Last time I wrote a post like this, I was in Portland with a desk in the corner of our living room. Now, I’m in Connecticut, still in a corner, but this time I’m in our office.

My life and my work have upgraded. That’s the heart of this post and what I want to tell you about.

My head was wrapped around writing something else to share today. It’s a list I’ll share tomorrow about all the financial resources I’m turning to in order to better understand my finances and my own money story. With that post it’s like I wanted to skip to the good stuff without giving you context of how I got there in the first place. I wanted to jump to the part where I tell you about all the ways I’m solving the reality without telling you first about the reality. This is a personal blog though and it warrants personal stories.

My stomach is turning because vulnerability on the internet is still hard no matter how many times you jump into the deep end.

I grew up surrounded by scarcity mindset and consistently being encouraged to embrace risk aversion because in my family’s eyes there was no reward at the end of risk, there was just pain and loss of what we did have, which as an immigrant family was always barely just enough.

My boyfriend and I both run our own businesses as content creators. We’ve always been close thought partners as creatives and bouncing ideas off of each other has always been fun but during quarantine we took our brainstorming partnership to the next level. Before February 2020, we would typically come to each other with ideas that were already half-baked, but now we start with empty post-it notes, sharpies, and a blank wall.

Whether you’re at the beginning of your journey with brainstorming or a seasoned expert, I hope this breakdown helps spark some new ideas or ways to approach ideas.

I grew up never being asked if I was happy. I didn’t realize this was strange until I got older. I took it as fact that since my family didn’t do feelings, no one else did. They didn’t talk about the hard or the good, so I never thought to even have those conversations with myself let alone someone else.

In retrospect I understand that my family mostly just strived for survival and any extra time in the day was spent sleeping, eating, or going down different spirals that would become intergenerational trauma.

I say this with little judgement because from my family I’ve learned we’re all just trying our best, even when someone else’s best isn’t necessarily how you would do it or live it or heal it.