Tag: lifestyle

  • Don’t Run From Yourself (You’ll Catch Up Anyway)

    At some point in life, you realize there is no such thing as “the future.” Not in the dramatic psychic hotline sense, but in the mildly inconvenient, existential way. Everything is apparently happening at once, and time is just… how we keep ourselves from panicking.

    Which means the thing you’ve been running toward (or away from) has probably been right there the whole time. Some of us feel things before reality as we perceive catches up. We get called “psychic.” No. We are just tuned into time differently than the average person.

    What we like to label intuition, telepathy, or how did I know that? isn’t a superpower. It’s not witchcraft. It’s not even particularly sexy. It’s just… being tuned in. To yourself. To others you resonate to. To your patterns. To that quiet inner signal that’s been trying to get your attention while you were busy refreshing your phone and questioning every decision you’ve ever made.

    It’s not mind-reading. It’s just frequency recognition. Once you know how something feels: a person, a city, a situation, you can sense it from miles away. Like a radio station. Some frequencies fade. Some don’t. Some stay stubbornly on air like a song you didn’t ask Spotify to play but now somehow know all the lyrics to.

    Have I mastered turning every frequency off? Absolutely not. But I have mastered turning my back. And I mastered not getting swayed away with all the coincidences and reminders that still manage to find me everyday. I mastered not giving an emotional response, other than cracking up once in a while when they get too ridiculous. And honestly, that’s an underrated life skill.  

    The more connected you are to yourself, the less random life feels. Patterns start revealing themselves. Yours. Theirs. Life’s. And yes, awareness can feel a little boring. Like being the only sober person at a party. But it’s also what keeps you from replaying the same emotional storyline with a different cast and a slightly worse ending.

    That’s one of the points life on Earth tries teaching. Not running from yourself. Not outsourcing your direction to fate, tarot cards, exes, or the universe’s customer service department, which in my humble opinion, doesn’t exist the way we wish it would.

    Because when you’re connected to you, you already know where you’re going. And suddenly the people and opportunities that appear make sense. Suddenly you’re less busy forcing outcomes and more comfortable letting timing do its thing.

    Once you start noticing how interconnected everything is: people, places, timing, moods, you notice something else too: alignment is contagious. When you’re aligned with yourself, aligned people show up. Aligned opportunities knock. Aligned chaos waits politely instead of kicking the door in.

    Funny how that works. The moment I stopped obsessing over destiny and started trusting myself (while handing the truly uncontrollable bits over to God), life aligned in ways I never could’ve planned. I wanted the “go with the flow” last year. I got it. Just not in the aesthetic, Pinterest-board way I imagined.

    Turns out clarity doesn’t always arrive loudly. It comes with fires that burn down the masks, storms that blow out the dead skin away, and then it just you on the shoulder and says, Relax. You’ve been on the right path longer than you think. 

  • (Almost) White Christmas

    Yesterday, the air smelled like snow. You know that smell, the kind that sneaks up on you, taps you on the shoulder, and whispers, “Put your expectations down, but trust me anyway.” I didn’t get my hopes up. I never do. I just knew. And sure enough, it snowed. The first snow of the season here.

    Apparently, I don’t just travel with actual baggage; I bring weather systems. Missed the November snow in Bern, caught it back home in Bulgaria. Timing has never been my strongest skill, but when it hits, it hits.

    I’m reunited with my parents and our dogs for Christmas and New Year’s, sitting in my parents’ new handmade sunroom while snow falls politely outside. Courtesy of my father, who can build actual structures with his hands. Which explains… A lot. Apparently this is why I have a soft spot for men who can build things. Especially out of wood. Especially if they don’t need an instruction manual. I, too, have woodworking plans. Turns out it’s genetic. The blueprint was there all along.

    Now, let’s be honest. I’d choose Alpine cold over this humid, windy chaos any day. This is the kind of cold that seeps into your bones uninvited. And yet, yes, I’m still considering a swim in the Black Sea, despite it feeling like minus seven degrees outside. Limits? Never met her. My idea of fun doesn’t need refinement, just a matching level of insanity and other humans who hear “freezing water” and think, “Perfect.” Especially if that’s a mutually agreed first-date plan. 

    After Christmas dinner, and an ambitious amount of mulled wine at apéro, I slept for twelve uninterrupted hours. Twelve. A coma, really. A well-earned one after a week of sleep deprivation and questionable decisions.

    And then… the dreams.

    Three different men starred in them. One by one. Like a rotating cast. I feel dirty, in the best possible way. Real me is on a wholesome family holiday. Dream me, however, had a packed social calendar, dream dates. One was the regular. The recurring character. Always there, stopped complaining about it, there is no point. This time particularly committed to reminding me what I was allegedly missing out on. The other two were new. And new is always delightful. I was eventually pulled back to reality by our puppy launching himself into bed like a furry alarm clock with zero respect for narrative closure. 

    And somewhere between the snow, the wine, the dreams, and the dog hair, it hit me how far I’ve come since September. Back then, I was still mad at him. Actively. Professionally. Now? Life is too good to bother. Plus, I closed the loop. Finally. Turns out some things don’t need force, just timing. And a little snowfall for dramatic effect.

    I’m out. I’m free. Free to live and enjoy the absolute crap out of myself, like a graduate freshly released into the world, slightly unhinged, deeply grateful, and fully convinced that the best part might still be ahead.

    And honestly? I’ll take that kind of white Christmas any year. Light and fluffy. Good vibes, BBQ meats with a side of potato salad with homemade French Dressing. 

  • Laundry Day

    At some point this year, after months of unpacking emotional baggage, breaking generational patterns, and performing full-time spiritual shadow work without PTO, I just… stopped unpacking my actual baggage. Specifically, my suitcase. And my closet.

    I’d come back from trips and let my luggage sit there for a week, like an emotionally neglected roommate. Clothes piled up on top of it, a textile volcano of defiance. My neat freak Virgo self would’ve never allowed it before, but this year? I liked it. I was rebelling. This was my punk era: no rules, no folding. I even let dishes pile up in the sink for three days. It was exhilarating. My inner control freak had finally left the building. 

    But then came the guests. Spontaneous ones, of course, because the universe loves testing spiritual people when their place looks like a small-scale fabric explosion. I did what any rational person would do; shoved everything into the closet. Clothes, tote bags, a rogue pair of jeans that could probably stand on their own. They lived there, crumpled together in the dark, for three weeks.

    At first, it felt liberating. But then it started bugging me. Like a tiny voice whispering from behind the closet door: “This isn’t freedom, this is chaos.”

    So yesterday, I went full Virgo. We’re talking deep-clean-on-steroids Virgo. I cleaned out the fridge, reorganized my kitchen, threw out anything that didn’t spark joy (or was growing its own ecosystem), and finally faced The Closet. I color-coded, categorized, folded, and Marie Kondo’d the life out of that place. Three giant donation bags later, I was reborn.

    I reorganized my bathroom, too. Got one of those fancy little shower shelves that can actually hold all my products: shampoo, conditioner, existential crisis scrub, the works. Now my apartment smells like fresh laundry and essential oils. It feels lighter. I feel lighter. Mostly because I’m no longer living with a closet monster made of denim and emotional avoidance.

    Here’s the thing: for someone like me, who used to clean to control her emotions and alphabetize her life just to stay sane, letting the mess be for a while was actually medicine. It taught me to release. To live with a little chaos without falling apart.

    The last time I deep-cleaned like a Virgo on steroids was on New Year’s Eve; and back then, the motive was… very different. I washed every piece of clothing that had ever stepped foot in his apartment. I scrubbed my luggage like it was evidence from a crime scene, determined to remove any trace of his energy, dust, scent, or emotional residue. Then, in true dramatic fashion, I left that luggage 2000 kilometers away like a symbolic mic drop two months later. I saged every corner of my apartment to banish the ghosts of me crying in those same corners over something he did. I flipped the mattress, washed every pillow, and practically performed an exorcism on my sheets. Turns out, I really didn’t want my 2025 to start with any leftover “him” haunting my space, and we weren’t even officially over when I was doing all of this. 

    But now? Now I clean from a different place. Not to control. Not to cope. Just because it sparks joy. And because, let’s be real, fresh sheets are the closest thing to enlightenment.