165. Paving the path without knowing.

A crying session that led me to where I am today.

Why do certain memories stick with us more than others?

Emotional impact? Repetition? Uniqueness? Attention? Stress? Hormones? Biological and cognitive factors? Associations? Context? Torture?

We lived in three different homes in Málaga, and I can only remember a handful of memories from each one. When I think about the last home we lived in, which was my favorite because it was full of dark wood, had three floors, and a bright orange kitchen, I can only remember one event:

Me sitting on our double bed, which was on the second floor, crying to my boyfriend C about how lost I felt. When I stop to relive that memory, I can feel the emotion in my chest again. I can feel where that wail came from. I can taste the salt from my tears. I can feel the release and relief that came after letting it all out.

The reason I was crying was that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. C had his own clothing brand and was designing and creating non-stop. He was connecting with a part of himself that brought him joy and a sense of expansion, while I was stuck in the unknown.

I’d been so sure that going to university would solve all my emotional wounds, but it didn’t. I was able to prove to myself that I was capable and that I was good at something: words. But it never did what I expected it to do: shut people’s mouths. I’d spent my whole adolescence trying to prove to other people that I was, in fact, capable of achieving things. I wasn’t a good high school student, but at university, I unlocked the talent of studying for exams and passing with high marks. I’d always thought that graduating from university would make me more important and respected by others, but the truth was that nobody cared as much as I’d spent years envisioning they would. Every decision I’d made revolved around somehow getting a university diploma, and my inner light was fading with every step I took toward that goal.

If I had wanted that degree, then I probably would have finished my last year and graduated, but I didn’t. I wanted to impress people and for people to love me because of it. I learned the hard way that I was never going to achieve what I was dreaming of because I needed to prove it to myself, not to anybody else. And that’s when I decided I was done. I walked away because I’d proved to myself that I could be a good student and that I could memorize page after page and turn it into something impressive on an exam paper, and that’s what healed my wound, not the external validation I yearned for.

I walked away from university, which had kept my calendar full of things to do, but when all of that was gone, I really did hit rock bottom. This leads us to me crying on the bed in our last apartment in Málaga, desperate for some kind of release and guidance, which is exactly what I received.

I was lost and had no goals in life, no idea of which direction to take, no future plans, and no way of enjoying the present. I could see C and how many collections he was creating for his clothing brand, how “successful” he was, and I felt like a loser. I would compare myself to him and try to follow in his footsteps to achieve the same feeling of expansion, but of course, I had my own path to take, and the more I tried to avoid the truth by copying him, the worse I felt.

Now that I’m older, I understand that the only way out was through, and at that moment, I was petrified of going through it. I was scared of facing the darkest parts of myself. The parts we all cover up, exile, bury, and ignore. I was scared of feeling pain and didn’t have any knowledge about how to face it all. The one thing that pulled all the pain out of me was C holding me while telling me that I didn’t have to follow a creative path like him if I didn’t want to. That there were many ways of living a happy life and that I had to find my own way. That no way was better than the other, all of them just as valid. And in that moment, I felt seen, heard, understood, validated, and cared for. With his words, he’d unlocked something inside of me, and I’d been given permission to let go of it all: all the preconceived ideas, all the comparison, all the inadequacy. I released it all.

And that’s when my whole life changed.

tshirt by @4creatorzonly

Everything I’d been carrying with me until then was gone, and I felt like I was starting from scratch. I felt like a blank slate that could become anything I wanted to. It felt freeing and exciting. I started to read a lot more and learn more about the literature and authors I liked. I started to write poems and to draw. C and I started a podcast together that we published every Sunday. I started to write stories and share them with close family and friends. I set up a Medium account. I wrote short texts on a private Instagram account. I started taking guitar classes every week. I helped C with photoshoots for his clothing brand. We could say that I laid down the foundations of what I do today, but back then, I had no idea that any of those small things would amount to anything.

The way I live my life nowadays is a direct consequence of being able to walk away from what I knew didn’t feel right for me. Was it a logical decision? Probably not, but I knew that it was the best thing for me, and I wasn’t wrong. That’s enough for me.

I’ve reached a point in my life, five years later, where things are starting to make sense and are starting to work out. None of my achievements happened overnight, and I’m still not where I’d like to be, but I’m closer than I was before. If you want to do something, just start. There’s nothing more to it. No magical formula, no secret recipe, no set path to success… You have to start wherever you are right now and keep going. You’ll fail a lot. You’ll make a lot of art you don’t absolutely love. You’ll get stuck along the way, but you’ll also create so many things that make you feel good. But you need to start.

I wanted to take this moment to talk about my current creative projects for those who don’t know, and to remind my family because they’re lost with it all too.

1. POMELO newsletter

This is where it all started. This is where I slowly but surely found the confidence to call myself a writer. This is where my life completely changed.

I publish an essay every Monday at 7:34 am. It all started as a way of writing every week no matter what because I wanted to get better at something I loved and because I wanted to form a habit. Three years later and it’s still my favourite thing to do and I feel like we can get even deeper.

2. greatreads book club

Shortly after I started POMELO, I created the book club. There were four of us and it slowly built up to around thirty-ish people. Each month for the past three years, we’ve read a book together and met up to talk about it. It’s been a beautiful experience and I can strongly say that I really did build a strong community. This month I decided it was time to say good bye to the project because people change and evolve and so do their projects. It’s been a good run and I’m still processing it all, but I’m proud of myself.

3. Dimanche Objects

This is a joint project I have with my boyfriend C aka

Jesús

. We moved to France last year and discovered that they love vide-greniers (car boot sales) here and we love going to them. After finding so (so) many cool objects that we couldn’t justify buying for ourselves, we decided to set up our own online shop called Dimanche Objects where we sell them. “Dimanche” means “Sunday” in French and we go to the vide-greniers on Sundays, so it felt fitting.

This is our first serious joint project and we never expected it to go this well. We have a website, which C made: dimancheobjects.com - he creates websites for other people too. But we sell all of our objects on Vinted to keep the shipping costs as low as possible. Every Dimanche (Sunday) we upload 3 objects and that’s why I never rest at the weekend. We’re going to be uploading more than three objects these next four weeks (starting from today) for the Christmas period so that we have more stock for those who would like to buy something from Dimanche Objects to give as a gift.

4. poda.server

poda.server is the second proper joint project C and I have together. This one is our biggest and most complex project to date. We spent over two years working on it with our web developer Gus. This website podaserver.com is more complex and although C designed it, Gus did the developing, we couldn’t have done it without him.

poda.server is a book recommendation service. You pay a monthly subscription (7 euros) and get access to your login area where you’ll find a form to fill out. C and I will read your form and begin the search for what book we think you’ll enjoy reading. We don’t use AI or any algorithms, we work human-human and we take pride in it.

Once you’ve read the book we recommended to you, you have two ways of delivering us your feedback: by marking it from 1 to 5 stars and by adding a comment so we can understand what you thought about it. The idea is that each month we get to know you better and can become your own personal book recommenders that know exactly what you like.

Take a look at the website to learn more about it, it’s pretty cool if I do say so myself.

5. poda.server
   newsletter

Seeing as poda.server is a completely digital project, we wanted to find ways to show who the humans (C and I) are behind it and what we’re going through. Breaking the digital connection is something we’re obsessed with, which is why we send out postcards and letters to our subscribers, but we wanted to find a way to connect with people, again, on a human to human level. That’s why we created the newsletter.

We wanted to talk about our experience of starting a new project from zero without all the romantic narrative. We wanted to show how we’re excited about having eight subscribers and how difficult it is sometimes to work with your partner. We fight about our projects too, and we wanted to be able to talk about that.

To have a bit of a structure, we decided to create our own “short digital magazine” called poda.serving, which we publish once a month. We talk about what books we’ve read, how we’ve been feeling, what we’ve done with poda.server… Then, the other section we have is called “Entrevistas Certified Bookworms”. On the 15th of every month we share a written interview. We speak to fellow bookworms about their reading experience to break the stereotypes that are usually tied to “bookworms” because we truly do believe that there is a book out there for everyone.

6. FRAGMENTOS
   podcast with
   carlota 🦎

FRAGMENTOS is our podcast and we’ve released seven episodes so far. We read a work of non-fiction written by a woman and select our favourite “FRAGMENTOS” (fragments) to use as our storyline. We talk about the author, her life, her upbringing and her work. We talk about the social context when the work was published and we use the FRAGMENTOS to talk about human experience and about how we have experienced said topics.

So far we’ve spoken about motherhood, about not having a place to call home, our relationship with money, about leaving the city that saw you grow up, about friendship, marriage and love, and about not knowing what you want to do with your life.

You can listen to the podcast (in Spanish) on Substack, on Spotify or on Apple podcasts. It should be available on all streaming platforms if I set up the RSS link correctly, but I’m don’t take my word for it. I tried my best.