the path disappears

what does it really mean to become the person you would like to be? + 10 things worth sharing

Hello dear reader :) As you may have noticed, I have rebranded my substack as promised. I have outgrown the alias “nomad nicole”, and wanted this newsletter to more accurately reflect what I’ve been writing about most recently. You can expect more or less the same reflective content, that I am now owning up to. Feel free to peruse my new “about” page, and let’s see how this new chapter unravels :) thanks for being here. (note: this is a late post, originally written in January 26th)

Greetings all —this is now my third¹ attempted draft in the month of January to collect some beginning-of-year thoughts. I have tried multiple angles and clearly not been very happy with any of the outcomes, so I’m coming back to my old reliable “10 things worth sharing” format, that always saves the day when I’m blocked (or very busy).

Normally I would start with a reflection, but seeing as this is where I usually get stuck, I’ll just get right to it (and, mind you, I’m going through a lot of changes so, to be fair, most of my reflections have not been fully experienced).

1. On quitting social media, short-form content, and movie & music streaming platforms. Okay, I’m bundling all of these together because they follow a similar theme of simply minimizing my digital consumption, and turning to a more intentional approach. I’ve said this before—but I’m aware of how extreme some of these sound, and (most of these) won’t be permanent. That being said, this has been truly a refreshing experience, and I do recommend everyone to at least try it for 30 days.

   The last time I remember my headspace being this quiet was almost 10 years ago, back in early high school, when I refused to get any form of social media. And after almost 2 months of going digitally minimalistic, I now feel increasingly aware of every form of content I consume, and much more involved in the decision of whether I want to consume it or not. I hardly scroll on anything other than goodreads, and my phone has become a delightfully boring tool to carry with me. I exchange phone numbers with people I meet, and we recommend books to each other or make plans to meet again. I go out for walks and sit on benches. I take photos of sunsets and send them to my friends. I spend hours a day making my own meals, and the day just seems to go on and on. Everything feels incredibly slow, and days seem to hold so much more space for me. I feel more in touch with what I want, instead of what I want to show to others I have, or want, or do with my life. I feel increasingly uninterested in comparing myself with others, and I can’t actually remember the last time I did. I feel more myself, and I trust my choices more for this.

   Granted, I miss music and I miss movies. But how often do we numb our thoughts with music, and our days with movies, and shows, and videos? Can you tell apart the yearning of listening to a great song from the need to fill up the silence? To be honest, I don’t think I could anymore, and my cleansing intended to strip me down from all the noise, and to find just that. The moments so rare and so special, that only a good song is worth breaking the silence for.

   So, I think both social media and short-form content will be somewhat permanently removed, at least from this period of my life. And while I will not stop watching movies or listening to music, I am also somewhat permanently cancelling all my memberships to streaming platforms, and simply tuning in to a good song when I feel like it from time to time.

2. I have read 8 books since the year started! One of the advantages of quitting short-form content, is how much more time I have to consume all the long-form content I’ve been meaning to for years! I’ve always been a fan of owning my own book copies, but what I’m recently realizing is that owning something makes you feel you will have it forever, so you take your time with this thing for granted —hence why I’ve probably only read 30% of the books I owned. So I finally committed to using Libby, and I gotta say, for a fellow ADHDer like myself, borrowing 6 books that I have to finish in 21 days is the most fun challenge you can ever give me. And it really has worked for me! You can follow the books I read and my reviews on goodreads, and I may mention them here from time to time. The last book I finished this morning was The Eyes are the Best Part by Monica Kim, and I am now aggressively looking for more books in the “I support women’s wrongs” category. So, if you have any feminist horror fiction (that is not Carrie), please send it my way!

3. On 30 days of doing pilates. Alright, the 30 days isn’t up yet, and I will admit in the 26 days of this month so far, I have probably skipped about 3 days, but honestly? Coming from someone who had taken only one(!) pilates class before this year started, I still think this is pretty damn impressive. My abs are almost permanently sore, and while I will definitely not do pilates this often come February, I’m really loving this off-season, low-impact, class-format training. The last two years of training for a marathon and a half-ironman were pretty lonely as I increased intensity, and they involved a lot of hyping myself up and coaching myself through the sessions. So it feels very nice to drive to a place at a fixed time everyday and have them tell you exactly what to do and how to do it for an hour. I have also been running everyday since the year started, and have noticed how pilates has helped improve my running form. I can also do >2 pull-ups now, and my waist size decreased 2 inches this month! I really do recommend it, especially if you’re someone like me who —aside from the 60-90 minute daily workout— is sitting in front of a laptop all day.

4. On going whole-food plant-based! Going back to this diet has been a dream of mine since I did it for half a year in 2021, and then stopped for a while. Back then, it was the healthiest I’d been, but I was living by myself and it was a very easy thing to do and monitor. When I moved in with friends, it became increasingly harder to only eat whole foods, though, and it slowly deteriorated into pretty unsustainable habits all the way into 2024. I am now baking my own whole food plant based cookies when I’m craving dessert (they are just ok though), and eating the most veggies and legumes I’ve eaten in a while! My overly sensitive stomach definitely appreciates :)

5. I’m now taking lots of supplements! Seeing as Vancouver winters are dark and cold, and I have not seen the sun in two to three months, I finally started taking Vitamin D supplements last month at everyone’s recommendation, and I was impressed by the pretty evident and immediate shift in my mood. I have nothing to compare it to except like a thin veil of melancholy being lifted from above everything, and random things that were making me sad that normally wouldn’t, don’t make me sad anymore! So, seasonal depression is definitely a thing, people! And it made me wonder what other supplements I could benefit from taking. So given that my iron levels are perpetually low, I have started taking iron supplements, and vegan omega-3, b-12, magnesium, and ashwagandha! (I gotta say these last two have really helped with my levels of stress— I’m not even sure I feel stressed anymore, physically & mentally speaking, which is insane.)

6. from “Relationships are just coevolutionary loops”: Probably one of the most beautiful ways I’ve seen relationships be described.

   When I meet a person who is truly, profoundly themselves, I sometimes think of a letter Charles Darwin sent to Joseph Hooker in January 1862 after receiving a package of orchids.
   

   “Good heavens,” Darwin wrote about the Angraecum sesquipedale, an orchid from Madagascar with a nectary as long as his forearm, ”what insect can suck it?”

   There must exist a pollinator moth with a tongue longer than any that has ever been observed, he conjectured later. The moth and the orchid must have evolved in dialogue.
   
   This is what I infer when I see someone who is comfortable in their unique strangeness, too. There probably exists someone who enabled that evolution of personality. A parent, a friend group, a spouse. It is rare for people to come into themselves if no one is excited and curious about their core, their potential. We need someone who gives us space to unfold. — Henrik Karlsson

   Reading this immediately made me think of the unique strangeness in my partner, which is what instantly drew me to him, and the eternal gratefulness I have for all the people in his life before me that allowed it to unfold. It also made me feel nostalgic about my own strangeness— which, devoid of spaces to support it, had been slowly vanishing— and is now rekindled thanks to him.

7. the path just disappears:

   “How do you know that you are on your path – because it disappears. That’s how you know. How do you know that you are really doing something radical? Because you can’t see where you are going. That’s how you know.”

   —David Whyte

   This is definitely not the first or last time you will find me quoting David Whyte in here, but this quote has been in my head a lot recently. I think the last few years have been characteristically different for me in that I’ve spent more time anxious from decision paralysis than I’ve ever been used to. Maybe some of that was due to my slowly growing out of touch with myself and increasingly sensitive to what other people thought of me. But I find that lately I’m not as bothered by it, or the large, looming abstract questions of what to do with my life; and my existential self-doubt has been replaced by a more pragmatic kind of self-doubt, that is instead inviting, exciting, and ambitious even.

8. From a note by “a constellation”:

   “i think the issue with a lot of the internet we’ve made nowadays is that people want to know how to do things, and how to improve themselves and bla bla bla… in short: many people don’t want the art as much as they want the tools to help them feel like they have the capacity to make the art.” — olivia rafferty

   I am noticing, as I move away from content consumption, that I am growing slightly allergic to (or at the very least, cautious of) the passive consumption of curated, digestible “how to” content that creates, mind you, a similar feeling to that of buying books that you will never read (—you feel smarter by just buying them!).
   

   At the risk of sounding cynical, most of these advices are probably developed by people ad-hoc, and are more likely ideal representations of what a perfectly successful system would look like. In reality, I think you do by just getting started; and creators consistently showing up probably teaches us more about their success than a lot of their content actually does. The “right” system is never quite as beautiful, and while any creator has their viewer’s interest at heart, they kind of do rely on your perpetual stay in consumption-land. Ironically, I realize most of my writing falls in a similar genre, which is to say, don’t stop writing it if it pleases you! I believe there is value in sharing the how’s —by many people: the more the merrier, and in however many ways it takes to resonate with the right person— but consuming all of it? Not so much value. There’s a clear distinction in where each path ultimately takes you.

9. I adopted a pet slug! — Back in December, after a special² day with Ethan in the BC forest, I helped him forage some greens and mushrooms to stuff in our raviolis. I was tasked with washing the greens (washing foraged stuff is, at least to me, quite scary), so I was incredibly thorough. Any less thorough, and I would’ve missed Horton —who we decided to name after, most likely, its species name Arion hortensis. Horton is possibly at early stages, judging by size; and also recently grew EYES (I think)! Which was exciting. I’m unsure of what is next in the cycle, so if you know a thing or two about slugs, do let me know (Arya, I’m looking at you!)

   

   not Horton, but pretty much! This is how its eyes started looking after a few weeks (or maybe it’s poop?)

   He might be the only thing I can care for at the time, given how low maintenance he is, but it’s nice to have a buddy while Ethan’s away.

10. Lastly, I know January is over now, and oh man has January been a year long. I’m very anxious about the state of things —things, in this case, being everything from politics, to technology, to climate. In times like this, it is incredibly hard not to be anxious, and thus, distracted; but talking about these issues and processing them is important —I’d like to think. I’m incidentally also limiting (at the very least attempting to) my exposure to incoming news, as I worry my immediate reactivity may stir me from actual, purposeful action, but this post and this video were particularly good at starting conversations that were ultimately helpful for me.

Finally, I’ve been really liking Sherry Ning’s Fitzgerald-esque writing, much to my partner’s disapproval (although he doesn’t say so, but I know). This one I really liked, and it may have prompted me to finally publish this damned post:

You’re scared of happiness, the way it would demand you to become someone else, someone more real and honest. So, you tyrannize happiness. You’re in love with your own suffering—punishment without crime, prejudice multiplied by pride. Your own little personal propaganda centers around how suffering is noble, how succumbing to whimsy is beneath you, without realizing that you’re tied to the habits and fears that you’ve already let shape you.

Sherry Ning - Just do whatever you like

This one kinda speaks for itself— How absolutely scary it is to go all in on what you want, because suddenly, the path disappears, and you don’t know where you’re going.

Much love,
Nicole 🌊

1. I went to my unpublished drafts and realized I now have 25(!!!) completely finalized drafts that never saw the light of day. 25! For context, I have published 25 essays, meaning that currently only 50% of what I spent hours (!) writing here makes it out of my drafts. Isn’t that sad! At the very least I wonder if it is common?

2. It was very special.