A Little Catch Up

Past, Present and Future Updates!

Through the magic of Substack, 225 more of you have subscribed to receive my essays since I last wrote. So to my old and new friends, hello! Here’s a little update from me. If you’ve forgotten about how you found me or what I write about, here’s a link to my About Me Page. From my archive, my most referenced Sabbatical piece is here and my favorite humor pieces can be read here and here.

Past:

2024 was a year that challenged me in ways that I did not expect nor wanted. However, I learned a lot about my own sense of integrity, how to navigate tough conversations, and my level of resilience. My garbage year turned into fertile soil and those seeds planted reluctantly have bloomed into a beautiful bed of roses. 2025 has been a blessing.

Last year, I kept telling myself, “I can do hard things.” While that kept me going during times of deep grief, I realized that in the school of Law of Attraction¹, it means I’m attracting hard things. I reflected on my belief that things had to be hard to be worthwhile. This year, I’ve leaned into “it can be easy” and I’m happy to report that it can, in fact, be easy.

Back to Shining

Another big milestone for me was in January 2025, my sister and I decided it was time to end our podcast, Build A Wealthy Spirit, after four wild years. I wrote my reflections about our experience in our newsletter.

210. End of the Build A Wealthy Spirit Era

One thing I did not expect was the flood of love we received from friends, family members and strangers who had listened to our podcast at some point. It was so sweet to have so many people reach out and tell us that something we shared helped them make a positive change in their personal finances and their relationships. I’m proud of Build A Wealthy Spirit and even though we won’t be recording more episodes, that time of our lives is in a time capsule forever on your favorite podcasting platform.

Present:

Last year, Write of Passage, David Perell’s online writing course, shut down forever. I loved working with the WoP team and am grateful I had two great years with them.

From those ashes, an unexpected phoenix arose for me. A student who’s essays I had edited, reached out and asked if I would be interested in writing coaching. I decided to try it out and have been partnering with six writers since January.

It’s been so meaningful to work with such talented writers who are eager to write, publish and share their personal stories. They each have their own specialty and I’m learning a ton through reading their pieces and following their journeys.

Check out their writing!

Harrison

,

Amit Ghosh

,

Kelly Davis

,

Richa Riddering

,

Chris James

and

Claudia Ng

.

If you’d like to join us, you can find out more about partnering with me here! Chances are we are well matched if you’ve written online, are looking to share more consistently, want to refine your craft and also build an audience in a meaningful way.

Through these conversations with writers, I’ve been learning a lot about writing craft, AI and marketing² specifically and will have some thoughts to share about modern writing coming up.

Future:

I’m going to Paris!

My mom is retiring next week. Ten seconds after she made that decision, she booked a ticket to visit a friend in France for the first time. When my mom asked me to join her, I listed one zillion reasons why I couldn’t make it happen including needing to work out for a body transformation³ challenge I’m in.

In reality, I work remotely, I have a flexible schedule and humans invented body calisthenics. So I didn’t have a good reason to stay home.

I’m now very excited to explore Paris (and likely Brussels!) with her. Outside of flying through Europe, my mom has never visited the continent. It’ll be fun to try and keep up with her fast feet and never ending energy as we explore such an iconic city.

Maybe We’ll Recreate This in Paris

1. Not a real school though I am in a LoA meetup in town. The people in it are so happy and so excited for me when I have a random synchronicity to share. I’m convinced every city needs one.

2. tl;dr everyone hates marketing

3. This is a strange one for me because I’m not innately obsessed with transforming my body but this app started a competition for $$$ and suddenly I’m doing things like lifting and eating my bodyweight in protein.