The algorithm can wait. I’m building a life that breathes.

Everything Feels Like a Beginning

Not the shiny, first-page kind — but the kind where you keep circling the same questions, noticing how often you’re standing at the edge of the unknown.

I’m fifty-three, and one year ago I walked away from a thirty-year career.

That still feels wild to write.

There was no grand plan.

No five-year projection.

No tidy exit strategy.

Just a quiet knowing in my body that something had ended — even if I didn’t yet know what was beginning.

HIDING BEHIND “EARLY RETIREMENT”

For a while, I hid behind the phrase early retirement.

And even though I didn’t fully believe it, something about saying it felt safer than the truth.

The truth being: I was lost and didn’t have a fooking clue.

Fifty-three and retired?

Yuk.

Even the word has a taste to it — dry, dusty, like cardboard.

But it wasn’t just the word.

I grew up in the ’70s, and retirement came with a sting in the tail.

I was raised to work until I drop.

To stay grateful, stay busy, stay useful.

Stopping — especially early — meant… well, what did it mean?

And this is where I found myself.

Did it mean giving up?

Becoming invisible?

But I wasn’t giving up.

I was waking up.

LEAVING WHAT NO LONGER FIT

I’d outgrown the system I was in.

I worked in social care — a world that says it’s about making a difference while quietly drowning in targets, funding streams, and box-ticking.

Services led by money instead of people.

Outcomes instead of humans.

I watched compassion get squeezed into systems.

I watched good people burn out quietly.

I watched myself being told we were here to make a difference — while knowing, in my bones, that we often didn’t.

It was utterly soul-destroying.

Then I got breast cancer.

Yes, I was equally as surprised.

And for those who’ve never been here — it shakes the life out of you.

You face death.

You meet it.

You give it a handshake.

“You’re early,” I thought. “But I guess we need to meet.”

It arrives with a reckoning.

Very true.

Very firm.

Very loud.

The kind that doesn’t whisper — it roars through your cells and rearranges everything.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

And once that truth landed, there was nothing left to negotiate.

So I left.

THE MESSY MIDDLE

Now I find myself in what I’ve come to call the messy middle.

A space between leaving my career and building something new.

A space that keeps me focused on navigating change — not chasing certainty.

I didn’t leave to build a business.

That was never the plan.

But here I am — following threads, offering space, sharing what’s moved through me.

Yes, I guess that means I’m building something.

Even though it doesn’t feel like a business.

Not in any way I recognise.

I’m not launching.

I’m listening.

And shit, that’s scary.

Maybe you’re here too.

Not at the beginning.

Not quite at the breakthrough.

Just… here.

Where the old world has fallen away, but the new one hasn’t arrived yet.

Where you don’t want to disappear — but you also refuse to perform.

I’m building something slower.

Softer.

Deeper.

Offerings rooted in Angelic Reiki, Gene Keys, and journaling.

How did this even happen?

Space — for those who are called to receive it.

The kind that’s been holding me, and now runs through me.

THE QUESTION OF VISIBILITY

And this brings me to the question of visibility.

I keep being told — kindly, sensibly — that I need to show up more on Instagram.

That if people don’t see me, how will they know I exist?

And I get it.

I really do.

We live in a world where visibility equals legitimacy.

Where if you’re not posting, you’re assumed to be absent.

Where being seen is often confused with being known.

So yes — I understand the logic.

And still…

Instagram makes me cringe.

Not the people — I follow beautiful, inspiring humans.

But reels?

Performing?

Pointing at words floating above my head?

My soul whispers: Really?!

Nope.

Not my language.

Not my nervous system.

I didn’t join Instagram to promote.

I went there to witness.

And when it becomes the place I’m told I should share my work, something in me resists.

Not out of stubbornness — but because it feels like being asked to use a space for something it was never meant to hold for me.

Yes, I’m stubborn.

But maybe that’s just code for:

I know what doesn’t feel right in my bones.

And I’m finally listening.

Still, the voice sneaks in:

How will people find you?

Even in my knowing, the doubt creeps in.

Just show up on Instagram. What’s wrong with you?

The logic fights the instinct.

The world says one thing.

My body says another.

And I’m caught again in that exhausting loop.

Why does this feel hard?

If I’m speaking truth from the heart, shouldn’t it be easy?

Am I hiding?

What am I hiding?

LEAVING THE IDENTITY TOO

Here’s another layer of truth:

For thirty years, I lived inside a job that led me.

Mapped.

Defined.

Predictable.

And I was good at it.

I had an impeccable reputation.

I led.

I coached.

I held space.

People came to me — for advice, for direction, sometimes just to be held.

I was trusted.

Respected.

That mattered to me.

But I also hated the hierarchy.

A system built on levels and titles — who gets listened to because of where they sit, rather than what they sense.

So leaving wasn’t just leaving a job.

It was leaving an identity.

And now…

Now I’m being led by the unknown.

No hierarchy.

No title.

No external validation.

Just whispers.

Threads.

Intuition.

A way of being led that asks for trust rather than control.

Which is both beautiful… and terrifying.

Because when you’ve spent decades leading, letting yourself be led feels wildly vulnerable.

At first, the unknown felt alive.

Spacious.

This new work began to shape itself — not because I decided, but because I listened.

But the unknown doesn’t stay unknown forever.

Eventually, it starts to look like something that should make sense.

And that’s when the doubt creeps back in.

Because when you think you know — and it doesn’t unfold the way you’d hoped?

Shit.

That stings.

That’s the place I keep circling.

Beginning again.

And again.

And again.

Not at the start line — but right here.

In the messy middle.

NOT CLIENTS. PEOPLE.

Some days, my ego wants proof.

Numbers.

Growth.

Signs of life.

Something that says:

Yes, you’re on the right path.

This is where the inner work meets the outer world.

Because when you step out of systems, titles, and certainty — and into work led by trust and timing — you eventually hit a very practical question:

How do I meet people now?

Not clients.

People.

And this is where Instagram stays in the story.

Not because I love it.

But because it’s where we’re told connection lives now.

Where visibility is measured.

Where showing up is quantified.

So yes — I am trying.

I post.

I share words that matter.

I press post even when my stomach tightens.

It doesn’t feel wrong.

It just doesn’t feel like home.

So the question becomes:

If not Instagram… where the hell do we go now?

Where do slow, feeling-led humans gather?

Where do people like us — who feel first and post later — actually belong?

THIS ISN’T CONTENT. IT’S A PRACTICE.

I’m not here to build a brand, a funnel, or a strategy.

I’m here because writing is how I breathe.

Because words are how I make sense of what I’m living.

This isn’t content.

It’s a practice.

My work — Reiki, Gene Keys, journaling, holding space — lives in relationship.

In trust.

In timing that can’t be forced.

So when I ask, If not Instagram, where? — I’m not looking for a platform.

I’m asking something deeper:

Where do we let our work be found — without performing for it?

The truth?

I haven’t a fooking clue.

But maybe that’s the most honest thing I can say right now.

Not knowing doesn’t mean I’m lost.

It means I’m freeing myself from every map that was drawn by someone else’s hand.

I don’t have the answer yet.

But I do know this:

Forcing myself into spaces that don’t honour how I move doesn’t make me more visible.

It just makes me smaller.

So I breathe.

I lean back into myself.

Messy.

Uncertain.

Still here.

Some days I doubt myself — especially when the followers don’t grow.

When the numbers stay still.

When I’m told:

Your people will find you.

And I know it’s true.

I really do.

But that line can feel frustrating.

Exhausting.

Because I’m human — with an ego that wants a sign.

So I breathe.

I lean back into myself.

Messy.

So fooking messy.

And I keep going — even on the days I want to give up.

WHAT I DO IS FEEL

Here’s the truth I keep returning to:

I don’t actually do visibility.

What I do is feel.

I feel into people.

I feel into words.

I feel into spaces that don’t shout — but hold.

My work is slow.

Energetic.

Relational.

It doesn’t want to be rushed, packaged, or bent into shapes that drain it of life.

Some days I want to give up.

And then I don’t.

Because this isn’t about hacking an algorithm.

It’s about staying in integrity.

About building something human in the middle of not knowing.

So yes — fook the algorithm.

Gently.

Lovingly.

With boundaries.

I’ll keep opening the door the only way I know how:

With words.

With presence.

With truth.

And if you’re here too — new to business, new to trusting the whispers, wondering whether to keep going…

Please hear this:

You’re not broken.

You’re not behind.

You might just be living in the messy middle.

And do you know what?

Some days… I bloody love it.