I don’t know about any of you, but I went into the year of 2023 expecting the best year of my life.
Call me crazy but this was based solely on the fact that my lucky number is 23, so naturally how could this year not be the ultimate greatest year of all time??
Optimistic doesn’t even describe how sure I was that this year was going to be my year.

Spoiler; this year was one of the toughest yet.
Although a lot of things were coming together, just as many things were simultaneously falling apart.

Getting engaged was an incredibly exciting start to the year, but the few months that followed were the foreshadowing of a tumultuous road ahead.
The stress of planning and making decisions over a year in advance was kind of a nightmare to someone spontaneous and impulsive like myself.
It was also somewhat of a sad reminder of how incredibly tiny our inner circle is.

Gelin (my fiancé) is busy most of the time with family, the kids, the business… his time to dedicate to friends is basically non-existent.
The realization that our wedding was going to be very small, and a lot of the traditional events leading up to that day may or may not make sense being that I have no bridal party, was kind of depressing.
I’ve seen my friends and family get married and have literally hundreds of people show up for them.
That won’t be us, but that’s okay!
To be honest, I’m used to being an after thought in people’s lives at this point.
One of the many reasons I keep to myself is because I hate being disappointed when I give all of my love & effort to someone, then when it comes time for them to show up for me, I’m just not as important as other people in their lives. Just not a priority. Not worth the effort.
Instead of being disappointed all the time, I learned that I can only count on me.
Plus, I keep reminding myself,
It’s our day and as long as we’re happy, it’s all good.
Silver lining; my best friend will be there standing next to me, and he makes up for a full bridal party on his own.
Our beloved friends & families will be there. (mostly)
No drama.
No color coded dresses to agree on (other than my own).
No petty BS.
Just me & my bestie being goofballs in a giant bridal suite.
I think I’ll survive.
The closer the wedding gets, the easier it becomes to envision the end result.
Honestly, since the beginning a lot of it has just fallen into place as it’s supposed to.
I met my photographer, Maxwell, at a concert.
My officiant is my friend Rachel, who’s loosely responsible for my fiancé and I ending up together in the first place.
The wedding band members (The Wolves) are all close personal friends of ours, whom we adore.
I also *magically* found the perfect dress in a sample store and I’m convinced it’s one of a kind.
I searched the internet high and low and couldn’t find anything like it anywhere.
It fits like it was made for me & I can’t wait to wear it.
I guess I didn’t expect wedding planning to be easy, but once I started having fun with it and embracing the stress, I felt the anxiety dissipate and things began aligning.
Only issue is the after…
When people ask what our plans are for after the wedding, I get a little sad.
Right now, we don’t have a house together so we spend most of our time at my condo.
It’s not terribly small but when me, my fiancé, his kiddos, and my doggo are all there chillin, it feels a little cramped.
Not to mention, I want my bonus kids to have their own rooms to go to.
I want them to have their own safe space in our home, and right now that isn’t a possibility for us.
It will be soon, but I’m impatient.
All my life I’ve wanted a warm, cozy home with a loving family inside.
I can close my eyes and imagine the feelings of solidity and serenity envelop me.
The freedom of having a beautiful homestead to build & grow together.
It’s going to be my golden era.

While all of that was happening;
My fiancé’s business was also taking a major hit.
During the start of my ‘business within a business’ there, I had been subjected to working with a crew of 3 men, who really were just adult boys.
I never felt comfortable there when all of them were working.
Were they great barbers? Yes.
Did they come to work and do their jobs well? For the most part.. yes.
But they were also wildly unprofessional, absolutely unfiltered & crude at times, unreceptive to being asked to keep their stations clean… they were overall just way too comfortable working for my fiancé.
They were fully booked all the time; so they were making money, which meant we were too.
Everything stayed status quo.. at least for a little while.
Towards the middle of the year, all of the 3 barbers who I’m referring to ended up consecutively leaving the shop in pretty shit ways.
One of them actually tried to buy our building, but he didn’t have the capital, so he decided it’d be smart to go down the street and open up a smaller, carbon copy of our shop in a more affordable building.
If you’re in the beauty industry, you get it. DON’T. FUCKING. DO. THIS.
It is considered extremely taboo to leave a shop and open your own within such close proximity, especially with no personal ties to the town itself.
It’s like when Larry David opened up Latte Larry’s coffee shop right next door to Mocha Joe’s coffee shop in that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Just for the sake of taking customers away from Mocha Joe, Larry opened his store out of spite.
He called it a “spite store”, which is fucking hilarious until it happens in real life.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here you go;
Via UrbanDictionary.com;
‘Spite Store‘: When a place of business angers you, so you open a competing store out of spite.

In the hair world, it’s an easy way to burn bridges not only with town locals and clients, but also other shop owners in your area.
This barber was taught everything he knew in my fiancé’s shop.
He didn’t grow up in the town, he doesn’t chill there, he doesn’t have friends there.
He chose this shady route because he had to copy our business model, bad mouth us, and duplicate our rolodex because he’s never had the ability to culminate his own success.
The choice he made was a majorly frowned upon, dirty choice.
However, the genius part of it was how he somehow got under our other barbers’ skin and convinced him to leave our shop and work in his.
This came as a shock to me because these 2 employees would always argue back and fourth.
They hated each other most days, so to see our longest standing employee leave to go work for the barber who talked shit about him every time he left the room was pretty unexpected.
The 3rd barber who left gave us no notice, with a book full of appointments.
Also very taboo.
Apparently he went to go “manage a new shop” in a different town, which cracked me up because he was the worst employee I’ve ever seen here.
Absolutely incompetent in every way.
But good luck to the staff he’s leading out there… god speed.
ANYWAY, the lesson learned there was not to invest time in people who don’t have your best interest at heart.

Unfortunately, there are no friends in business.
As much as you want your employees to feel comfortable at work, and you want to build solid relationships with them, no one is going to carry your business the way you do.
No one is going to care as much as you do.
Luckily we have since hired 2 new barbers that are nice, professional, and good at cutting hair.
The poison was sucked out of the shop with or without our input, and yes, that was hard and uncomfortable.
My fiancé isn’t used to watching his money or budgeting it correctly.
He needed to learn these lessons one way or another, and he did.
I’m confident that between his business getting back to where it needs to be, and my baby businesses all growing and becoming self-sustaining streams of income, along with these new lessons learned, we’ll be fine.

With all that going on, I’ve just overall been pretty morbidly depressed.
Very up and down with my emotions.
Feelings of being stuck in one place for too long.
Feelings of failure, emptiness, and hopelessness.
I’ve sacrificed a lot of travel this year.
I need travel to stay normal.
I wilt like a plant in the dark without the ability to get out of my daily routines –
I want to explore the world more than anything else. I have a huge fear I won’t ever get to.
Unfortunately, between the wedding and the business issues, money was tighter this year than previous years.
It seemed that every time I caught up and had a little stack set aside for fun, something would happen and that money would be gone.
To list a few random examples;
The time my brand new car got vandalized 3 days after I bought it.
Or the time my HOA decided to randomly charge all the residents an extra $1,000 on top of our dues, mortgages, and taxes for no reason at all. (hillbilly mafia)
Or the time I bought a new iPhone in cash then a potted plant fell on top of it due to a speaker vibrating on the shelf right above.
Or definitely maybe one of the times I was so depressed, doom scrolling on my couch that I justified and impulsively purchased ridiculous material items that I should not have purchased, one of which I am just now paying off… took me almost a year.
Am I happier having this designer closet full of impulsive manic depressive purchases?
LOL ABSOLUTELY NOT BABES.
In fact, I think I cry more now than I ever did when I had almost nothing.
Mo money mo problems right?
Yeah, so the obvious lesson here was money management and mental health being prioritized and not covered up in designer clothes, bags, and shoes. ..& make up.. & jewelry. (embarrassing)
I’m happy to say that right now, I’m a few payments away from being 100% debt free for the new year, with an almost flawless credit score.
That’s now my biggest project, my biggest goal ahead.
I had to shift my mindset entirely.
I managed to save a substantial nest egg working as my own boss for the last 3 years.
I’ve been intentionally putting money away that I’d otherwise be spending on something stupid.
I learned this lesson later in life than most.
But truth be told, I really didn’t have money until later in life.
There wasn’t much to manage when I was just barely covering my mortgage and bills.
But even back then, somehow I made it work.
The money was always there when I needed it to be there.
If I can live off of basically nothing, I can bank money now and possibly, god willing, have the ability to retire at a younger age.
That’s what matters to me at this point in my life.
Actually possessing sustainable independent wealth, not just appearing to have it, or temporarily having it.

I know a ton of people who can relate to 2023 being an overall difficult year for them.
The economy, job losses, pet losses, sickness.. it’s just all been so much.
Maybe it’s a painful collective cleansing of all that no longer serves us in our lives?
Or maybe for some it was about letting things go and accepting that time is fleeting and we’re given so little of it, so treasure every moment.
Or maybe some years are just shit and some years are great and we have no control over it & that’s all.
What I can say for certain is that I’m glad this year is behind us.
And as hard as they were, each and every lesson learned was absolutely necessary in order to level up in this next season of life.
With a new year comes new goals, new opportunities..
I’m excited to allow my creative energies to shine thru again.
(I’ve got a few projects I‘m super proud of in the works for 2024)..
Taking all I’ve learned this past year into the next feels so grounding to me.
I feel older, wiser, more balanced and aligned internally.
Almost like this is without a doubt where I’m supposed to be right now.
I’m ready to start this next year off with no expectations, just the mindset of being my best, most balanced self.

At the end of my life, I want to look back on every beautiful, messy, colorful memory and smile, knowing I lived the fullest life I possibly could.

Wishing you an extraordinary 2024.