The sunshine-and-rainbows lie of reinventing yourself

A modern “survival” guide to the inglorious death of who you thought you were.

I disappeared from the internet as a creative for 10 years. Not because I was “rebelling against the system,” but because I stopped believing I was allowed to create just for myself.

Photo by me, Photoshopped with terrifying clip art.

Before then, I used to write and publish a lot. I started on GameFAQs (IYKYK!), published in major outlets, and even started a YouTube channel. Creating was deeply a part of me. But at some point, I decided that this creative self was no longer valid, no longer enough, didn’t make enough money — so I buried her. Alive, I think.

And all of my creative work along with her.

Looking back, the most painful thing wasn’t burying that creative self. It was realizing that the urge to create stayed very much alive, always scratching beneath the surface. It whispered when I just wanted to veg out on the couch. It tugged, quietly and relentlessly, whenever I was watching or reading other creatives.

But I ignored it — for many, many years — because hey, I had bigger, better goals around money.

And well, I hit those money goals.

Shot straight through and made more than younger me ever thought possible. I’d built the kind of life that would’ve made those “be your own boss, design your lifestyle!” hucksters proud: nice car, lavish meals out, freedom to travel — whenever, wherever.

But if you’ve ever had the misfortune of reaching your goals, you already know the cosmically crushing truth:

The goal, once reached, never feels as good as you think.

I felt more hollow than ever. I’d try to soothe this void by leaning into more “experiences” or buying myself a lot of nice things, like an addict chasing more and more dopamine hits.

Then finally, last year I heard it — the creative urge I thought I’d buried, knocking again (and this time, not gently). I didn’t recognize it at first. It was just this nagging feeling in my gut that I couldn’t keep going like this anymore. Couldn’t live this vicious loop of expanding, stretching, and convincing myself that I was worshipping the right gods. You know: money, status, power.

So I did the only thing that made sense: I overcorrected.

I walked away from my profitable business and, as you’d expect, was immediately met with “Are you crazy? You’re throwing it all away?!”

People called me a quitter. Some asked if I was having a mid-life crisis (and honestly, maybe I was).

Only I knew the truth behind the truth.

That’s the thing about intentional life changes. No one gets you at first: Family asks why; peers question the strategy, your “end game”; and friends want to know what’s next. A never-ending exercise in soothing their fears on top of your own — all exhausting enough to make anyone turn back, just to make it all go away.

I understood their fears, but I didn’t turn back because I had finally returned to the thing they couldn’t see:

Myself.

In April, I released my first creative work — for myself — in 10 years. And what came out was a story that I started a decade ago on my old YouTube channel — a fitness transformation — and what it cost me to chase a goal for all that time. Similarly, about how I changed and came back to myself.

When I was making that video and preparing to launch this Substack, I had this sense that both symbolized a threshold for me to cross. A sort of imaginary finish line that would mark the “completion” of my reinvention. Now that these are published and live, I can say: I was right.

But only half-right.

Because crossing the threshold wasn’t the end of my reinvention. It was the beginning of the real battle — the kind no one warns you about.

The reality is, reinvention is a process, a fight, a long drowning — if you’re doing it right.

Most people who talk about reinvention tend to overfocus on the before (the initial impetus for change) and the after (“I’m successful now!”). They treat it like it’s some neat bridge you just cross, where a confetti-filled parade awaits you on the other side. But everyone glosses over the messy middle — that purgatory of “during” — where old values and beliefs don’t quite belong, but the “new you” hasn’t quite emerged yet.

This isn’t a guide exactly. It’s a map made from fumbling in the dark. A descent with no shortcuts or formulas, but extracted from the raw terrain through doubt, silence, and the suffocating in-between of what it actually costs to change. Reinvention doesn’t move like a ladder; it spirals.

Not up, not down. In.

I didn’t set out to structure things this way. It just came out like this. And maybe it's the truest shape reinvention ever takes.

The same gods, the same promises — until you see them for what they are.

What most people call reinvention is often just rearranged performance. This…is something else.

It’s the strange, exit-less and window-less waiting room of the soul. Where you’re no longer who you were, but you’re not yet who you’re becoming. So you’re just waiting. In stillness. And in that stillness is this secret desperation for things to work, for you to be right, and to show the world that you didn’t just take a bet on yourself and have nothing to show for it.

Except no receptionist ever calls you forward.

Instead, it’s living inside a life that isn’t quite yours yet. Not a before, not an after, but in-between, where no one can clap for you, no one can tell you you’re doing it right, and no guru can sell you a shortcut.

That’s what it feels like.

This is the truth about reinvention.

And most people won’t stay for this part.

The middle that breaks people

Take a look at these two images. What do they make you feel?

Credit to Reddit user your_local_snowy

Maybe you feel unsettled. Perhaps comforted?

Maybe these images call up some strange nostalgia — like a déjà vu you can’t place — but at the same time, you know something feels deeply wrong.

Almost like the slow, panning scenes in a horror film, where everything looks too calm, too composed. And without knowing why, you brace. You don’t know what for — maybe a monster just beyond the frame — but somehow, your body already knows.

How is that possible? How can these images evoke a sense of nostalgia, familiarity, and unease — at the same time?

Look again. This time more closely.

The first image, the hotel hallway, lulls you into false familiarity. You’ve been here before. Maybe seen it somewhere, like in a movie or a travel brochure perhaps. Hallways like this usually lead somewhere, with glowing exit signs marking your way. But this one is different.

This hallway stretches on forever.

No exit. No end.

Even the soft red glow of what looks like an exit sign plays mind tricks on you.

And yet, you feel a strange pull to walk down it anyway. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. As you do, dread sinks in. You keep going against your better judgment, lured by a tiny flicker of hope that maybe — just maybe — there’s a way out you can’t see yet.

Then there’s the second image: The lone blue chair under a flood of yellow-green fluorescent lighting.

It may look inviting at first. Even comforting. But something is off.

Isolation hums under the skin. A pure, desolate endlessness in a deserted space where you, let alone any human, don’t belong. Shouldn’t belong. Still, that single blue chair beckons, as if saying:

“It’s safe here. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable and sit?”

It looks like peace — a chance to finally rest. But notice the ceiling above warping into the distance. There’s no preview of what lies ahead. Just a single blue chair, and this growing sense that maybe this is it. Maybe this is where you stay.

The hallway and the blue chair aren’t just poetic.

They’re the lived spaces of every person who’s ever tried to change their life and wondered why it’s often so hard, so paralyzing.

Together, the hallway and the blue chair embody liminality, the transitory spaces between one state and another.

That uncanny, almost beautiful wrongness of being left behind while still being urged forward toward…who knows. Where hope, desolation, and grief breathe inside the same ghostly, otherworldly spaces.

It’s the feeling of being nowhere…but not lost. Alive…but not becoming.

Just this seemingly perpetual state of in-betweenness.

And that is exactly the murky middle a reinvention inhabits. Both are the connective tissue between a “before” and an “after.” The spaces between the old self and the unseen future.

Most of us think it’s just the hallway. That once we push through it, we’re done. I believed that, too.

Only in retrospect did I understand that the hallway was only half the story — and battle.

No wonder reinvention feels so deeply unsettling. No wonder it breaks most people.

No one wants to be here — neither wandering that hallway nor sitting alone in that blue chair. So isolating. So suffocating.

But perhaps more terrifying…

You are not truly alone.

No one comes for you

Once I made the decision to reinvent myself, I felt very little hesitation. I already knew what would be waiting if I went back: A long, living death. The kind that festers like a quiet rot, eroding your sense of self until there’s nothing left of you to save.

The only way forward was figuring out what came next.

It’s the same impulse that sends so many on soul-searching quests — traveling the world, moving to new cities, enrolling in retreats — in the hope that the Answer is just around the corner.

This is the liminal hallway that we all must walk. With no end in sight, no clarity. Just the tiniest sliver of hope that an exit exists — somehow, somewhere.

Obviously, I did find that exit. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. But I’d be lying if I told you I was only in that hallway momentarily. That I already knew: “Ah, I am going to write for myself on this Substack and make videos on YouTube!”

Nope.

I dragged my feet down that hallway for eight months, pulled forward by nothing but a fragile trust that it would lead somewhere.

There comes a point in everyone’s hallway where — no matter if you look back or ahead — it collapses into one long stretch of sameness. A point of no return, no arriving. Just the same blur of hallway — forever — in an eerie stillness.

That was the stretch where I started to wonder: Was this what I left everything for?

In one of my essays, I said that the worst part about reinventing yourself isn’t just the hit on finances or being misunderstood. It’s this — a feeling of lostness, unmoored in endless, tacky carpeted stillness. Where the silence makes any flicker of doubt inside your mind grow bigger, louder. Where the real battle isn’t just “you.”

It’s fending off voices from the past. The very same that tempt you to turn back and question your every move like the world’s most annoying back-seat driver.

“You’re making the wrong choice…turn back before you regret this.”

“There’s a reason everyone thinks you’re being crazy.”

“We knew it. You should’ve stayed.”

That’s what the silence is testing.

It strips you bare and chips away at your resolve. It tests whether you’ll double down on your decisions when there is no applause or validation. When it’s just you caught in this torrent of your own making — in your own silence — with no life raft in sight.

This is the part everyone wants to fast-forward. This is the “during” that becomes nearly unbearable to move through because being in the same claustrophobic space with this stillness and yourself for this long is a different sort of death.

The death of clinging to certainty. The death of clinging to control. And to who you thought you were. A death of self as you’ve known it — while grief, hope, and existential despair orbit in maddening proximity.

The task here is simple, really: Survive it long enough for the exit to come into view.

It did for me eventually, though there was no triumph. Or fireworks. It wasn’t catharsis either. Just the faintest thud of something still alive.

I just knew the alternative too well, and that knowledge made survival the only option for me.

Earlier, I said I was carried forward through the hallway by a belief that I could find the exit even if I couldn’t see it yet. But there was another unseen, pulsing force that pushed me forward: The urge to return to my creativity somehow — a glimmer that moved faster than any thought, stronger than any doubt.

Yes, creating again was the only path that made sense. And yet, I recognized even that path was fraught with its own perils.

My years of being behind the scenes of big and small brands alike had pulled back the curtain, revealing a “game” that most people weren’t even aware they were playing. I knew the players (and myself) well enough to know exactly what would be lying in wait to drag me back. Not new threats, just the old gods — reborn:

Metrics.

Performance.

Visibility.

Money.

Productivity.

The same gods and traps that I had to break away from in the first place. And the truth is, I don’t disavow them because I suddenly realize I’m better than them or that I’m above it all. For me to say that I don’t care about these things would be an outright lie.

Of course, I care about money. Of course, I still want validation. I still look at metrics. I still want to be seen.

But even knowing this doesn’t shield you from their seduction.

It’s never a clean break because these gods don’t shout their presence. They don’t rage. They murmur, quietly and patiently under the surface. The old gods reshape themselves and wear different clothes, disguising themselves so thoroughly that you mistake them for the sound of your own inner voice.

If I leaned in, I would trust them to build me a new life. But a false one. Different costume, same leash.

But I didn’t. And only because I’ve seen what that life would leave me. I had already pulled myself out — just barely, after all. And what followed after my jailbreak wasn’t any clarity-induced relief.

Just me sitting in the wreckage of everything I thought I wanted, feeling raw, brittle, and severed from the dead ambitions that once felt so vital.

And only then, somewhere inside that impossible narrowing of self, did something stir: A memory of my old self. The long, lost version of me that was once creating, laughing, and feeling totally, completely uninhibited. A self so unconcerned that it broke my heart to remember her.

That was when I understood: That was who I needed to become again.

It took time and an excruciating silence. It took tearing down parts of myself I had spent too many years building.

But eventually, I reached out for her — and to my shock, she reached back. She felt different, and I knew I was too, both of us deeply altered by this shared creative silence. She wasn’t wide-eyed anymore, and I no longer needed her to prove anything. And somehow, we still fit, like I was always meant to be that person.

Click.

That’s when the hallway finally started to shift and an exit loomed into view.

Or at least, that’s what I thought at first.

Because lest we forget… we have yet to arrive at the blue chair. And that’s where things get heavier — and the most insidious trap awaits.

False exits where the gods whisper

The roadmap was crystal clear: I just had to make my first public works again.

Part of that decision was starting a Substack and re-launching my YouTube channel in order to reconnect with the fitness thread I’d left behind. Not just to be seen again, but to prove to myself I was really back.

And well, here we are.

If you watch the 44-minute video, you’d see similarities in the arc I’m sharing here, just reflected in fitness form. And maybe — if you paid even closer attention — you could feel it, too: The grief I carried throughout my creative silence, wrapped in an unshakable hope for the self I was still in the middle of becoming.

But what the finished video can and would never reveal was the quiet violence inside that creation process.

It was more than just “Man, creating is hard!” (It truly is.) Rather, it was this clash between new, emerging desires and old instincts — the ones forged in the old armor of survival — that made the process extra…extra. These instincts don’t just disappear. They whisper like they care:

“Stay small. Don’t risk too much.”

“Just fit in. Make your work algorithm-friendly. Everyone else does.”

“You know how to get attention fast. C’mon, you know you want it…”

I heard them, loud and clear, and I knew the drill: I could game attention. I could mold my work to something less true. Again.

But I’ve already lived — and paid for — that trade-off. I had only just reclaimed myself, and I wasn’t willing to lose her again.

This time I would hold the line, stick to my terms, and stay true to my creative vision. And deep down, I expected it to work. I believed my integrity would be rewarded…

…maybe?

It felt like a collision of instincts: create or collapse. Stay true or be seen. A game of chicken between integrity and attention.

All this, I thought, was the test. The teacher.

That this was this reinvention’s final boss before I could unlock whatever was supposed to come next.

Bring it on, I said. Because finally, I had a direction. An exit!

I just had to go through with the making, the act of creating and finally releasing my work — on my own terms, like I’d planned. If there were ever a higher stakes moment than this in my recent life, I couldn’t name it.

The sheer pressure I had placed on this video: hope, fear, and excitement — all stacked on a single release. All I wanted was for someone to see me. Really see me. I didn’t need a lot. Just enough to feel like I wasn’t crazy for doing this.

To my credit, I wasn’t naive. I wasn’t blindly throwing things into the void. I brought the full weight of my experience to the table: I scanned the field, noted the patterns, built the infrastructure. I made sure every piece was thoughtful, intentional, and aligned. I played it smart. I played it sharp.

But…

For all of my skill, all of my precision, and all of my preparation, there was one thing I couldn’t properly brace for:

The devastating silence after I hit publish.

A handful of views. A few comments from close friends. That’s it.

I didn’t expect to blow up — only a small hope for something to catch. But even trying to manage expectations doesn’t soften the gut punch: To keep yourself silent for the better part of a decade… and then, after everything, be met with a different kind of quiet. A silence all the same, just on the other side.

And colder, too, because now it was public.

Don’t people realize how awesome this is? Don’t people see what I had to go through to get here? Don’t people see ME?

That was when I realized the horrible truth unfurling: I hadn’t reached the end.

I’d only arrived…just to find the blue chair waiting for me.

I thought that my crossing was publishing the video. I thought the threshold was revealing myself in public. I finally created something after 10 years! Wasn’t that enough?

Silence.

The brutal truth landed: No one gave a shit.

If the hallway is the slog, the blue chair is what actually comes after: The unsettling quiet that greets you when you think you’ve arrived. The solace that feels like relief at first — until you realize it’s just another rotation in the spiral of reinvention, coiling even tighter.

After all the pain before the hallway, the lonely crawl through it, and every ounce of grit to stay true, the silence did me in. I was so worn down from the grind of the hallway that anything else, even a false sense of safety and comfort, felt like salvation.

That’s the true snare of the blue chair: You sit down seeking relief, refuge, the familiar.

And once you do, that’s when they strike.

First, the past voices come roaring back — louder and more brazen than ever:

“See, we tried to warn you.”

“You should’ve listened to us. Should’ve stayed. This is what you get.”

“But don’t worry…you know better now.”

Voices so exacting yet so oddly consoling that you unknowingly get rocked to sleep and start to lower your defenses. Then while you’re in this raw, vulnerable state — just as you’re catching your breath — the old gods appear before you, dressed in new clothes and smiling like saviors.

They coo, “We see you. You only need to come back to us, and we’ll show you how to make the world care.”

I could feel the old habits and instincts stir beneath me. I could start to feel the familiar pull. The suffocating pressure that comes with being less easy to understand, less…marketable.

Maybe if I leaned in a little...

Maybe if I gave the algorithms more of what they demanded...

Maybe if I made myself a little smaller, a little shinier, a little more palatable...

Then people would care. Then they would see me.

One small bend. The “Just this once…” The tiniest sacrifice that feels safe to make…until it’s not. And slowly, so slowly, the old gods take their place on the pedestal again. And you?

You begin to disappear. Not all at once, but piece by piece. Just a little, then a little more. Until one day, you’re smiling because the world is celebrating you…

And all it cost was yourself.

If the hallway was despair, the blue chair is temptation, calling to you in a saccharine, comforting voice.

It’s the ever-so gentle invitation to settle in liminality and call it enlightenment. The blue chair lets you build a brand around unfinished healing, and perform the “after” while the “during” quietly still bleeds underneath.

It feels like growth. You think you’ve changed, but all you’ve really done is step into a different cage and lock your own door behind you.

In real life, that looks like…

…taking a better-paying job at a new company and telling yourself it’s different — only to realize the handcuffs fit better this time, because of the perks.

…prioritizing creative freedom — only to turn your passion into a monetized personal brand and kneel to an audience.

…pivoting into a new niche, a new brand, a new industry — only to rerun the same tired playbook in a different setting.

…starting your own business — only to still measure your worth by how little you work and how much money you make.

…leaving a job to go freelance — only to recreate the same 60-hour grind and call it freedom, just in your pajamas.

These are reinventions that leave your loyalty to the old gods intact. A false exit. The prettiest kind.

A false exit isn’t failure. It’s success that asks you to stay a little longer — and forget what you came for. It gives you a story to tell, something to point to, and a way to say:

“Look, I made it.”

That’s when the real game becomes clear: You’re not in competition against anyone else. Not even against yourself.

You’re up against the forces that destroy most people before they even glimpse the other side. Things like financial responsibility, peer pressure, and societal pressure.

The invisible gravity of the status quo.

The real enemy at this stage isn’t doubt. It’s the seduction back into the cage — disguised as safety and respite from the unknown.

Because if the reinvention that comes out is still about proving your worth, being seen as productive, and getting approval from the same systems — just in a different arena — then…

Isn’t the new life you’re building just a prettier version of the same traps?

It’s like surviving the hallway — only to die in the blue chair.

The old gods have always been patient. They always return, just not in the form you expect. They just learn the language of healing, change the altar, and call it freedom.

And here, they laid it all out for me on a silver platter — refined and fully optimized.

All I had to do was nod. All I had to do was obey.

If I say yes to this, I get everything I thought I wanted: recognition, ease, and validation.

But if I say no, then…

The choice to remain

It’s funny, isn’t it?

How easy it is to say you’ll hold your ground. To claim you’ll stay true to your vision, no matter what. When the battle feels far off — when the stakes don’t feel real yet — your intentions seem unshakable, like steel.

But it’s all hot air until your resolve gets tested for real.

Because the moment the true enemies show themselves — the temptations you swore you’d resist, the easy outs you promised not to take — that’s when you find out what you’re actually made of.

I certainly faltered there.

The response to my first video in a decade fell painfully short of the sky-high expectations I’d placed on it, and all I could think was: Maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought.

Maybe I was naive to believe I could do things differently — and still make it work.

That gap between how I thought people would react and how they actually did cracked something open, deep and uncomfortable.

And just like that, the old gods changed clothes.

Suddenly, the answer seemed obvious: Pitch the work. Frame it better. Optimize. Just this once.

And before I knew it, the dam broke. I was right back in the trenches: Finding and curating lists of promotion targets, carefully crafting cold pitches, obsessively refreshing views and comments. My old instincts humming like they’d just been waiting for permission to act.

Oh, how fast I fell back in. I knew the traps. I’d accounted for them. But there I was, right back in the hustle I thought I’d outgrown, chasing metrics and mistaking proof for meaning.

That’s the power of the old gods. That’s how deeply they take root. You think you’re moving up — with new tools, new praise, more room to move — only to discover later you’ve been pruned to fit the shape of the system.

And just as I was about to spend another full day hunting for promotional opportunities, I caught myself.

I’d seen this door before. And that was when I recognized it.

It wasn’t opportunity. It was a false exit — elegant, optimized, and shaped like mercy.

I’ve walked through it many times in different costumes: as a creative chasing fulfillment; as a freelancer chasing freedom; as an entrepreneur chasing power.

Every one of them almost worked. Each one promised me true change. Each one promised that this time, this version of me, finally made sense.

For a moment, it felt like maybe they were right. Because oftentimes it feels like the old gods are on your side, chanting the words of healing, purpose, power, and even creativity. But each time, something just felt slightly off. And only later, after the initial spell wore off — as it always does — would I look up and realize that I had just built the same exact house, with rearranged furniture and repainted walls.

The “freedom” still had a leash. The “success” still required a shape. The version of me being celebrated was never quite me.

And then comes a quiet and merciful moment when you realize you could stay. That this version could almost work. No one would blame you.

Initially, the question you set out to answer in a reinvention is likely:

“Who am I? Who can I become?”

But the real dilemma in reinvention reveals itself to be:

"Will I choose to live half-dead in a familiar cage, or risk everything for a life that may not even exist yet?"

I almost chose the former.

But I remembered what it cost me the first time — and every time after. That’s what made it dangerous.

I’ve walked through enough false exits to finally know their true shape, and this one had all the markings.

Facing the allure and power of the old gods — shapeshifted but still the same as ever — was the true crossing. The true threshold and reinvention. Not the video’s release.

And for the first time in my life, I could no longer say yes to the old gods.

Not because I didn’t want ambition, money, status, or recognition. It was because my creative integrity now demanded it.

It demanded that I choose silence over spectacle. To choose intention over desperation. And to choose myself over selling my soul for speed.

Even if there was no guarantee anything would come of it.

Most people are terrified to drop what they’ve built. Their self-worth, their security, their identity are all tied up in it. And that’s not weakness. It’s just how the illusion works. We all get tricked.

Once I made my choice, I dropped all promotion activity that didn’t serve the work and went back to focus on the making. I knew real freedom and sovereignty meant preserving my own creative spark and core.

I still feel the pull. I still glance at the metrics. I still want to be seen. But I no longer offer myself in sacrifice to them.

Only to the work. Only to what’s true.

And that’s the truth of it: Ambiguity still lingers. The unknown is still here. But now, I’m moving through it with my integrity and soul — whatever remains of it anyway — intact.

We do not always arrive. We do not always triumph.

We survive, unfinished — and move forward only with our compass pointed true.

The gods of metrics, validation, performance, productivity, and money don’t need to be exiled. They’re tempting, familiar, and occasionally useful.

But not my masters.

The old gods always return. The question is never if.

It’s what you’ll do when they do.