After my layoff swept my table of proof clean, I had to rebuild my creative life from scratch. Here are three practices helping me create without equating my worth with output—lessons about capacity, imperfection, and learning to trust my seasons.

My childhood bedroom is now my office. A wooden desk sits where a twin bed once was, cameras and computers where Barbies once lived. Some days it feels like my past self is still here, just out of reach. This essay is about memory, leaving and returning, and what it means to live beside her again.

I spent years living in the when-then cycle: When I get this, then I’ll be happy. When I reach that milestone, then my real life begins. I chased dream after dream, but every time I arrived, I’d already set my sights on the next. It took an unexpected pause to see the truth — the in-between isn’t a waiting room. It’s where the becoming happens.

I never met my great-grandmother, Concetta. But somehow, she keeps showing up—in my mirror, in my kitchen, and in the quiet rituals passed down through generations. This is a story about memory, family recipes, and the invisible ways we’re shaped by the women who came before us.

Somewhere between 26 and 32, I started shrinking my desires, believing I was too old, too late, too much. But I’m learning that wanting isn’t dangerous—and naming what we want is its own quiet rebellion.