She’s deeply tuned in to this kind of work — the inner kind — so the conversation flowed easily into something I’ve been sitting with for a while. The idea that each of us has our own set of values. An authentic blueprint. Not an assigned one. Not an aspirational one. One that’s been operating underneath everything all along, quietly shaping what we’re drawn to, what depletes us, and what makes us feel most like ourselves.

That conversation made me want to write this down. Because I think a lot of us are making decisions without access to our own map.

What an Authentic Code Actually Is

Your authentic code is not a personality type. It’s not a vision board or a list of vague aspirational values. It’s a distillation of what already makes you feel most alive, most clear, most yourself — extracted from the evidence of your actual life.

Mine emerged through inner work I’ve done with To Be Magnetic®— a methodology built around uncovering the subconscious patterns that shape how we live and choose. I won’t detail the proprietary technique here, but I’ll share the framework, and the invitation to find your own.

Think of it less as something you build and more as something you uncover. It was already there. You’re just learning to read it.

How to Find Yours

The TBM process pairs journal prompts with a “deep imagining” — a guided self-hypnosis technique that bypasses the analytical mind and drops you into the subconscious. It’s quieter than meditation, more directed than journaling. You’re not thinking your way to answers — you’re receiving them. What surfaces in that state tends to be truer than anything you’d arrive at by thinking hard at a blank page.

Start with observation, not aspiration. Sit with these prompts — and answer them honestly, not beautifully:

When do you feel most like yourself? Not happy — yourself.

What have you consistently chosen, across different seasons of your life?

What do you lose track of time doing?

If you were completely free — financially, logistically, socially — how would your days actually look?

What comes up gets written down — freeform, unedited. A sprawling list of words, images, feelings, fragments. Then you sit with it. You start circling what recurs. You notice what carries weight versus what just sounds good. Slowly, almost naturally, the list distills. The noise falls away. Four words — or themes, or feelings — remain. Those are your pillars.

Not goals. Filters. Each one should answer: when I live inside this, my life feels more true.

Four is intentional. Enough to be comprehensive, few enough to actually hold in your body when you’re standing at a crossroads wondering which direction to take.

My Authentic Code

These four pillars are the ones I’ve returned to again and again — in lifestyle, in travel, in work, in the quiet decisions that shape a life.

I. Exploration

Curiosity, trial, learning, discovery, travel, growth, wonder.

Exploration is not just travel — though travel is its most visible expression. It’s the orientation toward the unknown that makes me feel awake. The willingness to try something before I know how it ends. Sojourne exists because of this pillar. So does every new hyper-fixation, every solo walk through a city I don’t know yet, every book I pick up on a subject I have no background in. I am most myself when I am in the middle of discovering something.

II. Design + Aesthetics

Creativity, curation, beauty, style, imagination, artistry.

My design background isn’t just professional history — it’s how I think. Beauty is not a luxury in my world; it’s a signal. When something is well-made, considered, and intentional, I feel it in my nervous system. This pillar shows up in how I create a seasonal menu, how I approach a Substack post, how I chose the hotel we stayed in last September. Aesthetics is not vanity. It’s integrity — the outer world made to match the inner one. Sense of place is my absolute lifestyle guide.

III. Harmony

Personal balance, abundant time in nature, alignment with natural cycles (seasons, astrology, femineity).

Harmony is the one I’m still learning to protect. It asks for slowness in a world that rewards speed. It shows up in how I structure my creative work around seasons and my cycle, in the hours I spend outside that aren’t earned or scheduled — just taken. In the instinct to pause when something feels forced. The disruption of harmony is the first sign that something is out of alignment. I’ve learned to treat that dissonance as data, not weakness. If I’m slow enough to tune in to what is really coming up for me, not just rushing past it, I feel in balance. Time in nature is my quickest throughline to self.

IV. Freedom

Limitless, individuality, time wealth, remote work, flexibility, financial independence, flow.

Freedom is the why behind most of the big decisions I’ve made in my adult life. A degree in communication + business = not being boxed into any one path (just open enough to go anywhere). A career in sales = freedom in my schedule (just hit your number). A design career = creative expression (just for the client and the firm). I’ve optimized for freedom my whole life without realizing I'd named it. Now I’m building something of my own that could travel with me. Choosing time over title. Where the only ceiling is really just me. This pillar isn’t about having no commitments — it’s about ensuring every commitment I make is one I chose, freely, from a place of alignment rather than obligation. This is the one that truly keeps me in flow with life.

Using Your Code

Once your pillars are clear, the decision-making process changes — not because the choices get easier, but because you stop auditioning them against external benchmarks. You start running them through something internal instead.

Does this support at least one pillar? Does it compromise another? Ideally, it lights up all four. That’s the filter.

I used mine to navigate one of the bigger decisions of my life: leaving my full-time interior design career to build something of my own. When I ran that job through my code honestly, only one of my four pillars was being upheld, the obvious one: Design + Aesthetics. The work was an obvious connection to this pillar. But it wasn’t expansive, it wasn’t mine, and it didn’t fit into the life I want to live. One out of four wasn’t enough. And that kept resurfacing time and time again when I could justify staying another month after month. The code made that clear in a way that months of deliberating hadn’t.

That’s what a well-honed code does. It cuts through the noise of what looks good on paper and gets honest about what actually fits.

And it’s worth revisiting — not on a schedule, but whenever you start to feel a low-grade disconnection from yourself. A subtle flatness. The sense that you’re going through the motions of a life that used to feel like yours. That’s the signal. When it comes, return to the prompts. Sit with your pillars again. Your code doesn’t change dramatically over time, but it deepens, it refines — and sometimes what you thought was a pillar turns out to be a preference, and something you’ve been quietly living all along finally has a name.

Your code is already written. You’re just learning to read it.

If this resonated, I’d love to hear what pillar surfaced first for you — or what surprised you when you sat with the prompts. Reply here, or find me on Instagram. This is the kind of conversation I’m always glad to keep going.

“You wait, little girl, on an empty stage, for fate to turn the light on.”

I’ve been haunted by this lyric.

Not in a gothic, something-is-wrong way. In the way a song finds you in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday and refuses to let go — the way music sometimes knows something about you before you’re ready to admit it yourself. I had been rolling it over in my mind for weeks until it dawned on me where its coming from. It’s from The Sound of Music. You know, the classic 1965 musical. And somehow, impossibly, it has become the most accurate description of my inner life I’ve encountered this season.

To be perfectly honest: I’ve been feeling a little lost.

Not dramatically. Not in crisis. Just — untethered. The way you feel when you’ve done the inner work, followed the thread, built the thing, and still find yourself standing in a room where nothing has quite clicked into place yet. Waiting for something you can feel coming but cannot yet see. The stage is set. The lights are down. And now you are standing in the dark wondering if the show is still happening.

Liesl

There’s a character in The Sound of Music I’ve always felt a quiet kinship with. Liesl. Oldest daughter. Leader of the von Trapp children. Charming, capable, a little romantic about the world — the one who holds her siblings together while privately longing for her own story to begin. Sly, too, in the way oldest daughters often are: the well-timed practical jokes to scare off the governess du jour, the chirped retort to her father that lands before anyone can catch it. Impressionable and idealistic and sixteen, yes — but also watching everything, missing nothing.

She knows things. She’s mature beyond her years, and somehow still every inch the girl who believes the world is about to open up for her. She’s on the cusp of adulthood. And yet she’s the one singing about waiting. She’s the one on the empty stage.

I am the oldest daughter. I am the capable one, the sibling ring leader, the idealist who genuinely believes things will work out while simultaneously cataloguing every reason they might not. I go to the hills when my heart is lonely. Metaphorically. Sometimes literally.

What I’ve been sitting with is the specific ache of Liesl’s waiting — not passive, not resigned, but fully alive to the anticipation of something that hasn’t arrived yet. She’s not asleep on that stage. She’s ready. She just doesn’t control the lights.

The Astrology (Stay With Me)

Here is where I have to tell you about the sky, because the sky has been talking.

I am a Gemini sun, Capricorn moon, Virgo rising. Mercury is my ruling planet — communication, the mind, the messenger. Jupiter sits at the top of my chart, in my tenth house, the house of career and public life, expanding everything it touches and simultaneously pulling me in two directions at once: fly free versus show up, soar versus be responsible, be seen versus protect yourself.

This year, Uranus moved into Gemini. As in last week. Its an outer planet, so a larger thematic playing in the background versus something we feel more tangibly day to day.

Uranus is the planet of disruption, liberation, and radical rewiring. It hasn’t been in Gemini since 1941–1949 — the last time this transit swept through, the world was mid-rupture, old orders were collapsing, and people were walking into the unknown with nothing but what they could carry. The Sound of Music is set in that same convulsive era — Austria on the brink of Nazi Anschluss, the von Trapps choosing moral courage and fleeing everything familiar. A family that chose freedom over safety, and sang the whole way. Make of that what you will. I certainly have.

When Uranus transits your sun sign, it illuminates where you have been limiting yourself. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t do subtle. And for me — with Mercury, Jupiter, and my Midheaven all living in Gemini — this transit is personal. It’s coming for my public identity. My voice. The work I put in front of the world.

Planets are beginning to pile up in my Midheaven. The Midheaven is the very top of the chart — your public image, your aspirations, what you are meant to be seen for. Something is building there. The astrology, if I’m honest, has never been more pointed. It keeps saying: not yet, and also: soon.

This summer also brings my North Node return — a transit that happens roughly every 18.5 years, when the moon’s North Node returns to the exact degree it occupied at your birth. The north node represents your soul’s directive. The direction your growth is meant to move toward.

Mine is in Aquarius. In my sixth house of service and everyday work.

Aquarius: outside the box, collective, visionary, belonging to something larger than the individual. The sixth house: devotion, craft, the unglamorous daily practice of showing up. My soul, apparently, is meant to move toward collectivist work. Work that serves. Work that connects rather than spotlights.

The prompt my astrologist gave me landed quietly and then wouldn’t leave: Where is there an opportunity to feel part of something greater than myself?

The Empty Page

Back to our musical. The lyric doesn’t stop there. It continues:

Your life, little girl, is an empty page that men will want to write on.

I’ve been sitting with this second half just as long.

An empty stage is one thing — pure potentiality, a threshold, a breath held before something begins. But an empty page. That’s different. That’s an invitation. And also, if you’re not paying attention, a vulnerability. Open space draws authorship. Others will rush to fill it, shape it, claim it — if you let them.

2025 was the great stripping. I don’t say that lightly or dramatically. I say it because that’s what it was: a year that took things away until what remained was only what was actually mine, raw and honest. A city I’d outgrown. A career that had been written, in part, by other people’s expectations. A version of myself that was legible to everyone around me and quietly illegible to myself.

I left San Diego. I changed course — not for the first time, and not lightly. For me, moving from luxury wine sales, earning another degree, entering commercial interior design: each chapter was a weighted choice, a version of myself I stepped into with full intention. But there comes a point where you realize the self you’ve built is legible to everyone around you and quietly illegible to yourself. Sojourne — this small, stubborn, earnest thing — was the first chapter I began without a map, without a precedent, without anyone else’s template to follow. I just began.

What I understand now, that I couldn’t quite see while it was happening, is that the stripping was the writing. Not the passive waiting for fate to hand me a pen. The active, sometimes terrifying, choice to clear the page myself — before someone else’s narrative had the chance to settle permanently into the margins.

The empty stage of right now is not the same emptiness as before. This one is intentional. This one I chose.

I used to confuse this kind of waiting with inaction. With lack of ambition or laziness even. I’m learning they are not the same thing.

The lights haven’t fully risen. But the page is mine.

The Hills Are Alive

Maria goes to the hills because she doesn’t know what else to do with herself.

She is too much for the abbey — too loud, too wild, too alive. She is drawn to nature the way people are drawn to things that don’t ask them to be smaller. The hills don’t require her to perform or explain or apologize. They just hold her.

I understand this. I go to nature when the noise inside gets louder than I can manage. When the waiting becomes too sharp. When I need to remember that I am a small thing moving through a very large and very patient world — and that this is a relief, not a diminishment.

I go to the hills when my heart is lonely.

The inner child lives here, in this impulse. The part of us that knew before we were taught otherwise that play is serious, that beauty is data, that sometimes the most productive thing you can do is lie in the grass and let the sky be large. The Sound of Music is saturated with this — with children running through meadows, with music erupting out of impossible situations, with the radical act of singing when everything is falling apart.

There is something here about allowing your light to shine not because the world is ready for it, but because the light is yours and it is time.

The Empty Stage

Here is what I’ve come to, slowly, imperfectly, still in the middle of it:

The stage isn’t empty because I’m not enough.

The stage is empty because the scene hasn’t started yet.

My Capricorn moon wants the recognition to arrive on schedule, properly, with the weight it deserves. It wants to know the plan. It is deeply uncomfortable with this particular form of not-knowing. But the transit doesn’t care about my moon’s preference for timeliness. Uranus has its own schedule. The north node return arrives when it arrives.

What I’m learning — what I’m still learning, on a good day — is that the waiting is not wasted. Every piece of inner work, every spiral of astrology, every essay written into the void, every morning I chose the craft over the recognition — it’s all happening on the stage. I just can’t see it from here.

Maria doesn’t leave the hills because the abbey sends for her. She leaves because something in her knows it’s time to step into the life that is asking for her, with a little encouragement from the Reverend Mother. She doesn’t have certainty. She has a direction. She walks toward it, terrified, and then she sings.

The von Trapps flee Austria into total uncertainty — and they sing the whole way.

Maybe that’s the move. Not waiting for fate to turn the light on. But singing in the dark until it does.

The lyric still plays. You wait, little girl, on an empty stage.

But I’m starting to hear it differently.

Not as a taunt. As a promise.

The light is coming. The stage won’t stay empty. Something in Gemini is waking up, and it is waking up in me too — this voice, this work, this quiet and persistent belief that I have something to offer the world that the world actually needs.

I don’t know when fate turns the light on.

I’m learning to trust that it will.

And in the meantime — I go to the hills.

xo, Taylor Campbell

Soul Chat is a series where I explore the inner + outer lives of travelers, creatives, and curators who move through the world with curiosity, taste, and a distinct point of view. Less itinerary, more philosophy, all soul.

There are people whose work stops you mid-scroll — not because it's loud, but because it's precise. Hollis M.M. is one of those people. A designer, holistic life coach, and astrologer, she's spent over a decade helping people take what lives invisibly inside them and make it real — something you can hold in your hands, share with the world, press into the record of your own life. Her platform, The Designed Life, is exactly what it sounds like: intentional, crafted, and deeply considered. As someone who arrived at Sojourne from a design background myself, I'm drawn to work that's been built with that kind of care. She was the obvious first call for this Sunday’s Soul Chat.

Arrival + Intro

Welcome Hollis!

Where you are in this season of life?

HMM: I’ve been describing to many people that I actually feel like I have my feet on the ground and I can start walking. The last few years have contained some upheavals – a big move out of New York City after 17 years, some challenging situations with my partner, lots of changes to my client roster – but this year thus far it’s felt as though I can finally anchor into the ground under my feet and start properly walking, perhaps even jogging at times.

As it is for many of us, my life has been consistently inconsistent which has taught me that change can happen at any moment, so there is a part of me that is a bit hesitant to believe that this moment of anchoring will stay as it is. But overall this teaches me that my work right now is to be a fully rooted into the present moment - to be open and honest with those who are right in front of me, to not hold myself back in my work and creative projects, and to continue to stretch myself just outside my comfort zone with the support of my foundation underneath me.

A small sensory detail, moment, or place that’s inspiring you right now?

HMM: The light that travels into my home office from the sunrise

Cosmic Snapshot

Your Sun Sign — how do you relate to this energy?

HMM: My Cancer Sun is a tender one. As I write this, my ruling planet (and incidentally my current time lord) Jupiter is sitting with the Moon on my Sun, and I’m reminded of how soft she really is. There’s a lot of sensitivity here, that’s coupled with a passionate desire to protect what I deeply care for. And so not only is there a vulnerability, but also a potential sharpness depending on how you approach this part of me. I have a stellium in Cancer all opposing a stellium in Capricorn, so I can’t help but be present to how somatically aware I am. There’s this constant exploration around what being in a body occupying time and space really means and feels like. Because this part of me is also so changeable, I feel like I’m in constant exploration of what it means to be in different states of being. And because my Mercury and Chiron are also here, I’m always in the pursuit of trying to give all this internal exploration words and language to be expressed. Ultimately I know that this placement is what makes it so possible for me to do the kind of intimate work that I do with my clients.

Your Moon Sign?

HMM: I think my Libra Moon is what people encounter when they first see me online. It’s the side of me that’s so friendly, and aesthetically minded, and wants to connect with all the people and have a lovely time in whatever environment I’m in. Whenever I’m really in my flow, and I’m feeling really centered in myself, it’s my Libra Moon that can connect and have fun with pretty much anyone I come into contact with, and I can also help them feel really good about themselves. I’ve been thinking lately about how the power of Libra is the ability to see the beauty in whatever space she’s in, but the downfall of Libra is the ability to ignore what she doesn’t deem as beautiful or harmonious, particularly when she’s energy is out of balance. Mainly, I just consider this part of myself the side that deeply needs acceptance and to feel valuable – the part that wants to create things that bring peace to others and that helps people to also see the beauty in their own lives. This is the part of me that aches to be in art museums, and to have beautiful moments scattered throughout my days, because those types of experiences truly are my medicine.

Your Rising Sign?

HMM: Sagittarius (ruler Jupiter in Gemini, 7H) – I felt it was necessary to explain where my ruling planet lives to describe the kind of Sagittarius rising I am! A lot of people consider Sagittarians to be very independent, and to be pretty consistently untethered to things or people. But since my Jupiter is in the 7H of committed partnerships, I often find myself through my relationships, and I’m very dedicated to the ones that mean a lot to me. My chart as a whole is very relationship heavy, meaning that connections to others is a big part of my life story and big driving force of how I live and shape my life. So although I am naturally very independent, very generous with my time and resources, pretty go-with-the-flow and optimistic, and have been known to take some big leaps in my lifetime, I’ve also always been surrounded by (mostly Mercurial) friends and family that are incredibly important to me, and I know that will never change.

Which placement influences your creative or personal journey the most?

HMM: This is an exceptionally hard question to answer because at different moments in my life different placements have been much more active and alive. That said, there is something I’ve noticed about charts that describes where the energy concentrates, and for me it’s heavily weighted on my Venus and Saturn placements. So although not part of my “Big 3” those are the two placements I find myself reporting back to often, which most of the time looks like me being concerned with value and integrity.

Any recent transits or cosmic events that have shifted your perspective? (Big astro year for sure!)

HMM: Very big astro year! I’m still unravelling the Saturn/Neptune conjunction from February that coincided closely with that first Aquarius eclipse. I have Saturn/Neptune conjunct natally, so I’ve been watching how this story continues to unfold. Lot’s to say here, but nothing I feel called to share just yet!

Outer Landscape (Travel + Place as Mirror)

Are there locations on your own Astrocartography map that feel especially activating, nourishing, or challenging for you? How have these places influenced your experiences or choices?

HMM: Mexico City is on my Jupiter line and although I’ve only been there twice, both times I’ve gone I’ve felt like I’m some how at home. My lineage on my maternal side is Mexican and German, and being originally from Southern California, Mexico has always been a big part of my life. When I was turning 30, my partner at the time asked me where I wanted to go and while meditating one morning it hit me very clearly that Mexico City was the place. I can’t properly explain why it feels so connective for me there, but I know it’s a special place - for me and many, many other people.

A place that has shifted your perspective or felt transformative?

HMM: Trinidad. My partner is from there originally, and I had never had a relationship to the island until meeting him. It’s very close to my Pluto line, so whenever we visit it’s a mix of really profound internal experiences (Pluto is in my 12H), and sometimes this physical oppressiveness due to the heat and humidity that can permeate my consciousness. The culture there is also like nowhere else I’ve ever been, so it’s certainly shifted me.

A destination that feels like a mirror for your current self?

HMM: Paris.

Inner Landscape (Soul Prompts)

What’s emerging in your inner world right now?

HMM: I’ve been part of a philosophy group called Supernova that has helped me parse apart an idea I’ve been sitting on for a long time. There’s a somatic experience that we all have with the astrology, but aside from medical astrology and the associations of the zodiac with different parts of the body, I haven’t come across much work that discuss our emotional interaction with the astrology, and also how we can learn more about our emotional experience via our bodies and the astrology simultaneously. I’m at a moment where I’m putting together a framework for how to study this in others so I can start to implement a proper research study.

How do you navigate challenges or shifts using astrology, intuition, or rituals?

HMM: Similar to what I described in my previous answer – as I’ve developed my own relationships to each of the planets, I’ve come to be able to identify them in my emotional landscape and therefore in my body. This helps me to give language to whatever challenges I encounter - not always immediately, but usually in time - and that helps me sort through my relationship to the challenge.

For example, the Mars retrograde that occurred in Cancer at the start of 2025 was a really tough one that brought up some very difficult experiences with my partner. Being aware of the transit helped me to feel a little more in control simply by way of knowing the cause. Knowing that it was a Mars retrograde helped me understand why the experiences were inflammatory and painful. Knowing that it was a temporary transit helped me recognize that although intense the situation was also temporary - but it required me to move through the moment with courage. And understanding my relationship to Mars being one about sovereignty, honoring my own boundaries, and giving language to my experience while in conflict, I used the situations as testing grounds to titrate my experience to those things. It took getting through the whole transit to fully make sense of what unfolded, but while I was in it I was able to create a little bit of space between me and the experiences, which ultimately helped me move through them with more agency than I would have had I not had the astrological context.

When do you feel most aligned, curious, or expansive?

HMM: This is an enormous question! I feel all of the above just after I’ve had my morning matcha or cup of coffee :)

Now + Next

Where are you being pulled next—creatively, spiritually, or physically?

HMM: Well, I’m getting married in June so at the moment that’s my main focus! I’ve been thinking about the space between the wedding date and my birthday (June 2-July 9) as almost like a threshold that I’m crossing. This year, 36, has felt like a foundational year in so many ways, and so 37 feels like I’m being called to build on top of that foundation and really own this new maturation of myself, my business, and my life. I’m taking it day by day at the moment, but it feels like there’s a lot to expand and relax into based on what’s supporting me right now.

A mantra, phrase, or three words defining your current season?

HMM: Simplicity. Reciprocity. Rooting.

Hollis and I have never met in person — and yet something about this exchange felt like running into an old friend on a familiar street. Maybe it’s the shared design background, or the way she holds big ideas without losing the texture of real life. Maybe it’s that we’re both always looking up, locating the moon wherever we are.

At Sojourne, the nautilus shell is the symbol for a reason. Its sacred geometry is one of nature’s most precise expressions of growth — each chamber complete in itself, yet only made possible by everything that came before it. A life built the same way: not in spite of what’s been lived, but because of it. Hollis is someone who understands this intuitively. You can hear it in the way she talks about her work, her relationships, her body, her sky. All of it building. None of it wasted.

Find Hollis and The Designed Life at hollismm.com

To our own soul’s journey of becoming,

XX,

Taylor Campbell 🐚

The end of March marked a full twelve months without my consistent W-2 income, a year since I walked away from my design firm and stepped bravely (albeit a little blindly) into the void of creative entrepreneurship. I remember the specific texture of that first free Monday — the absence of someone else’s calendar dictating my hours, the strange silence where urgency used to live. It felt, in equal measure, like liberation and freefall.

Sojourne has held me and all my creative dreams in one container since. It’s wearing a lot of hats. It’s taking all of my experience (sales, branding, wine knowledge, travel, design, astrology and wellness) into one personal brand + creative business. It’s bold and messy and hard to explain at dinner parties. But it’s mine, which means the rules are mine too.

And the thing I am most proud of is something so much quieter than the business itself.

Because it’s mine + mine alone, I have the rare opportunity to curate how I work around my own needs — namely, my cycle. I know most of my readership is female, (with a lucky few male outliers), yet we all know there is undoubtedly variance in the day-to-day interior life of a woman. Ignoring that fact, as I so adeptly did for decades, is to miss the very real gifts that come with that variance. We were not designed for a flat, linear week. We were designed for rhythm.

I spent years overriding mine. But in this new era, now I work with it.

For instance, I now know the four to seven days each month when I should absolutely NOT trust my inner voice — the days when I am most likely to want to burn it all to the ground, for what feels like an obvious and total lack of vision, creativity, skill, and ability. Those late-luteal days are not for big-picture planning or creative flow. But they do serve a real purpose: low-hanging fruit tasks, logistical follow-through, and scheduled rest. Yes, the once-doomed “laziness” of rest. Because when I can actually plan for those days on the calendar, I can work with them instead of grinding against the friction they always used to cause.

And then there are the days on the other end of the spectrum — the ones I used to chalk up to a great night’s sleep or a lucky alignment of the stars. The days when I feel absolutely magnetic. Articulate in a way that surprises even me. Witty, sharp, present, like every conversation I walk into is one I was made for. Like I downed a golden vile of felix felicis potion. I used to hope for those days to arrive and quietly mourn them when they left, never knowing when they’d return. Now I know exactly when they’re coming. I put my most visible, most public-facing Sojourne work there. I send the pitch I’ve been sitting on. I schedule the call I’ve been nervous about. I show up, because my biology is already showing up for me.

That’s the shift. From friction to flow. From white-knuckling through to actually planning with the very human body I live in.

Here’s the part that still quietly astonishes me: this is not a radical concept. It is, in fact, one of the oldest and most obvious ones. But we have built entire economies — entire identities — around ignoring it. The standard work week does not care what phase you’re in. Deadlines don’t negotiate with your hormones. And so most of us learned, early and thoroughly, to override the signal. To perform with consistency we don’t actually feel. To treat our natural variance as a liability rather than a blueprint.

What I’ve found, on the other side of that override, is that designing a business around your actual life is less of a luxury and more of a quiet revolution. It looks, from the outside, like flexibility. From the inside, it feels like finally being let in on something everyone else somehow already knew. A life hack so simple it’s almost embarrassing — and so countercultural it still takes courage to claim it.

I actually want this work to be a true extension of me. Not something I’m constantly pushing through. And because life has slowed down in the most intentional of ways, I’m finally noticing what was always there — the rhythm my body has been running on my entire life, quietly, whether I paid attention or not.

Now I pay attention. And I’ve built my work + life around it.

A Cycle-Synced Life Rhythm

This is my personal guide — part body attunement, part business calendar. It is quite literally the calendar blocks I put in my own iCal for both awareness and future-forward scheduling. It’s imperfect, it’s always evolving, and I offer it not as a prescription but as permission: to look at your own patterns, trust what you find, and build something around them.

Menstrual: Reset + Retreat

Days 1–7 | Energy: low, inward, reflective

This is the phase I spent years white-knuckling through, caffeinating past, and quite honestly resenting. I scheduled over it. I showed up to things I had no business attending. I mistook depletion for weakness instead of recognizing it as information. Now I protect this phase the way I protect a flight I actually want to catch — with intention and a little buffer room.

The menstrual phase is a biological reset, not a productivity failure. For Sojourne, this means I let the inbox breathe, revisit older drafts without pressure to finish them, and do the quiet administrative work that doesn’t require me to be on. No pitching. No publishing. Just tending.

• Life: slow mornings, solo time, journaling, cozy environments

• Relationships: fewer plans, deeper 1:1 time

• Movement: walking, gentle stretching

• Sojourne: light admin, reading for research, revisiting saved ideas without pressure to execute

• Calendar Note: Rest does not need to be “earned”. This is not laziness. It’s biological recovery.
  

Follicular: Re-entry + Exploration

Days 7–14 | Energy: rising, curious, optimistic

The follicular phase feels like opening a window after a long, still winter. Something lifts. Energy returns in a way that feels almost suspicious after the quiet — light, clean, full of forward motion. This is when I want to start things. New essays, new pitches, new routes on a map. The inner critic goes unusually quiet and I’ve learned to use that window aggressively, in the best possible way.

I front-load my most generative Sojourne work here. The brainstorming sessions, the blank-page moments, the bold ideas that need space to breathe before I can talk myself out of them. Follicular Taylor is an optimist and I try not to waste her. You can bet your last dollar this article was written during this phase.

• Life: try new things, plan trips, explore new routines

• Relationships: light, social, reconnecting

• Movement: building intensity, strength training, longer walks

• Sojourne: pitching, brainstorming, starting new pieces, creative planning

• Calendar note: Follow curiosity. Say yes (within reason).
  

Ovulatory: Connection + Visibility

Days 14–17 | Energy: confident, social, expressive

This is the window. Brief, potent, and genuinely not to be squandered on tasks that don’t require you to show up fully. There is a magnetism in ovulation that I used to dismiss as coincidence — a few days a month where I felt inexplicably more articulate, more present, more like the version of myself I was trying to be the rest of the time. Turns out it wasn’t coincidence. It was biology, doing exactly what it was designed to do.

For Sojourne — which is, at its core, a personal brand — I am part of the product. The writing, the voice, the face behind the byline. This is the phase I schedule anything that involves being seen: publishing, outreach, partnerships, collaborations. If I’m going to ask someone to pay attention to me, I’d rather do it when I’m already firing on all cylinders — when the words come easy and the confidence isn’t something I have to manufacture (how nice is that!?)

• Life: social plans, hosting, being seen

• Relationships: best for communication, intimacy, deep connection

• Movement: strongest workouts, group classes

• Sojourne: publishing, outreach, collaborations, anything public-facing

• Calendar note: Peak visibility. Be out in the world.
  

Early Luteal: Nesting + Refinement

Days 18–25 | Energy: grounded, focused, productive

This is the phase I underestimated the longest, and the one I’ve come to quietly love the most. Early luteal and late luteal are different beasts entirely. After the follicular spark, energy has settled into something steadier — focused, detail-oriented, get-it-done spirit. There’s a satisfaction in this phase that the flashier ones don’t offer: the satisfaction of finishing things. Of following through. Of looking at a to-do list at the end of the day and finding it actually done.

Sojourne benefits enormously from early luteal. This is when I edit drafts that felt too raw to touch last week, when I organize the backend of the business, when I batch-schedule content and respond to the emails I’ve been meaning to send. Less spark, more substance. Both are necessary. This phase just happens to be better at one of them.

• Life: organize, cook, reset routines, finish tasks

• Sojourne: editing, refining drafts, operational tasks, scheduling content, inbox management

• Relationships: smaller, more intentional plans

• Movement: steady workouts, pilates, hiking

• Calendar note: Get your life in order. Strong follow-through.
  

Late Luteal: Sensitivity + Discernment

Days 26–31 | Energy: lower tolerance, inward, emotionally sensitive

Here is the phase that used to wreck me. The one I had no framework for, no language around, no grace for. I just knew that for a handful of days each month I felt like a stranger in my own life — questioning everything, tolerating nothing, irritable as all get-out, convinced that something was fundamentally wrong. With the business, with a relationship, with my face, my clothes, with a decision I’d made confidently two weeks ago.

What I know now is that nothing is wrong. Or rather: the things that feel wrong in late luteal are worth noting, but not worth acting on. This phase has an exquisite sensitivity to misalignment — it will surface everything that isn’t working, everything I’ve been tolerating, every quiet resentment I’ve been rationalizing. The key is learning to receive that information without detonating anything.

I journal instead of reacting. I observe instead of deciding. I keep Sojourne’s bold moves on hold and let myself be small and quiet for a few days. And then follicular arrives and I can look at those late-luteal notes with fresh eyes — and usually find that about thirty percent of them were actually onto something.

• Life: fewer plans, solo time, comfort rituals

• Relationships: avoid heavy conversations, keep it simple

• Movement: gentle only, walks and stretching, legs up the wall

• Sojourne: no major decisions, no pitching, no publishing — observation and notes only

• Calendar note: No major decisions. Nothing needs to be burned down. Journal instead of reacting.

I want to be honest about something: this took a full year to build. Not the framework — that exists, and there are brilliant women and researchers who have done the deep work of mapping it. What took a year was the permission. Permission to design a life that actually accounts for the person living it. Permission to call rest productive and slowness strategic. Permission to stop treating my natural rhythms as inconveniences to manage and start treating them as information to act on.

The western work model was not built for this. It was not built for variance, for cycles, for the kind of intelligence that moves in waves rather than straight lines. And for a long time I was an excellent student of that model — I pushed, I delivered, I performed with consistency and a smile I didn’t feel. I was good at it. I was also exhausted in a way I couldn’t quite name.

What I’ve found on the other side is something I didn’t expect: not just a more sustainable way to work, but a more honest one. A business that is actually shaped like my life. And a calendar that, for the first time, I actually trust and I actually look forward to.

That’s the flex. Not the hustle. Not the grind. The fact that I finally stopped building around a system that was never designed for me — and built something that was.

xo,

Taylor Campbell

It’s easy to believe our closest relationships are coincidence.

Shared interests. Timing. Geography. Chemistry.

But astrology suggests something more structured:
We don’t choose randomly. We choose along energetic lines that were written into our architecture.

When you look closely at the friendships and partnerships that endure, patterns emerge. Repeating signs. Repeating elements. Familiar archetypes returning in different faces.

The company we keep isn’t accidental. It’s patterned.

And often, it follows three energetic threads:

1. What feels like home (imprint)

2. What develops us (axis activation)

3. What regulates us (elemental balance)

1. What Feels Like Home (Imprint)

The rising sign — or Ascendant — is the sign that was rising on the eastern horizon at the moment you were born. Astrologically, it marks the beginning of the first house: the house of identity, embodiment, and how we enter the world.

But psychologically, it’s more than presentation. It reflects the atmosphere we were born into — the tone of the room, the expectations placed on us, the behaviors that were modeled and reinforced.

We don’t just express our rising sign.
We were conditioned through it.

I’m a Virgo rising. Precision. Service. Attentiveness. Improvement as devotion.

Both my father and my grandmother — who played a significant role in raising me — are Virgo Suns.

Virgo wasn’t abstract in my childhood. It was embodied. It was modeled. It was rewarded.

So when strong Virgo energy shows up in my adult relationships, there’s recognition. A nervous system exhale. I understand the rhythm. I know the rules.

Familiarity often gets mistaken for compatibility.
But familiarity is imprint.

The company we keep frequently mirrors what once felt like home.

Read more

Over time, I’ve learned that the years that change me most aren’t necessarily the loud, obvious, flashy ones. The ones that move mountains for me, are the years where energy clicks into place. Where action feels clean. Where life + work stop competing with each other.

For 2026, three intention words rose to the surface for me and refused to leave:

Together, they describe how I want to build what’s next and how I want it to feel as I do so.

Read more

Before I ever thought about landscapes as emotional mirrors or spiritual teachers, I learned to read them through the lens of design. In interior design school, one of the first principles we studied was site selection — how the land itself shapes what a space can become. We were taught to look beyond the obvious: not just where the sun rises or how far the nearest road sits, but how a building converses with its environment. Why one hillside feels protective while another feels exposed. Why a slight rotation of a structure toward prevailing winds can shift the energy of the entire interior (and energy costs). Why homes perched too high, without natural backing, often feel impressive yet strangely ungrounded.

It was here that I first encountered one of the most beautiful concepts in classical feng shui: the harmony created “when the mountains meet the sea.”

Read more

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how much of this year has carried that quieter cadence. A year of profound change unfolding both around me and within me — people in my world beginning again, shifting careers, selling off assets, landing in new environments that finally fit. And underneath it all: a pull toward stillness, toward internal re-anchoring, toward trusting that not every chapter is meant to be outwardly productive. That even the quieter times have profound impacts.

Luckily, it always seems as though winter seems to arrive just when we need it. Busy summers full of life, action and movement hit a peak and then the collective seems to crave a slow down, cozy layers and hygge time indoors as the seasons begin to change. Then there is always that direct shift — the one when the warmth of days truly falls away to winter’s chill. That’s where the invitation lies.

There is a wisdom in wintering. A permission to slow down, to let the soil lie fallow, to honor a season not for what it produces but for what it prepares. I’m learning to trust that instinct — to let the ground be bare for a while, knowing that just beneath the surface, something is gathering strength.

Read more

This can be the same sensation in sitting with presence — holding both the past and the future to come, but really just sitting with the here + now.

Lately, I’ve been working through that presence isn’t about silencing what was or ignoring what’s ahead — it’s about widening your capacity to hold both without being swept away by either. To stand in the space between what’s been and what’s next, with your feet rooted in this moment.

Read more

The cadence is nothing like ordinary home life, yet also its not so different.

Holding both truths begs the reflection: when was the last time I truly felt stretched beyond traditional “home”?

After deep soul chats with my favorite partner to do so (hi husband), he landed on the perfect analogy for this sensation: study abroad. You’re out there, on your own, but still wildly supported from home base. Its definitely foreign and alienating at times. It works a different part of your brain. You feel wildly alive. Its stretching both in day-to-day and future-forward. Its something you’ve worked really hard towards being able to do. You want to be able to dive in completely to, yet there are still very real anchors of reality keeping you afloat. Its easy to feel disassociated from everyday news + social updates. But its temporary. Its for an allocated amount of time — time enough to both settle in but not settled in so permanently either.

Read more

To be known as part of a greater whole is one of the most essential, yet overlooked, experiences of being human. It is both grounding and expansive—the reminder that our lives do not unfold in isolation, but in conversation with the people, the places, and the histories that form us.

I’ve been reflecting on this more deeply after spending time back in my home state.

I was born in the hills of Oakland, and spent the first formative chakra-forming years in California. But it was a small mountain town at 7,000 feet that truly raised me. When I was five-years-old, my family moved to Flagstaff, Arizona craving a simpler, slower existence + local community of our own.

Growing up in Flagstaff meant living in rhythm with the four seasons. Summers were marked by the freedom of long days outdoors: my sisters and I building forts in the forest, climbing the “big oak tree”, concocting witches’ potions from leaves, pine needles, and wildflowers. We weren’t just playing, we were inventing entire worlds, exercising the imaginative muscle that only childhood seems to allow so fully. In autumn, days growing shorter, soccer seasons in full swing with the aspens turning gold then dropping entirely. Winters brought snowbanks taller than we were and snow dances for a cancelled school day the next morning. We skied at the local Snowbowl and escaped for winter warm ups to the Valley of the Sun just south of us. Spring meant the thaw, mud under our fingernails baking mudcakes in the crawl space beneath the house. Spring days grew longer and brighter, but never without the May snowstorm to keep us on our toes. Reflecting on the simple connection to the outdoors really instilled a rhythm to life and its cycles if we humans can slow down enough to notice.

My parents, both deeply woven into the community through their work taught us what it meant to belong somewhere, to contribute, to be known. I became known collectively with my two younger sisters as “the Bonatus girls” around town, in school, and on our various sports teams. Straight A’s and no-curfews-required became apart of our responsible brand, and we earned the support, trust and freedom accordingly.

That sense of belonging surfaced recently in an unexpected way. An old teammate and friend from high school, who later has become a dear client of mine, offered to grab a bite and drive me to the airport. What began as a kind favor quickly unfolded into a mini time capsule.

We talked about where life had taken us—how we’d each carved out our own paths, the twists neither of us could have predicted, and the ways our choices echoed what we might have guessed back then. We caught each other up on the whereabouts of classmates: who stayed in town, who left and never looked back, who circled home to raise families of their own. Somewhere along the drive, we laughed over the tangled web of romances — who we dated, how serious it felt at seventeen, how amusingly small it all seems now. Names we hadn’t spoken aloud in years surfaced like artifacts, triggering stories half-forgotten until the other filled in the missing details. It reminded me how memory itself is communal: certain pieces only exist when shared.

There was an ease in that conversation that can’t be replicated with new acquaintances. The cadence of shared history — the shorthand of place + time — creates a cadence you fall back into without effort. Catching up with an old friend really does become a return to a collective memory, a reminder that our past selves still live within us, and that others hold those versions of us too.

It reminded me of the African proverb: “I am because we are.”

This is the essence of ubuntu, the Zulu philosophy of interconnectedness and our shared humanity. The belief that our very being is inextricable from one another — that identity is not individual but collective, woven from our shared experiences and mutual recognition. That car ride was ubuntu in action: two people reflecting each other’s histories back, filling in memory’s gaps, and affirming that who we are today exists only in relation to where we’ve been and with whom.

I first encountered the idea of ubuntu on my honeymoon in Africa, and it struck a chord with me I didn’t expect. It was less a concept to understand than a truth I felt instantly in my body. Of course, this struck me extra deep while in my honeymoon glow — to feel so known and connected to my husband, knowing in my bones that my story inevitably is connected to his. I am because we are. Years later, the phrase still reverberated in my mind that I had the words inked on my arm, in my grandmother’s gorgeous cursive penmanship — a lineage of connection in itself.

Ubuntu is remembering that we are mirrors for one another. The stories of our childhood towns or our college cities, the friends who resurface years later, the family traditions, the laughter and loss and history — all of it binds us. It is not about dissolving the self, but about realizing that our individuality gains meaning only in relation to the collective.

Perhaps that is what I carry most from both my upbringing and my travels: the recognition that we are all threads in a larger fabric (cliche I know). I am because we are. Always.

Travel, too, becomes a practice of ubuntu. Each place we enter leaves its imprint on us—the tempo of a language overheard, the way light filters through a foreign landscape, the hospitality of strangers sharing their stories that become part of our own story. These experiences don’t exist in isolation; they fold themselves into our memory, altering the shape of who we are and how we understand the world. The people we meet, even fleetingly, live within us, becoming part of our collective experience.

In this way, travel reminds us that identity is porous, ever-expanding. A perpetual becoming. Just as our childhood towns and longtime friends root us in belonging, new places and unfamiliar cultures stretch us into a broader version of ourselves. To carry ubuntu into travel is to recognize that every encounter is reciprocal—we are not only absorbing, but also contributing, leaving behind traces of our own humanity.

It feels, in many ways, like the philosophy aligned with the Aquarian age we’re moving into: an era defined less by individual accumulation and more by collective connection. To travel consciously is to see ourselves as part of a shared human story, to let every journey remind us that I am because we are. Always, everywhere.

In the end, travel + life alike ask the same thing of us: to remember that who we are is never ours alone.

I hope this made you think.

In love + light,

Taylor Campbell

We’d followed a thread of directions — simple in theory, yet a little hazy in reality — leading us to Café Azawad in M’Hamid, a name that sounded mythic by the time we arrived. The whole scene felt like something out of an Desert Storm war movie. The café felt like the only place in town open and in business. A few locals sat languidly in plastic chairs under the shade of a faded awning, sipping mint tea and watching the day wind down with no apparent urgency. Time didn’t move here in hours or minutes — it drifted like sand.

The town of M’Hamid marks the end of the road. Beyond it lies only desert. The buildings thin out, and the horizon stretches endlessly in every direction. It’s a place that makes you aware of your edges. Of where infrastructure ends, simple as it may be, and the unknown begins.

Just as we debated whether we were in the right place, a man in modern clothes and a blue turban approached with calm confidence. “Taylor? You must be here for the desert,” he said, smiling. This was Mohammad, our 4x4 guide. He pulled up in a shockingly new (as in still had the stickers, new) Ford Raptor pick-up truck and introduced himself as if we were old friends, and somehow that was enough. He gestured for us to follow him through town, past crumbling walls and quiet alleyways, to a dusty parking lot tucked behind a cluster of buildings. This would be the last place we’d see pavement for days.

We left our rental car and stepped into his vehicle, trading asphalt for sand, leaving the known for the unknown.

Read more

Optimization obsessed.

Productivity as a personality trait.

Even as someone who praises slow living, I can still find myself caught in the current of rush society. Scrolling. Strategizing. Speeding through my to-do list in the name of progress. It’s subtle, sometimes — a creeping sense that if I’m not producing, I’m falling behind. That my worth is attached to how efficient I am, how knowledgeable I am, how fast I can figure things out.

But slowness isn’t a lack of ambition.

It’s a return to intention.

To presence. To pleasure. To enoughness.

It’s a gentle reminder that everything good — meaningful work, true connection, grounded inspiration — blooms in the pause.

So if you, too, have been feeling swept up in the undertow of urgency, here are a few ways I’ve been practicing the art of slowing down:

A Few Ways to Slow Down

Begin the day tech-free

Try starting your morning without reaching for your phone. Brew your coffee or tea in silence or with a favorite playlist. Let your senses wake up before your screen does.

Replace scroll time with soul time

Keep a book or journal nearby to reach for instead of your phone. I like to rotate between favorite authors’ work (Brianna Wiest for example), or something inspiring that reminds me of life’s beauty beyond the algorithm.

Make it lovely

Romanticize your routines. Slow living is rooted in ritual. Light a candle before making dinner. Plate your lunch like you’re hosting yourself. Listen to a full album from start to finish while folding laundry. Presence transforms the mundane.

Take a walk without a destination

Wander. Let yourself move slowly. Look up. There’s something so freeing about space above your head. Let your surroundings change you — not your step count or pace.

Do one thing at a time

Multi-tasking fractures attention. Try monotasking for an hour — just one task, one focus, no tabs, no toggling. It’s wildly restorative and shockingly productive in its own way.

Let the earth set your pace

Go outside. Notice how everything in nature takes its time — from seasons to seed sprouting to tides rolling in and out. Let that rhythm remind you: there’s no rush.

What I’m learning is this:

Slowness is a skill, one that requires unlearning and remembering. It asks for trust. It teaches us that life doesn’t have to be earned by exhaustion. That beauty and belonging are not just found in the milestone moments — they exist in the spaces in between.

So here’s your invitation today straight to your soul:

Slow yourself down.

You’re not missing anything.

You’re arriving.

For Your Journal

1. What does “slow living” mean to me right now — in this season of life?

   (Let it be personal, not perfect.)

2. Where in my day do I feel most rushed?

   What would it feel like to reclaim that time with more intention?

3. What do I fear I’ll lose if I slow down?

   What might I gain instead?

4. When was the last time I felt truly present — unhurried and grounded?

   What was I doing? Who was I with? How can I invite more of that in?

5. If I trusted that my timing is divine, how would I move differently today?

6. What’s one small ritual I could create or return to that reminds me I’m allowed to rest, pause, savor?

7. What would it look like to measure my life not by productivity, but by presence?

Happy Weekend All! 💛

To your becoming,

Taylor Campbell

Our newly dubbed “Pizza Saturdays” tradition.

Both giddy and energetic with the adventure we’re choosing to under take this fall: An RV trip across the West. Our third musketeer in our golden retriever Berkeley girl riding shotgun. A freedom-inspired dream.

Worth noting: neither one of us has ever driven let alone lived out of an RV before — but we have lived out of a 1977 vintage VW van trekking across New Zealand. If we could not only survive that but thrive in that right-hand drive left-side slow lane, a modern RV feels like true spacious luxury. It will be our home on wheels for a couple months, our “land boat” so to speak.

Read more

Lately, my practice includes morning journaling, subconscious reprogramming, intuitive cooking, astrocartography, lunar alignment and feeling more connected with my heart than ever.

But one system and practice has been overwhelmingly informing, beautiful and eye-opening.

Enter Human Design. Over the last 12 months, I’ve seen a shift in my life that I never thought was imaginable, and I’ve become in tune and confident owning my “woo”. Human Design has opened me to a way of living that isn’t necessarily new, but what feels like is authentically me.

Human Design is a system that combines ancient wisdom + modern science to provide a unique blueprint of your energetic makeup. It's a self-awareness tool that helps you understand your energy, how you make decisions, and what your natural gifts and potential challenges are. Think of it as an "owner's manual" for yourself, based on your birth information.

Illustrated by a BodyGraph (below), including the seven chakra system and a series of connecting channels. It shows how your energy flows, your strengths, weaknesses, and how you're designed to interact with the world. Your defined centers (areas colored in) are a source of strength and consistency. Where as your open or undefined centers (areas that are white), are areas where a person is more susceptible to external influences and conditioning by the world you grew up in - from your family, friends, school, etc.

The starting point in Human Design is your energy type. It’s like asking someone their sun sign in astrology. Your energy type describes the unique way you’re meant to operate in the world: your energy levels + patterns, and also ways of doing + resting. When you are able to honor your natural ways (instead of trying to do things how you think you should) everything comes together more easily, effortlessly and successfully.

I’m a Gemini sun btw. And if you know even a basic level of astrology, Gemini’s are known for their quick wit, versatility and social nature. We’re highly communicative, social creatures, intellectually curious and also indecisive, inconsistent and restless. The twins. We’re the both/and’s of the cosmos. The winged messenger, ruled by Mercury, the planet and god of communication, intellect and the mind, as well as travel. With Mercury’s proximity to the sun and therefore a shorter orbit, makes it quick changing, versatile and adaptable. Like the wind. Lol “a fart in the wind” as my brother-in-law would say.

I’m finally coming into acceptance with my natural energy flow. I was never meant for the linear path and always seemed to struggle with too much rigidity, stationary existence or staying somewhere (anywhere) too long. I’m meant to dabble in anything that lights me up. And have I ever!

I’m your pure Manifesting Generator.

Manifesting Generators are a hybrid of two other types, Generators and Manifestors. Yet another parallel to duality. We’re both the bold initiators (Manifestors) and the sparkly magnetic energizers motivated by joy (Generators).

In Human Design, the body chart of a Manifesting Generator is illustrated by a defined Sacral center connected to a defined Throat by a fully colored channel - either directly or through the G center. This brings a consistent and powerful Sacral energy, providing a strong inner motor for work and creation AND another defined motor center connected to the Throat, meaning the ability to initiate and manifest.

ManGen’s response to life will activate in the Sacral, giving a feeling that sounds like “ahuh” for yes or “un-uh” for no.

In layman’s terms, ManGen’s follow our gut to create (manifest) something into reality.

MG’s have various passions and are meant to do many varied things in one lifetime. However, living in a world that tells us that in order to be successful + happy, you have to “pick a lane”, which is just not true for us. We’re meant to show the world there’s a new way of doing things. Our gift is to break us out of the boxes and expand perspectives + realities of what is possible.

We are here to chart previously unseen life paths.

This was the answer inside myself I’ve been looking for my entire career. As I’ve seemingly bounced around, I was simply following what lit me up and let curiosity be my guide. It’s how I’ve found myself in 4 different industries at the young age of 36.

On the career spectrum, I’ve worked in professional sports, in the wine industry, as an interior designer, and as a traveler planner + creator. And I’ve been successful in each industry by all accounts. I’m diversely educated, through both experience and study. I’m a sommelier (and lots of other fancy letters on the back of my name). I have a fine arts degree and a 4-year big university degree (RIP PAC-12). I’m a writer, a photographer, a travel planner and a budding astrologer. All at once. I’m existentially curious. And I’m positive I’m not done yet.

So in a stack of resumes, I’m the one that definitely needs some explaining to accompany my various pivots (cue LinkedIn insecurity). My path doesn’t look like anyone else’s and embracing that truth is where the magic is. Again, here to chart previously unseen life paths.

Another example of this energy is my flexibility to change up movement routines. I’ve trained for triathlons and half marathons. I’ve maxed out my unlimited monthly yoga membership. Sometimes high intensity, sweat fests are my vibe. Sometimes I just go for long walks and roll around on the ground stretching. And I like the ability to flip around and adjust depending on my energy.

This is also reflected in my sometimes insatiable wanderlust. There is so much to experience in this big, beautiful world, and I’m constantly eager to explore it. It’s one of my lifelong goals: to see as much as this planet as possible this lifetime.

Yet when I find something that truly lights my soul up, challenges my mind, and holds my interest, it is the fuel for my engine that can chug along forever into the sunset (Manifestor energy) while keeping the joy cup full (Generator energy). I see this with my fellow ManGen husband and my happy soul home base in San Diego.

Further more, I’m a Human Design 2/4 profile. The paradox. A 2 (the natural, the hermit) and a 4 (the people person, the opportunist). The need for solitude to develop my thoughts, processes + gifts but also relying on connections for opportunities. This can be balanced by understanding the need for both solitude and social interaction. Or creating a dynamic where I need to be well-prepared before making changes, often preferring to have something in place before I make a shift. And I’ve learned to love this paradox in myself. Both can be true.

Understanding my own energy blueprint feels like the key to unlock my own life. It’s been the greatest permission slip.

Having all these languages to describe myself, feels like a coming home to what I’ve always known anyway: We’re actually never meant to fit in. We’re meant to be so alive and true to our authentic nature that we step into the flow of life.

We’re all so unique. We all have our own conditioning, patterns, and experiences coloring our reality. Yet when we’re looking to fit inside the lines to prescribed “norms”, it can feel lonely and alienating when we don’t match the prototype.

So for my fellow Manifesting Generators, out there, if you look around and have no examples to mirror your own experience: you’re right on track 🩵

Leave a comment