inner authors world

The Cage I Created to Become Productive

I didn't plan to live with my mum.

There are parts of adulthood that you imagine will unfold in a certain order. You imagine becoming independent, building your own home, creating your own routines, earning your own money, travelling, and moving forward into the next chapter with a sense of certainty. You imagine that by a certain age, you will have figured out where you belong and what your life is supposed to look like. Then life does what life does. It rearranges the furniture. It changes the timing. It places you somewhere you never expected to be, and suddenly you find yourself looking at a life that bears little resemblance to the one you thought you were supposed to have.

I had always imagined something different for myself. Internally, I saw myself as a travelling, money-making nomad: a professional woman who could move through the world with freedom, create, earn, travel, and experience different places without feeling permanently tied to one location. I wanted a life that felt expansive. I wanted the ability to wake up and decide where I wanted to go next. I wanted movement to feel natural, not like an escape. I wanted to build a life that could travel with me.

And yet, no matter how much I wanted that life or how many efforts I made toward it, I found myself positioned back in my small island hometown, living with my mum.

At the time, I could not understand it.

I still don't always understand it.

There are days when I find it deeply limiting, especially when I look around and see how seemingly easy it can be for professional single people in their thirties to build lives abroad, become immigrants, move between countries, or create nomadic lifestyles around the world. I have wondered what it would have cost me to build that kind of life earlier. I have wondered whether my family had some kind of hold on me that I could not see clearly at the time. I have wondered what I might have become if I had created a world outside of my mother's home sooner.

I have wondered about the versions of myself that might have existed elsewhere. The woman who moved abroad. The woman who built a career in another country. The woman who travelled constantly. The woman who lived alone, met different people, and created a life that had no connection to the place where she was born. I can imagine these women, but I cannot know them. I cannot compare the life I lived with the life I might have lived, because I can only experience one timeline at a time.

I do not know whether I would have been happier somewhere else. I do not know whether I would have been richer, more successful, more loved, or more fulfilled. I do not know whether the freedom I imagined would actually have given me what I believed it would. There are entire versions of myself that exist only in imagination now, women I might have become if circumstances had unfolded differently. I can wonder about them, but I cannot meet them.

What I do know is that, somehow, I ended up here.

And almost everyone around me seemed to believe that this was somehow for my best.

At the time, I could not see it.

I still question it.

But when I look carefully at what has actually happened to me during this unexpected chapter, I have to admit that something extraordinary has taken place.

I have bloomed.

And perhaps more surprisingly, I am genuinely impressed with the woman I see emerging.

I like how I look. I like how I feel. I like the way my energy has changed. My brand feels cleaner, more organized, and more intentional. My relationship with my family has improved. I have become less interested in the party scene and more interested in health, longevity, beauty, anti-aging, strength, movement, sleep, and the quiet discipline of taking care of myself before a crisis forces me to.

I have also become increasingly intentional about how I want to experience aging. I have spent a great deal of time around older people, and that proximity has changed my understanding of what it means to grow older. Aging is not some distant event that happens to other people. It is a process that begins the moment we are born, and I have become interested in curating my experience of it rather than approaching it passively.

I want to look the way I look because I have worked hard to care for myself. I want to feel strong because I have invested in my health. I want to enjoy beauty because I genuinely value it. I want to dress well because fashion and personal presentation have become part of my creative language. These things are not distractions from my life to me. They are part of the life I am choosing to create.

Perhaps not everyone understands that. Sometimes even people close to me have questioned the amount of attention I give to beauty, health, anti-aging, or clothing, as though caring about these things must automatically mean I am vain. I see it differently. I have spent enough time witnessing the realities of aging to know that I would rather be intentional than surprised. I would rather invest in the body I live in, the way I present myself, and the quality of my daily life because those things matter to me.

I am not interested in pretending that beauty is the only thing that matters. It isn't. But I also refuse to pretend that it means nothing to me. I like what I like. I find value in it. I find joy in it. I find discipline in it. I find creative expression in it. And I have come to believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to age well, dress beautifully, feel physically strong, or create an environment that reflects the person you are becoming.

In fact, one of the greatest gifts of this chapter has been fashion.

I never imagined that I would become so interested in design. I never expected to learn so much about clothing, styling, proportion, materials, silhouettes, visual identity, and personal presentation. I began investing in my wardrobe, but somewhere along the way, I realized that I was not simply buying clothes.

I was learning design.

I was learning how to see.

I was learning how to construct an image.

I was learning how to communicate without speaking.

I was learning that fashion could be architecture for the body, and that personal style could be another form of authorship.

That discovery has completely changed the way I see myself. The woman who once thought she was simply developing a personal image is now beginning to understand that she has an instinct for visual storytelling. I don't think I would have discovered that without the space I have had in this chapter.

The same thing happened with my voice.

I have written. I have read. I have spoken. I have thought. I have drafted. I have created. I have developed ideas that needed somewhere to go. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I had enough material, enough emotion, enough perspective, and enough things I wanted to say to begin creating something I never expected to have the space to create.

I drafted two music albums.

Two.

That still surprises me.

I did not set out to become the person who would sit quietly in a private space and develop enough of a voice to draft two albums. But I did. And that tells me something. It tells me that there was a creative life inside me that needed room.

Perhaps I had spent years thinking my energy was scattered when, in reality, it was simply waiting for enough space to reveal its shape.

Eventually, I found the channels.

Writing became a channel. Publishing became a channel. Reading became a channel. Speaking became a channel. Thinking became a channel. Creativity became a channel. Fashion became a channel. Music became a channel. My personal brand became a channel. The things that once felt like scattered pieces of my personality began to come together and form something that looked much more like a life.

I have realized that I am not just one thing. I am not only a writer, only a brand, only interested in beauty, only interested in fashion, only interested in health, only interested in anti-aging, only interested in music, or only interested in business. All of these things are connected through my voice.

For years, I thought perhaps I needed to choose one identity. Now I think I need to build an ecosystem.

And perhaps that is what this unexpected life has given me: the space to discover the ecosystem.

There was a time when I thought love was almost a free concept. I approached it with the spirit of a hippie, I suppose. I believed in love, but I did not necessarily understand the seriousness of relationships. I did not take boys particularly seriously either. Somewhere in my mind, I imagined that when the time came, the right man would simply show up.

I was not interested in building a man from the ground up. I imagined a man who already knew who he was, a man who had the capacity to build, a man who could walk into my life with the maturity, stability, and resources to create something substantial. In my imagination, there were houses and diamonds and a beautiful life. I never really thought I was supposed to spend my best years trying to convince a boy to become the man I wanted.

So I played. I flirted. I explored. I did not take much too seriously.

But now, when I look back, I realize that perhaps I was doing more than playing. I was developing. I was becoming. I was studying. I was building a brand and developing my personal image while trying to understand who I was and what I had to offer the world.

My energy was moving in a hundred directions because I had not yet learned how to organize it.

Now I see that my energy was never really the problem.

It simply needed somewhere to go.

And perhaps this is why I have come to appreciate the private space I created for myself.

I created a private space and time to write, to publish, to develop ideas, to explore fashion, to draft music, to think, and to become. There is something deeply powerful about having a place where you can hear your own thoughts without immediately having to explain them to anyone. A place where an idea can be messy before it becomes intelligent. A place where you can sit with yourself long enough to discover what you actually think.

I needed that.

I needed the quiet.

I needed the structure.

I needed the walls.

In some ways, I created a cage for myself. But I created it because I needed somewhere to become productive. I needed fewer distractions. I needed less noise. I needed to stop scattering myself across parties, relationships, social situations, and experiences that were not necessarily bringing me closer to the person I wanted to become.

So I built a smaller world.

And inside that smaller world, I began producing.

I read more. I wrote more. I thought more deeply. I developed more. I became more organized. I started to understand the difference between simply having an image and actually building a brand. I started to understand the difference between having energy and knowing how to direct it.

There is something almost masterful about learning to own your own energy. Not suppressing it. Not giving it away randomly. Not allowing every person, party, relationship, or distraction to have access to it. But learning to direct it toward something that can actually grow.

That has become an art I genuinely enjoy.

Yet I am also beginning to understand that I cannot live in the cage forever.

I created the cage to become productive. I did not create it to become disconnected from life.

There is a difference between solitude and isolation, and I am learning that difference now.

I do not want to become so private that I lose touch with reality. I do not want to become so absorbed in my own thoughts that I become blind to the relationships that are healthy for me. I do not want to protect my energy so aggressively that I stop allowing anything new to enter it.

Because the truth is that people inspire my work.

Life inspires my work.

Conversation inspires my work.

Travel inspires my work.

Being around the right people can take me deeper into myself. The right connections do not pull me away from my creativity; they feed it. They give me new perspectives. They introduce me to ideas I might never have encountered alone. They challenge the way I think. They remind me that I am still part of a living, breathing world beyond the walls of my own mind.

I need that world.

I need real conversations. I need real experiences. I need to meet people who make me think differently. I need to see places I have never seen before. I need the freedom to travel when I desire it. I need beauty and culture and movement and surprise. I need to be somewhere unfamiliar sometimes, because there are parts of myself I will never discover by remaining in the same environment forever.

My work comes from living.

It comes from observing people. It comes from conversations. It comes from uncomfortable moments and beautiful ones. It comes from being surprised. It comes from seeing how other people live. It comes from discovering that there is more than one way to exist in the world.

So I am learning that I do not actually want a smaller life.

I want a more intentional one.

I want the room to write and the freedom to travel. I want the discipline of routine and the spontaneity of discovery. I want a private creative world and meaningful human connection. I want to be able to close the door and work, but I also want to be able to open the door and go somewhere.

I want to retreat when I need to create and explore when I need to experience.

I do not want to destroy the structure that helped me grow.

I want to expand it.

Perhaps the cage was never really a cage.

Perhaps it was a greenhouse.

A greenhouse is not built to imprison a plant. It is built to protect something while it is becoming strong enough for a larger world.

And I think that is what this chapter has been for me.

A protected environment where I could become productive, organized, creative, healthier, more reflective, and more aware of myself. A place where I could discover parts of myself I did not even know were waiting. A place where I could find my voice.

But a greenhouse is not the world.

Eventually, the plant has to experience the weather.

It has to feel the wind.

It has to grow beyond the walls that once protected it.

And I think I am somewhere in that transition now.

I am somewhere between building and living.

I am building a brand while trying to actually live a life worth documenting. I am creating privately while learning how to connect publicly. I am becoming more disciplined while still allowing myself to experience pleasure. I am becoming more selective while remaining curious. I am protecting my energy while learning that not every connection is a threat to it.

Some connections nourish you.

Some connections drain you.

Some relationships expand your thinking, while others slowly reduce your sense of possibility.

I am learning to tell the difference.

That discernment matters to me now.

Because I am also becoming more honest about the life I am building and what it costs.

My books cost money. My education costs money. My beauty and wellness routines cost money. My travel costs money. My creative projects cost money. My equipment costs money. My time costs something. My brand development costs something. Even the social experiences that inspire me cost something.

These are expensive interests when viewed purely through the lens of immediate financial return.

Publishing a book can cost around $5,000 per book. Developing a wardrobe that reflects the woman I am becoming costs money. Investing in my health and longevity costs money. Creating music costs money. Travelling costs money. Building a professional brand costs money.

I have invested in myself in ways that do not always come with a guaranteed financial outcome.

But I am beginning to understand that not every investment pays me back immediately in dollars.

Some investments pay me in perspective.

Some pay me in confidence.

Some pay me in health.

Some pay me in creativity.

Some pay me in relationships.

Some pay me in ideas.

Some pay me in the ability to imagine a different future.

And some investments simply make life more interesting.

That is where I am positioned right now.

I am in a strange but beautiful middle ground between building and living. I am investing in things that might or might not become profitable. I am developing ideas that might or might not become businesses. I am creating work that might or might not immediately produce a financial return.

But I am also becoming the kind of woman who might eventually know exactly what to do with an opportunity when it arrives.

That is why increasing my revenue matters to me.

I do not want money simply for the sake of having more money. I want the freedom that money can create. I want access to travel, beautiful environments, wellness, professional opportunities, and experiences that expand my imagination. I want the freedom to move when I need to move. I want to build a business that gives me choices.

I want my brand to create opportunities that allow me to move through the world. I want my work to fund the lifestyle that feeds my work. I want to be able to travel somewhere new, experience something extraordinary, and return home with a new idea.

I want the freedom to say yes to the right experiences without constantly wondering whether I can afford them.

Because I am beginning to see that my life and my work are not separate.

My life is the source material.

My experiences become my ideas.

My ideas become my writing.

My writing becomes my publishing.

My publishing becomes my brand.

My brand becomes my business.

And my business should eventually give me the freedom to go back into the world and gather more experiences.

Create.

Experience.

Reflect.

Create again.

That is the cycle I want.

There is another part of this chapter that I am still learning to understand: the relationship between independence and partnership.

I have become increasingly aware that I do not simply want someone to occupy space beside me. I want a man whose presence makes sense within the life I am building. I want someone who understands that my standards are not a demand for perfection but a desire for coherence. I want to know that if I choose a partner, I am choosing someone whose values, lifestyle, ambition, communication, and capacity for commitment can actually coexist with mine.

I have learned that two people can care about one another deeply and still be fundamentally mismatched. A person can be a wonderful teacher, a good roommate, a meaningful chapter, and still not be the person with whom you should build a marriage.

That realization has changed the way I think about relationships.

I no longer want to confuse convenience with compatibility.

I no longer want to mistake companionship for partnership.

I no longer want to choose someone simply because they are nearby, available, attractive, or willing to fill an empty afternoon.

I want to understand what I am choosing.

I want to understand the life we would be building.

I want to know whether the man I choose would actually choose me in the same deliberate way.

I have also become more aware that I want to be intentional about the kind of relationship I build. I want to understand how a man communicates when there is no physical convenience holding us together. I want to know how he handles distance, uncertainty, conflict, planning, money, travel, family, and commitment before our lives become so intertwined that separating becomes painful simply because we have invested years.

I want to build emotional intimacy before allowing physical proximity to make decisions for us.

I want to know whether the man I am with genuinely intends to build a life with me, rather than simply enjoying the relationship while it remains convenient.

I have learned that distance does not automatically create a relationship, and proximity does not automatically create a partnership. Two people can live in the same house and still be emotionally worlds apart. Two people can live in different countries and be deeply committed to one another. The geography matters, but the intention matters more.

I want a relationship where pursuit is clear, where intention is visible, and where I am not constantly wondering whether I am being chosen. I want to feel secure enough to continue living my own life—to write, create, travel, work, develop my interests, and care for myself—without wondering whether the relationship is quietly disappearing while I am looking the other way.

I want to know that the man I am with has already decided that partnership is something he genuinely wants and is prepared to build.

Perhaps this is also why I have become more conscious of how I have chosen relationships in the past. There were times when I confused convenience with connection, attraction with compatibility, or companionship with partnership. Sometimes I chose people because they were available in the moment, because I was bored, because I wanted someone to talk to, because I wanted company, transportation, food, entertainment, or simply someone to share an afternoon with.

I did not always ask myself whether I was actually choosing a life partner.

That distinction has become clearer to me with age.

A person can be useful to your life without being suitable for your future.

A person can be enjoyable without being compatible.

A person can make you feel wanted without being capable of building what you need.

And I think I am finally learning to ask the deeper question: What am I actually choosing this person for?

That question has changed everything.

I also want to give more of my energy to my mum.

Living with her has made me think about what it means to appreciate the person who has been there. I want to see how I can contribute more to her life, not from a place of obligation or guilt, but from genuine appreciation. I want to see what is possible when two women in different stages of life decide that they are still allowed to transform.

I want to encourage her to take care of herself, to think about her health, her beauty, her environment, and her own sense of possibility. I want to create moments with her that are not simply about sharing a home, but about sharing life.

Because I have also realized that no one else on this earth is responsible for giving me everything I need.

So I want to become someone who can give, too.

Not from depletion.

From overflow.

That is the woman I want to become: a woman with enough energy to create, enough discipline to protect her health, enough confidence to build a serious business, enough softness to love her family, enough standards to choose her relationships carefully, enough wisdom to understand that attention is not the same thing as love, enough ambition to increase her revenue, enough structure to turn her brand into an actual business, enough self-respect to stop chasing what does not align, and enough imagination to build a life that does not have to look like everyone else's.

Perhaps that is also why I have become more conscious of what I have removed from my life.

I have become less interested in the party scene. Less willing to give my energy to relationships that do not nourish me. Less interested in performing a lifestyle simply because it looks impressive from the outside. Less interested in chasing attention for its own sake. Less willing to confuse romantic chemistry with actual compatibility. Less available to people who expect access to me without contributing anything meaningful to my life.

Those removals have created space.

Space to write, to publish, to make music, to explore fashion, to learn design, to think, to become, and to develop a brand that actually feels like me.

Perhaps this is the real lesson of this chapter.

My life has been giving me data.

Every improvement is data. Every loss is data. Every relationship is data. Every habit is data. Every moment of peace is data. Every moment of depletion is data. Every creative breakthrough is data. Every time I feel more like myself is data.

I do not have to judge all of it.

I have to pay attention.

Then I have to make better decisions.

That is why I want to study this year carefully. I want to understand specifically what is working for me and what I have gotten rid of that was quietly working against me. I want to identify the conditions under which I thrive rather than simply assuming that the life that looks successful from the outside is necessarily the life that is right for me.

I know that I thrive with structure. I know that I create more when I have quiet. I know that my creativity expands when I have space. I know that reading makes me think differently. I know that writing helps me understand myself. I know that fashion and design have awakened a part of my creativity I never expected. I know that I have enough material inside me to draft two music albums. I know that I have a voice that deserves to be developed. I know that meaningful conversations make my work richer. I know that travel expands my imagination. I know that healthy relationships inspire me. I know that my family matters to me. I know that my health and appearance affect how I feel about myself. I know that I want longevity. I know that I want financial growth. I know that I want my brand to become more professional. I know that I want my creative work to become commercially valuable.

And I know that I do not want to become so focused on building a future that I forget to experience the present.

My next chapter does not need to be a rejection of this one.

It needs to be an evolution of it.

I do not need to abandon the woman I became in the quiet.

I need to take her into the world.

I need to take everything I learned in this small island life and use it to build a larger one.

I need to keep the discipline without the confinement, the solitude without the isolation, the beauty without the performance, the ambition without the desperation, the relationships without the chaos, the creativity without the financial naivety, the freedom without the lack of structure, the health without obsession, the love without losing myself, the money without making it my identity, and the travel without running away from my life.

Perhaps the goal was never simply to escape the island.

Perhaps the goal was to become expansive enough that the island could no longer define the size of my world.

I still want to be a travelling, money-making nomad. I still want to see the world. I still want to build a successful professional life. I still want to publish books. I still want to create music. I still want to explore fashion and design. I still want to build a beautiful home. I still want comfortable sofas and a view. I still want to love. I still want to experience. I still want to create. I still want to come home.

But now I understand that perhaps the life I imagined and the life I was given do not have to compete with each other.

Maybe this chapter was not the end of the world I wanted.

Maybe it was the place where I learned how to create the woman who could eventually move through that world differently.

Maybe I needed to be here long enough to discover that I could write books, develop my voice, draft music, learn design, understand fashion, build a brand, become healthier, deepen my relationship with my family, direct my energy, become more selective about love, become more intentional about money, and become more conscious of what I actually need from a life.

I do not know exactly where I will go from here.

But I know what I am taking with me.

The discipline, the creativity, the voice, the books, the music, the fashion, the design, the health, the family, the lessons, the discernment, the ambition, and the desire for freedom.

And the understanding that my life does not have to be perfect to be meaningful.

I created the cage because I needed somewhere to grow. I needed a place where I could become productive, organized, creative, healthier, more reflective, and more aware of myself. I needed a place where I could discover parts of myself I did not even know were waiting. I needed a place where I could find my voice.

But perhaps it was never really a cage.

Perhaps it was a greenhouse.

A greenhouse is not built to imprison a plant. It is built to protect something while it is becoming strong enough for a larger world.

And I think that is what I am beginning to understand about this chapter of my life.

I do not need to destroy what protected me.

I need to expand it.

I need to build doors.

I need to build windows.

I need to create a life where I can leave and return, where I can be private and public, where I can be deeply focused and deeply connected, where I can be a creator and a participant, where I can have a rich inner world and still remain fully engaged with the world outside of me.

I do not want to become unavailable.

I want to become discerning.

I do not want to become isolated.

I want to become intentional.

I do not want to become detached from people.

I want to become conscious of who I allow close enough to influence me.

Because I am finally beginning to understand that my environment is part of my art. The people I spend time with, the books I read, the places I visit, the conversations I have, the way I care for my body, the way I spend my money, and the way I spend my time all become material. All of it shapes the woman. All of it shapes the work. All of it shapes the future.

So this is where I am.

I am creating. I am investing. I am experimenting. I am learning. I am living. I am becoming increasingly comfortable with the fact that not every beautiful thing I invest in will immediately pay me back.

Some things are investments in the woman who will eventually know exactly what to do with the opportunities when they arrive.

And perhaps that is what this chapter is really giving me.

Not a finished life.

Not a guaranteed return.

But the time, space, relationships, experiences, and perspective to become someone capable of building one.

I created the cage because I needed somewhere to grow.

Now I am building the doors because I am ready to explore what I have grown into.