My Story, So Far
On instinct, interruption, and building a creative life off-script.
Some stories don’t begin with a bold decision; they unfold softly, over time, by instinct.
Mine started with quiet curiosity and a vivid imagination.
I realized recently that I’ve never really shared my story here, not fully at least. If you’ve found your way to this space, you might not know much about me or how I got here. So I thought I’d start at the beginning.
As a child, I was soft-spoken and observant, happiest in the world behind my eyes. I was the kind who preferred listening to speaking. I was always drawn to rhythm, to motion, to anything that felt like expression without needing explanation. At some point, my mom followed that cue and signed me up for ballet and figure skating lessons.
I started competing at seven years old, still soft-spoken, still hesitant in everyday life. But something shifted the first time I stepped out onto the ice. Not just in the way I moved, but in the way I was. I didn’t feel nervous or small; I felt alive. I hadn’t grown into my voice yet, but on that rink, I didn’t need words to speak. I felt seen in a way I hadn’t known I wanted to be. Figure skating wasn’t just a skill to be learned; it was a way of becoming. A portal into a version of myself that felt braver, bolder, and more at home in the world. From there, creativity became my native language. It showed up in every corner of my childhood: home videos, recitals, fashion shows, and art projects. I was always building something, always telling a story. I didn’t have the words yet, but I understood how a scene could say something a sentence couldn’t.
As I grew older, I learned that confidence doesn’t always arrive through approval. Sometimes, it’s about discovering an outlet; one that allows you to step outside of who you’ve been told you are, and into who you’re meant to be. Growing up, performance was that outlet, but in high school, it took a new form.
Academically, I often felt behind. My classmates were competitive, and while my peers excelled in school, I constantly felt like I couldn’t keep up. It wasn’t for lack of effort; I just didn’t fit into the shape the system expected of me. But during my sophomore year, I enrolled in a video production class that changed everything. Behind the lens, I found my focus. I could craft narratives, control the rhythm, capture emotion, and create beauty out of fragments. It reminded me of performing, not in the sense of being seen, but in the sense of transformation. I could shape the world into something that mirrored how I felt inside. I wasn’t just good at it, I was me in it.
College came next, and everything unfolded as expected until it didn’t. During my freshman year, my body shut down. At first, it was exhaustion, then brain fog, then a full-body heaviness I couldn’t explain. I struggled to walk across campus. I was sleeping 16 hours a day and still waking up depleted. My mind felt distant, like I was watching my own life through a fogged-up window. Doctors told me I was depressed, but I knew it was deeper than that. My nervous system was overwhelmed, burned out in ways I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to understand. Eventually, I had to step away. I took a medical leave of absence and moved back home. I’ll never forget how disorienting that winter was, watching everyone around me return to campus while I stayed still. In the world I grew up in, taking a break from college seemed unheard of. Everyone followed the script: high school, college, job, life. To step off that track, even temporarily, felt like failing.
But in hindsight, it was the beginning of becoming.
All of my friends had left my hometown, and for the first time, I was alone. I needed an outlet, a purpose, a place to pour all of my energy that wasn’t going into healing. So I started a blog. It began quietly as a private space to collect images and thoughts, but over time, it became my world. Online, I wasn’t defined by what I was missing or recovering from. I was a creator, a storyteller, a girl with ideas and the freedom to build them. That blog gave me more than a platform; it gave me a sense of authorship over my own life. Slowly, I stopped waiting to return to the traditional path. In fact, I realized I didn’t want to return to it at all. I was learning how to shape a life from scratch. One rooted in intuition, not expectation. I became proud of being unconventional.
During this time, I also started researching chronic illness and the nervous system. I learned what so many others navigating invisible illness already know: that healing is rarely linear. There are months you feel on top of the world, and others where you start all over again. I learned to listen to my body, to rest, to pause, and to choose softness over speed. I swapped long runs for slow yoga, HIIT workouts for pilates. It wasn’t just a change in movement; it was a change in relationship to my body, my energy, and my identity.
Eventually, I found my footing, and when I did, I followed a dream I’d carried since childhood: I moved to New York. I grew up idolizing the city. My dad lived there, and every visit felt cinematic; the pace, the people, the pulse. That time living in New York was exactly what I needed. I felt completely independent. I tested myself, I stretched, I created, and when the time came, I returned to Los Angeles to finish school with a deeper sense of self and a quiet kind of confidence I hadn’t known before.
This time, LA felt different. It wasn’t a city I was passing through; it became home. I took a job with a small clothing brand downtown, working while finishing school. It was far from glamorous, but being surrounded by creatives lit something up in me. I began to understand what my life could look like if I kept following that feeling, if I kept building from instinct.
I graduated in 2020, right into a pandemic. It was a strange, still time to step into adulthood. I’ve often described it as standing on top of a frozen river. Everything was stagnant on the surface, but the water underneath kept moving. When the ice finally thawed, I was standing in the same place, but in new water. Everything around me felt different. It was disorienting. I tried to return to the things that once brought me joy, but they no longer fit. The world had shifted, and so had I. That feeling of ache and disconnection stayed with me for a while, but eventually, I found my rhythm again, and like so many times before, it came from trusting my instincts.
My first real job after graduating was in social media. I was grateful to have it, especially given the state of the world, but I knew almost immediately that I wanted more. Not more in the title, necessarily, but more in creative ownership. I had ideas I wanted to execute, visions I wanted to bring to life, and I could feel that something bigger was available to me if I could find the nerve to reach for it. As luck may have it, there was an opening on my team for an art director. I wasn’t remotely qualified, didn’t have the portfolio, and I wasn’t even fully aware of the scope of the job. But I saw a window cracked open, and I climbed through it. I pitched myself for the role, not because I thought I was ready, but because I knew I’d rise to meet it.
Somehow, it worked, and that single “yes” became the cornerstone of my career.
Since then, I’ve said yes to the things that scare me, I’ve surrounded myself with people who challenge me, and I’ve built a career that isn’t always easy to explain, but forever true to who I am.
And now, I’m building The Maxwell.
A full-circle project. A tribute to the gallery I wandered as a child (more on that here), a love letter to my lineage, and to the instinct that has quietly guided me all along.
I don’t know exactly what comes next, but I know how I’ll find it:
By listening.
By moving toward what lights me up.
By trusting that some of the best paths aren’t walked in a straight line, but drawn in curves, loops, and open-ended sentences.
Thanks for being here. I hope this story reminds you that the best ones are rarely linear.
x, s.