I Think I’ve Been Living Out Loud My Whole Life...
So I finally gave the oversharing a permanent address.
For years, I’ve lived by one rule: "If I say it first, you can’t use it against me later." So yeah, buying a domain with my own damn name on it and creating a permanent corner of the internet to say whatever’s on my mind? I’m sure that’ll ruffle a few feathers. And I’m fully aware that this "digital diary" is about to become a beautifully organized ammunition stockpile for anyone who already isn’t particularly fond of little ol’ me. That’s fine. Because this is where I’m telling the whole story, the past, the present, the pretty parts, the ugly ones, and everything that usually gets edited down before it makes it to social media. It's also where I’m putting the thoughts that are too big for a caption, too complicated for a Facebook status, and occasionally just questionable enough that I probably should’ve left them in the group chat. Will something I write end up being discussed at somebody else’s dinner table? Probably. Could I piss somebody off? Almost certainly. Will someone screenshot a paragraph, send it to their friend and say, “Girl, did you see what she wrote?” God, I hope it’s at least a good paragraph. At this point, I’ve spent enough time worrying about who might misunderstand me, dislike me, talk about me, or use pieces of my story against me. So.... fuck it, I reckon. They can’t weaponize a story I’m no longer afraid to tell. I have started approximately 47 different things in my life because I had an idea at an inappropriate hour and thought, “You know what would be cool?” This little blog is apparently number 48...
Welcome to Off the Record!
Although “welcome” feels a little formal considering there's a very good chance I'm eventually going to tell you things on here that should've stayed between me, my best friend circle, and whatever poor bartender happened to be within earshot. But we'll get there. If you know me, or you've followed me for more than five minutes honestly, you probably already know that I am not particularly good at keeping my life neatly packaged. I'm a mom. I work. I own a business. I'm building a creator brand...or trying to. I have entirely too many ideas. I buy things on Amazon like I'm personally responsible for keeping them profitable (absolutely ticks my partner off). I change my hair when I get bored. I start projects before finishing other projects (also ticks him off). I occasionally decide at 11 PM that tonight is obviously the appropriate time to reinvent my entire life. And somehow, underneath all of that chaos, I'm always trying to build something.
Sometimes it's a business. Sometimes it's a career. Sometimes it's a relationship. Sometimes it's myself. And that last one has probably been the biggest project of all...
Social media gets the short version.
That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. You can know a surprising amount about someone online while simultaneously knowing absolutely nothing about them. You see the picture. The announcement. The funny Facebook status. The business launch. The mom moment. The TikTok Storytime squeezed into a couple of minutes. The win. Sometimes even the breakdown. But you rarely get everything that happened between those moments. And my life has lived almost entirely in the “between.” There have been chapters I'm incredibly proud of. There have been chapters I would very much like to remove from circulation. I've made good decisions. I've made spectacularly bad ones. I've loved people. I've lost people. I've become a mother. I've built things from nothing. I've watched things fall apart. I've had moments where I genuinely thought, “Okay. Maybe I've finally got this shit figured out.” Life usually corrected that assumption pretty quickly. But somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to pretend that growth means becoming someone who never screws up again. I think growth is becoming someone who can look at what happened, own her part in it, learn something from it, laugh when appropriate, cry when necessary, and keep fucking going. And I've got a lot of stories from that process.
So... why “Off the Record?”
Because you know when you're talking to somebody and they suddenly lean in a little closer and say: “Okay, but this is off the record...” and immediately you know the conversation is about to get good? That's what I want this place to feel like. Not a perfectly curated lifestyle blog. Not me sitting behind a laptop pretending I've unlocked the secrets to motherhood, business, relationships, beauty, happiness or adulthood.
Dear God, please do not take life advice from me without reviewing the supporting documentation first. This is the other stuff. The story behind the Facebook post. The lesson I learned three years after I probably should have learned it. Motherhood when nobody is taking the cute pictures. Building businesses while simultaneously Googling things I probably should already know. Beauty products I spent entirely too much money on. Relationships. Friendships. Ambition. Mistakes. Starting over. Things I'm proud of. Things that still make me cringe in the shower six years later. And the occasional story that sounds completely fabricated but, unfortunately for me, has receipts.
I honestly don't have a lesson to teach you...
And I think that's important. I'm not starting this because I've reached some magical point where I can look backward and explain exactly why everything happened. I'm still in it. I'm still raising my kids. Still building businesses. Still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up despite being very much grown. Still learning how to balance ambition with actually enjoying the life I'm working so hard to create. Still trying things. Still failing at things. Still changing my mind. Still becoming. Maybe that's what I actually want to document. Not the polished version once everything works out. The middle. The part where you don't know yet. Because I think more of us are living there than we're willing to admit.
So, here we are, my peeps...
I don't really know what Off the Record will become. Maybe it'll be funny. Sometimes it'll probably get heavy. There will absolutely be oversharing. There will be motherhood, beauty, business, relationships, weird shit I learned on the internet, things I bought that you probably don't need but I'm going to show you anyway, and stories that require significantly more context than TikTok allows. Some entries might actually have a point. Others may end with both of us wondering what the hell we just talked about. BUT it'll be real. Because if I'm going to put another piece of myself on the internet for people to mock or talk about, I at least don't want to create another place where everything has to look perfect. I've spent enough of my life worrying about how the story looks from the outside. I honestly just wanted somewhere I can actually tell it. So consider this your seat at the table. Grab a drink. Get comfortable. I've got some shit to tell you. Off the record, of course.
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