What happens when you show up to create every day for a month — not to go viral, but to recover your creativity? This essay shares what Vlogtober taught me about fear, perfectionism, and finding peace

Every October teaches me how to let go. This year, it’s fear I’m shedding — fear of not being enough, of being judged, of wanting too much. Because joy, I’m learning, doesn’t come from certainty. It comes from trying.

The cold sea licks at my feet, and I ache with yearning—for a cottage by the sea, for salt air and harbor walks. But yearning is not absence; it’s an invitation to live the dream life in the figs already ripe before us.

We’ve been taught to chase a dream life always out of reach—moving the goalpost, climbing the ladder, never quite arriving. But what if the real trap isn’t that we’re behind, but that we’ve bought into the promise itself? In this essay, I explore how to step off the treadmill of striving and name the ordinary moments—coffee in your pajamas, tending the garden—as the dream life already unfolding. With a simple practice I call the Enough Audit, you’ll learn how to notice, honor, and nurture what’s here right now.

I used to think my dream life would begin when I “made it.” But sitting here in Rockport with coffee in hand, seagulls overhead and salt air filling my lungs, I realized: this is it. The dream life isn’t pinned to a board—it’s rooted in presence, contentment, and creativity.

These are the books that became my lighthouses in the messy middle—reminding me that you don’t need to wait for milestones to start living your dream life. If you’ve ever felt untethered or weighed down by “shoulds,” these stories may help you find your own way home.

August has been a practice in slowing down — shaping my days around rituals, cozy recipes, and small joys. This month’s Harvest gathers the grounding habits, tiny luxuries, and moments of presence that carried me through late summer. Think of it as a little care package from my garden to yours.

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.