurvedic retreat, the main reason I came to India.

This makes it sound like I am a digital nomad, which I am absolutely not. I dislike the term and find most people who operate under it irritating. I am not here to optimise my lifestyle or collect experiences. I am a woman rebuilding her life after a total collapse in my personal world, and coming to India to nourish my body and my wavering spirit made more sense than sitting alone in a small apartment in the cold, battling the seasonal depression that inevitably appears when daylight hours shorten and temperatures drop below 16°C. It just happens that thirteen years ago, I had the very wise idea to build a business that was location independent, not because I wanted to be untethered, but because I wanted the security that comes from creating your own thing in an increasingly insecure world.

What I am here for is time and space. The kind of time and space that healing and grief require, and that our modern Western world does not allow for. There, I had to keep going at a speed my soul could not keep pace with. Here, I can slow down enough for my body to match my internal rhythm, no longer flanked on all sides by the demand to do more, better, faster, harder. This is something I have struggled with my entire life, the inability or refusal to keep pace with a world I fundamentally do not want to participate in.

Omg, cute! This little girl just came up to me and offered me sweets, and I thought she was trying to sell them to me, so I said “no, thank you”, and then her mother (?) told me it’s her birthday, and it’s tradition to give people sweets on your birthday, so of course I accepted. Her name is Amrita, and she’s turning 10. Happy birthday, Amrita!

Which brings me, loosely, to my point. Given my sensitive personality and my inability to follow rules simply because they exist, it was always clear that the only way I would be able to function in society was by working for myself. I am a terrible employee. I cannot align myself with things I do not genuinely believe in. The lack of integrity causes physical pain in my body.

But I am also the most type-b person. My business runs on intuition, pattern reading and vibes. I barely do spreadsheets, and I don’t have coherent systems of organisation. I am organised in a chaotic, beautiful, fluid way that makes sense only to me, and I am happy about that. I am consistently inconsistent, and also determined and disclplined but mostly just really devoted to creating a beautiful life through psychology and art and poetry and beauty and pragmatism. So when I decided I wanted to have my own business without having what I thought were necessary business skills, I thwarted myself. Until I decided to try anyway.

Sorry for the randomness, but I’m having a bit of a stream-of-consciousness write-it-as-it-happens moment, which includes natural interruptions. I just went to use the bathroom and thought to remind anyone who is romanticising my life right now that while yes, everything can be and should be romanticised, everywhere you go, there are challenges.

India is not an easy place. Not in the way Paris is easy, which is where I was before I came here. Squat toilets are the norm, and while I genuinely love squatting as a bodily practice, cleanliness is not guaranteed. Comfort is inconsistent. Beds are often uncomfortable. Hotels and homestays receive excellent ratings for experiences that would be considered below average elsewhere. If your stomach is not accustomed to spice, every meal is a potential gamble. Wifi can be excellent or disappear entirely without warning, which is stressful when your work depends on it. None of this is a complaint. I am very happy to be here. The benefits outweigh the costs, for now. I simply want to be clear that no place is paradise by default. Any place can be paradise or hell depending on context, capacity, and timing.

There’s this trend going around since the start of this year where people are sharing their 2016, which is cute, but the year that actually changed my life was 2013. I was living a version of my dream life, and had been burned exactly 0 times. I was made up of hope and optimism and maybe 1 single insecurity. That was the year I started my business, which very quickly grew into something capable of supporting both me and my distinctly non-traditional way of living.

As a type-b woman, I am naturally curious, persistent, and an unconventional thinker who uses intuition as a strategy. Intuition does not give you the entire plan. It gives you the next right step. It often points toward a new direction long before the how becomes clear. In 2013, I kept receiving a very strong internal message that I needed help in the areas that did not come naturally to me. I did not need more creativity. I needed structure. I needed to learn systems, language, and a framework sturdy enough to support my intuitive way of working without disregarding it.

Looking back, I can see how an intuitive, type-b approach to business has shaped my personal brand, influenced what I create, and opened doors to opportunities I was uniquely prepared for. It is only in retrospect that the path appears coherent. Intuition requires radical self-trust, but systems and processes sustain it. Thirteen years later, I still return to parts of that course when I need inspiration, grounding, or a strong backbone for my business. I watch a few videos, revisit an exercise, and remember what actually matters and what works for me.

It is Wednesday, and it is another workday. I am sitting in a co-working office in Bangalore not far from the train station, where I arrived early this morning and will depart from later tonight as I continue moving south. The space is quiet and insulated, a small pocket of stillness, and a reprieve from the mass of people moving continuously outside.

If I am being honest with myself, living and travelling this way was exhilarating a decade ago. Now, it feels different. Less romantic. Less novel. I notice my tolerance is lower, my body more discerning, my nervous system clearer about what it needs. I love that. I love seeing how I have changed, how my expectations and priorities have matured, how much more I value steadiness over stimulation. This trip has been clarifying. It is showing me how I want to orient my life and my business going forward around support, depth, and continuity.

I am acutely aware of the privilege inherent in even being able to have these reflections. The privilege of time, of choice, of mobility, of financial resourcing. That privilege comes partly from circumstance and partly from years of intentional effort, from consciously designing a life that extends from who I actually am rather than who the world told me I should be. That kind of life does not happen accidentally. It requires courage. It requires risk. It requires a willingness to let things unfold differently than you imagined, and the capacity to stay present when they do.

I have immense respect for anyone who chooses a path outside the status quo. Not because it is more virtuous, but because it demands a level of self-responsibility that most people are never taught how to hold. Building a life and a business that reflect your internal reality is not always comfortable, but it is honest. An honesty that compounds.

What’s on your to-do list today?

So many things. My life feels a bit like a circus with all of the balls I’m attempting to juggle as a new business owner… again. But the most important thing on my to-do list has been my daily commitment to circadian rhythm syncing. It’s my one single health goal for 2026: to watch the sunrise and sunset daily for a minimum of 15 minutes — feet on the ground (if possible), no phone, no matter the temperature outside. I combine this with my daily prayer practice. It’s really nice and grounding.

What’s one thing you’ve already crossed off?

Watching the sunrise from my front porch in 10 degree (-12 celsius) weather!

Do you write lists on paper, in notes, in your head, or not at all?

I would get nothing done if I kept my lists in my head. Historically, I’ve always used paper - more specifically, a planner. But for the past year or so, I’ve been using my Notes app, which is nice because I can easily shuffle things around - but I much prefer physically writing things down and crossing them off... I guess I need to find myself a new planner for 2026!

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

Kiss whichever of my three kitties has nuzzled her way into my armpit overnight. Followed by scraping my tongue, which I absolutely cannot go a day without.

What’s always on your bedside table?

I can’t sleep without slathering my lips in Primally Pure’s Peppermint Lip Balm. I get panicky if I can’t find it! And also, my blue light glasses. I feel like a cliche wellness-girlie when I say that, but I’ve been wearing them at night for years, and if I’m really committing to a healthy circadian rhythm, then they’re not going anywhere!

How do you like your mornings to feel?

Hm... The words “slow” and “productive” both came to me, which is borderline an oxymoron. I guess what I mean is that I have a slow routine that I like to get done by a certain time so that I also feel productive about my morning. But if that routine runs too late, it throws the rest of my day off.

What’s in your mug or on your plate today?

There’s a gentleman at my local farmers’ market who makes the most delicious cacao. I buy a fresh pint each Saturday to drink throughout the week. I can’t drink coffee, or anything caffeinated for that matter. In fact, I couldn’t drink cacao for the longest time because it was too stimulating for me. But this cacao is impeccably sourced and blended with a whole bunch of adaptogens, which I’m assuming is why my body is able to handle it. I turn it into a daily mini 5-minute ceremony for myself, and I love it.

Something you’ve stopped doing and don’t miss?

For the love of God... Wearing heels. Don’t get me wrong, I love them for the right occasion. But when I think about the number of college nights out in Manhattan... Woof. 4 inch heels until 4am is truly only something a 20 year old can do!

What are you working on that excites you right now?

I recently started a new business. And while it’s incredibly exciting and innovative, we’re only 9 months old, so we’re very much in the grind phase and it’s a lot. Substack has honestly been a lifesaver in recent months. I didn’t realize how much I needed an outlet that was fully and completely me. It feels like the place where I can just be myself and share whatever is on my heart. I’m about to launch a monthly Prayer Circle through Substack and I’m very excited about it.

How do you know you’re in alignment in your work?

When things are floooooowing. I’ve experienced incredible flow in my work and I’ve also experienced extreme stagnation. It’s challenging when you’re stuck because you can’t force the flow, but you also can’t just sit and wait for it. You do have to figure out how to get there, and the quickest way in my experience is absolute, utter authenticity.

How do you rest or recharge during the day?

I’m working more than I’ve ever worked in my life with this new business - it’s a regenerative, organic clothing company - and wow, starting a clothing brand is not for the faint of heart. Especially when you’re trying to buck the system and change an entire industry, like we’re attempting. I’ve been forced into breaks during the day; otherwise, I completely burn out. For me, that rest looks like stepping outside mid-day, sun on face, hand on heart, with some big deep breaths.

How do you like to end your day?

I remember having this conversation with you in person, but I’m someone who becomes relaxed while watching TV - I recall you saying you don’t! That said, I’m extremely sensitive to overly stimulating shows and movies, so I have to keep it light. I’m currently bingeing Gilmore Girls, which I watched as a teenager. So it brings an extra dose of nostalgia, which warms my heart and sets me up for a restful sleep. (blue light glasses on while watching!)

What’s currently on your nightstand / playlist / altar?

Nightstand - Love Poems from God, my favorite collection of poems from different mystics throughout history.

Playlist - I’m late to the party, but I just discovered Olivia Dean. Love.

Altar - Mother Mary, always.

Thank you for sharing your list with us.

Last question ~ what links can people find you at?

My Substack
My Personal Instagram
My Regen Organic Clothing Company