Break Your Promises in Life
You don't have to settle for the life you promised yourself when you were 25.
You don't even have to settle for the life you promised yourself now if it's no longer serving you.
Life is a constant evolving and shifting force with factors that happen outside of expectations that cannot be controlled. To demand yourself to live the idea of a single life you promised yourself is to deny yourself the possibility of growth and expansion. It denies yourself the possibility of living other lives in the one life you get to live.
As we approach the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026, I'm often in a reflective mood over the state of my life and where I was in the past and where I want to go in the future. If you asked me when I was 21 who I was going to be when I was 30, I would have more than happily given you my ten year plan of how I was going to singlehandedly create a one woman media empire through YouTube and my books, commanding a social media army through tweets and videos as a force of good on the Internet. In fact, I'm pretty sure I had more than three vision boards and goal sheets formulating this exact plot. I was so vocal about my goals in life that everyone in my life knew me as the YouTube girl and would regularly check in on me and my channel to see how things were going (okay that part may have been because I was also grinding for more subscribers, but you gotta give credit where credit was due for my younger ambitious self).
Nowadays, I enjoy challenging myself more on hobbies that keep me off my phone than on it. Twitter was bought under the control of an egomaniac billionaire who renamed it to something stupid and destroyed any semblance of a worthwhile algorithm so remaining on the site became a waste of time. YouTube culture died with the birth of TikTok and I wasn't going to fall down that rabbit hole of obnoxious nonsense either. You can catch me dancing in my kitchen while making waffles, but not in a parking lot to some thirty second soundbite for a chance “oh neat” moment before the viewer scrolls on to the next “oh neat” video. My dreams of fame and fortune dwindled as I fell into a routine of corporate work and exploring living my own life offline, discovering that I enjoy being an introverted nobody more than being known. I enjoy consuming media just for the sake of enjoyment rather than following what’s trendy. It now offends me when people ask if I plan on monetizing my crafts and hobbies. I've published two books, with a third on the way, but don't mind the books are not even close to bestsellers that I imagined would define my empire. I don't even care if I break even on them for the costs to publish them, to be honest. I cultivate my own joy from my relationship to my writing and truly enjoy publishing my novels, even if no one but me and like two very nice friends reads them. My calm life at 30 is far from the one woman media empire I envisioned myself living at 21.
But I'm currently living my best life, the happiest I've ever been in it, and I'm doing it while living my 21 year old self’s worst nightmares.
If I forced myself to live the life I promised myself at 21, I would be miserable. Fame and living inauthentically to fit an audience’s perception of me didn’t suit me. I like drinking whiskey and being a foul-mouthed, incredibly socially awkward nerd too much to maintain the flawless facade needed to lead a one woman media empire. I like being able to breathe and take life slower than the fast paced pedal to the metal style required to find success on the Internet. To deny myself the chance to experience life offline at a slower pace and without achieving fame just to satisfy the wants of my 21 year old self who wanted the opposite of those things would deny myself the opportunity to develop into this version of myself, which is so far my favorite version of me.
Thanks to the efforts of my 21 year old self, I still got to be somewhat famous in my life. Not a super praise-worthy amount of fame, but enough of it for me to have a taste of what I never want to happen to me again. It was a worthy effort to remain true to my values for that period of my life and the person I was back then. But now, I get to be extremely boring in life and it is awesome. My days are spent working, walking my dog, reading, and working on crafts as I watch weird movies. Occasionally, I meet with friends, try new hobbies, and just do my best to be a better person than I was the day before. It doesn't always happen, but it doesn't hurt to try.
This was not the life I wanted for myself at 21. In fact, this was the exact opposite of a life I wanted for myself. There was a bit of pain in the transition as I reckoned with the expectations set by my younger self and the reality set in my life, where I felt like I could've been doing more to achieve what my younger self dedicated so much of our time and energy to fulfilling. I felt a lot of guilt and inner turmoil over failing my previous expectations in life.
But, ultimately, denying my previous promise to myself on the life I wanted to live was the best thing I could've done. It's not fair to my future self either to set high expectations, such as whether I should have kids, if I should get married, etc., when they could fail for any reason at any time, or succeed at another time than desired but I didn't allow them to succeed because of the narrow view I held for how to live my life. From my experience, it's best to go with the flow and let yourself guide you through it, for better or for worse. Even the “worse” loops of life can allow for growth. Allowing yourself the flexibility of opportunity to a new life outside of previous promises to yourself when it's presented allows you to live a more fulfilling life. Values are allowed to change as life does its thing and presents new information and new ways of living it. What was once valuable to your 21 year old self can be a nightmare to your 30 year old self and vice versa.
Life can be so much more than what was promised. While it can be valuable to remain true to yourself and maintain loyalty to the initial promises you made for yourself in life, it can be equally rewarding to give yourself the options to experience a new life and expand your values if you allow it. It's just all about what you're willing to settle for in this life.