Dear readers, 

You know how your favorite Webtoon writers and AO3 writers are like, “Sorry guys, my cat died, and I lost a hand, and so on, so I can’t continue writing your favorite stories?”

Yeah, this is about to be one of those posts, hehe. Be warned: be emotionally ready to read these reasons!   

Blogging all started because I wanted a place to rant and show the lessons I’ve learned and have actively been learning on this journey called my 20s.

Because let’s be honest again, everyone swears that your twenties are for mistakes but never tell you the mistakes it’s for. There are TikTok videos, sure, but you lose them after you scroll; at least I have.

I wanted to write down in writing how tough it is to mature in this world through my experience in romance, friendships, healing journeys, and so much more because I am someone who makes mistakes constantly because, babes, I am one naive girl and boy do I have stories for days. 

As I took a step back from blogging, it was still consistently on my mind, and I made the number 1 mistake they tell you not to do when creating and starting a blog.

I paused my new website and will now have to start again, but that’s okay, according to the healing page I follow on Instagram.

It is okay to retry to recreate repeatedly until you can be consistent, which I agree entirely as someone who’s trying to tap into their creative energy per se.

So, why did I pause blogging in the first place? Here are the top 5 reasons I took a step back: 

1. Miss Stress

I was in the last year of my graduate program, coaching basketball for the first time and teaching for the second year in a row. I was so stressed with all three that I was not doing so well in grad school since my focus shifted to ensuring I was doing my best as a coach.

I’d get home at 7 p.m. after a 7 a.m. start and have to hop onto Zoom right away because attendance counted as a percentage of my grade. Mind you guys, I knew nothing about basketball, and neither did my elementary girls.

We had to practice basketball in our small cafeteria after school. Luckily, one player on our team knew basketball and helped us at our games. By help, I mean she brought us to win our first-ever basketball championship.

Then, my class during my second year was a little challenging compared to my first-year kids due to an overwhelming amount of personalities and learning styles to cater to.

Co-Teacher to Rescue

My co-teacher and I had to ensure that we were performing the best we could data-wise. It doesn’t stop there; besides coaching through a cafeteria/learning about basketball rules, and teaching 29 students full of strong personalities, I was failing grad school in my last year. When I say fail readers, I mean I was failing. I had F’s all the way through with no homework turned in.

“Thankfully, my professor was understanding, and I made sure to communicate when I could; my best friend from work kept me posted on how to complete the assignments since we were in the same classes and started the same year, so it relieved the stress for me.“

Still, I would always think about the horrible grades I saw. The outcome through all this chaos, though, is I have my masters officially in education now, my kids grew so much educationally and hopefully emotionally (probably not), and I won my championship, as said. 

2. No Money Honey

Through the stress previously mentioned, my financials started to bug out. I started going paycheck to paycheck and could not afford my lifestyle; by lifestyle, I mean Ubering everywhere and going out every weekend in NYC.

I was overwhelmed with thinking about money and the fact that I didn’t have enough of it while I had a good-paying job for my age. I wish I could freely talk about my finances, but trauma doesn’t allow me to. Maybe as time goes on in my 20-somethings, I can share my journey without shame. But just know, readers, I was struggling.

It impacted most of my friendships because my accessibility decreased, and I couldn’t be the friend that showed up everywhere with no care; instead, I became the friend that said no to everything because I would be short of money and wouldn’t be able to get to where I need to. That was one of many reasons for my lack of availability. Still, it was undoubtedly a big piece that made me hesitate.

Plus, pressure from my parents about money really put me in a sour mood, so because I felt financially helpless, I started to look at my blog, which was initially supposed to be a safe space for you and me readers to relate to navigating adulthood. However, that changed quickly into this get more money thing, which overwhelmed me because, if you don’t know, monetizing a blog is so much work that I can’t do when I am fighting for my life in every aspect.

So, it made me more overwhelmed about writing because I’d think of how to grow my blog, and I became obsessed, which stressed me out of continuing.

3. Depressy Fairy

Depression is a bitch. I will say it. I was in such a rut with school because I couldn’t write, and I just couldn’t do the work because executive dysfunction is also a thing for me. Then, I was so depressed over my class at work and felt like I didn’t show up for them. I said they had strong personalities, which is just sugarcoating our experience.

Most of my class had behavioral conflicts with each other, and most of them needed a lot of support with their learning. You may think, “Hey, that’s your job as a teacher’, yeah, it is, but it gets hard to show up for 29 kids that need everything from you while your life turns to shit. My co-teacher was a great person and a teaching vet and was also getting emotionally hijacked by our group.

My kids would do the absolute most in the classroom; it’d feel like 300 kids in one place. The personalities were something I and my co-teacher were mentally dead from, but in the end, we loved them so much and saw their growth. They taught me so much about teaching, which you will learn when I start writing on my teaching chapter.

Depression Pile Up

But my class did add to my depression because I wanted them to understand everything we taught them. I wanted high scores, but they weren’t getting it because some couldn’t read. Their learning/processing took time, making me feel incompetent as a teacher that my kids weren’t where they were yet. Plus, I felt like I wasn’t showing up as significant as other teachers because other teachers could handle their classes gracefully without asking for help.

Still, here I was, scared to teach without my co-teacher and always yelling at my class to be quiet. So, put together, the feeling of incompetency and comparison, my depression was skyrocketing. But the depressive episodes didn’t stop at school or work; they continued into friendships where I felt like I was not doing enough or deserving of my friends because I just couldn’t show up mentally or emotionally.

I couldn’t text my friends all the time, I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to go out, and my friends and I bumped heads around that. So sprinkle that into the depression jar. Oh, but it doesn’t stop there ( are you stressed yet?), I was depressed from family conflicts. Long story short, Haitian moms are truly a delight to deal with when you want to go out as an adult. 

4. Old Love Bug

I was falling again for the chapter of my life called Baldy. EHEHE.

Just rewriting about him, I was like, omg, he was so great for me. Insert major eye roll. He was, in fact, not the greatest for me because he played me the most and did me the dirtiest out of all the men I’ve ever talked to.

Writing about them was a way for me to release their bond from me, but writing about Baldy made me realize I was just reliving them and hadn’t actually released or processed them the way I had thought I did. I wish this wasn’t a reason, but it was. I was generally missing this man, but it wasn’t him that I was missing. It was more so the treatment he gave me at the start of our situationship that I was missing and craved in those moments.

I think now I am at a place where I can write, feel, and honestly just look back like what the actual fuck LMAO and do my best to move on.

“Do these men plague the shit out of my head!?”

Yes, because when you are consistently played by men, it does play with your mind to the point that it makes you question your worth, especially as a plus-sized, tall black woman. 

5. Grim Reaper Season

Not to pull the dead uncle card, but I am pulling the dead uncle card.

Let’s just say when I thought life couldn’t get any worse, it did. My uncle died along with 6 more people in my family’s life, but his death was the one that hit me the most because I was closer to him. Before my uncle died, 4 people had already died from my mother’s side of the family whose funerals she attended without us present.

At the fourth funeral I attended this time, my mother, who has weird prophetic dreams and intuition, said, “Someone else is going to die.” Barely a week passed, and my uncle died. My uncle and I aren’t as close where we share secrets and talk all the time, but he’s the uncle who is the life of the party, embodies the forever young mentality, comes every Labor Day for Jovert, has way too many kids, and just a cool guy when he visits, just all of a sudden dies.

Our Closeness

We were hi and byes relatives mixed with talking about life, and he’s someone I grew up around where one of his sons and I are the same age. I hadn’t experienced death in such a long time, and I was surrounded by so many deaths in less than a month; every few days, there was a death that had a girl too stunned to speak.

When the man who’s always preaching on living life the best you can to everyone he meets and saying he was forever young, which he lived by, suddenly dies, it shakes you inside. I will tell you guys more about the story of my uncle’s death experience for me in another post.

But, for now, I’m listing it as the fifth reason that took me away from writing and was the finishing touch to my mental numbness from the beginning of the year. 

Back on my BullS***

Overall, my dearest readers, life was such a bitch, and something had to be sacrificed. I had to step back and rethink what Lostinmytwenties was about for me.

It will still be about being chaotic in your twenties and lots of life lessons/ stories I’ve faced.

It will look more like figuring out how to make an email list to keep you posted on the new posts, keeping track of what’s catching your eye the best I can, and doing my best to connect to you.. my readers.

So strap on this journey or continue this journey of still saying, “What the actual fuck” and embrace the ups and downs of blogging with me because don’t let this age fool you; I know nothing about technology.  

What content would you like to hear more about now that I am back to weekly weekend posts!? Let me know in the comments!!