The Tour Guide (that’s me) Forgot the Map

Forget walking a mile in my shoes. Honestly, that sounds exhausting (it actually is)—for both of us. They’re not that comfortable anyway (I hate wearing shoes), covered in vendor dust and permanently scented with rage, floor cleaner, and resignation. If you’re really curious how my mind works, skip the shoes. Just spend thirty seconds in my brain. That’s where the good stuff is. And by “good,” I mean mildly alarming, a bit chaotic (okay, more than a bit), and seldom quiet (even when sleeping).

It’s chaos in here, but not the decorative kind you post about in sanitized, socially acceptable formats. The tabs are open—mentally and digitally (reality check: 17 different windows with at least 8 tabs each). The caffeine levels are high and rising (I rarely drink coffee—Pepsi, on the other hand...). The ideas are all half-finished but somehow still scheduled to launch next Tuesday (unless I delete them, which I likely will). My impulse domain names are stacking up like unpaid parking tickets (not that I’ve ever had one—seriously), and I swear three of them are brilliant if I could just remember what they were for (or figure out where I saved them on my computer). There’s no such thing as a content calendar (because my brain just rejects that concept). Just a metaphorical drawer full of sticky notes, emotional spirals, and half-hearted pep talks scribbled between customer complaints and migraine logs.

This isn’t a strategy. It’s emotional parkour (imagine a caffeinated raccoon flinging itself off urban obstacles like it’s training for the Olympics but forgot why it signed up). That’s me, trying to turn flashes of brilliance (well, I think they might be brilliant—until another one flashes) into paragraphs before the dopamine wears off.

Or, if we’re dropping the visual entirely: this isn’t neat and tidy. It’s not linear (linear?why would I want to be linear?). I am bouncing between thoughts, distractions, merch ideas, five different books, unprocessed emotions, and 25+ voices (not real ones—just those random thoughts that sound like something said by someone else and have somehow stuck with me long enough to become part of my internal dialogue), all tangled up in caffeine-fueled epiphanies while trying not to break anything important—including myself (maybe most importantly... myself). This is the part of the process I didn’t want to post about because it doesn’t photograph well and it sure as hell doesn’t come with a growth funnel. It’s messy (in the best kind of way—at least I think it’s the best kind of way). It’s mine. And it’s still moving (just not usually forward—I apparently like detours and scenic routes).

Welcome to the chaos. I’ll be your tour guide. I forgot the map (wait—there’s a map?). We’re still going.