I turned 31 today.

I don’t really know how to start this. Obviously if you look closely you can see I’ve taken a big hiatus from substack, right after saying in January how much I wanted to devote time to this and to be consistent. I can’t even say that I will be consistent from now on, that I‘m back in action, if I’m being totally and completely honest.

I turned 31 today and like many on their birthdays, I am having complex feelings about it. While I know this is normal for most, it is actually more of a rare occurrence for me. Ever since I was in my mid 20’s I cherished my birthday - it truly was always one of my favorite days of the year. This is mostly attributed to a rejection of past experiences with a very emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend who made me cry every year in college. After we broke up and I did some healing, I vowed to make my birthday a day of joy and happiness. I created a tradition where I spent the day alone doing all my favorite things - I often started the morning taking myself out to breakfast followed by a day of art gallery visits and thrift shopping. Then I finished off with a dinner of sorts with my closest friends. It was a recipe for success. I truly already had the best day and then walking into the night surrounded by the people I love the most who in turn love me the most, always left me feeling so grateful and full.

29 was the first time I had cried on my birthday in many years. This was also attributed to a boyfriend at the time who really didn’t deliver and brought some negative energy into the weekend - we broke up only a few weeks later.

Then 30. The big one. As midnight stuck, I balled harder than I had in a long time. I touched on it a bit in my October diary, but with 30, I did really feel a shift internally. For 1) I was (in the simplest of terms) mourning a decade, closing a chapter - although in theory I can recognize, the bookends of this chapter are sort of imaginary and irrelevant. The new year is only significant because we give it significance. I woke up the next day and in a way, didn’t feel that different.

But in other ways, as weeks went by, I did feel a difference. I felt like I suddenly was hyper aware of time. Time simply on planet earth, time as a finite resource, time to be a young person who’s “just figuring it out.” In dating, new fears arose that perhaps I was getting closer to expiration. A stale piece of merchandise left on the back of the grocery store shelves. I wasn’t one step closer to having babies (by the mere fact that I was totally and utterly single, but also in my mindset - no part of me felt any inch closer to that desire to procreate even if I always assumed that was my destiny). Yet by the sheer fact of biology, I was sure my ovaries were aging.

After I got back from my 2.5 months in Europe last summer, my focus was primarily on two things - 1) Get a Visa to move to Paris 2) Work as much as you can because I needed to save up in order to move to Paris. I knew I was tired of superficial dating experiences, entertaining the “just for fun” “just for right now” type of situationships, that I was craving something deeper, more real. Yet because I wanted to move it felt careless to date, so I mostly didn’t.

The first half of 2026 (since I last wrote) I would mostly characterize by a concentration on work. I was determined to grind as much as I could, knowing that uncertainly lie ahead when I moved. I said yes to so much, that it eventually culminated in a total and utter meltdown, feeling true burnout for the first time in my life.

In February I opened up Substack and started typing out a Diary, but never finished. I wrote the following:

One of the greatest joys in my life right now is my work, but I also want to be honest about the quieter, heavier parts of this season and career. The highs are only part of the story and I hope with my honesty and vulnerability, you also feel a little less alone in this crazy world. Firstly February has felt like a month of reckoning with what it means to be single—especially as an independent creative.

I’ve been single for about a year and a half now, and in many ways, that space has been incredibly necessary. Last year gave me the time I needed to fully process a relationship that took a long while to move through. And I’m very aware that being single has also made this current moment possible. Without a partner tying me to one place, I’m able to take a huge leap this year and move to Paris — a truly holy shit scary dream that I think will change my life. If I had someone here who wasn’t interested in leaving California, that decision would feel infinitely more complicated.

I’ve felt for a while now that I’ve outgrown Los Angeles. And lately, staying in a place that no longer fits has felt more painful than taking a big, scary, courageous leap into the unknown. I’m stuck fully in limbo in a place that no longer feels like home, waiting for the moment when I can arrive at the next chapter in my life. There’s so much gratitude wrapped up in the freedom to make this choice, but there’s also weight. Because while independence has given me so much, it also means I’m carrying everything on my own. I notice it in small, quiet ways—watching friends with partners who can pick them up from the airport, watch their pets when they travel, make them soup when they’re sick. Those things seem small, but they add up. It’s energy I’m constantly expending to take care of myself, self-soothe, problem-solve, and hold everything together.

That said, this season and really the bulk of my 20s has also made me deeply self-reliant. I’ve always genuinely enjoyed my own company. I know myself well. I trust my instincts. But winter months tend to amplify loneliness, especially as people retreat inward. I anticipated that a bit going into December, but I was buffered by travel, projects, and the momentum of sustained work. January surprisingly stayed busy with work as well. Then February rolled around, bringing the first quieter month I’d had in quite some time—and with that quiet, many things were brought to the surface.

Being single has also made it easy to become a workaholic. When evenings feel long and empty, it’s tempting to keep working until 10 p.m.—and honestly, I often do. And to be fair, that focus has yielded real results: career growth, financial stability, momentum. I don’t regret it. But I’m starting to see how work has sometimes filled spaces that connection used to occupy. And as February came into view with a much smaller workload (one that I was excited for), I actually felt more unsettled than I expected.

I originally imagined February as a kind of creative reset. With fewer paid shoots on the calendar, I thought I’d finally have the space to pour myself into personal projects and test shoots. Those are, after all, my favorite things to do—first, because they’re deeply fulfilling, and second, because they genuinely push my career forward. Whether it’s learning something new on set or creating work that eventually catches a brand’s attention, personal projects have always been fuel for me.

February started unfortunately with a terrible illness that knocked me out for an entire week. And after that, instead of bouncing back into inspiration, I found myself feeling… blank. I think sometimes you have to trust the process, and accept that inspiration isn’t something you can summon on command. There was a gap between expectation and reality. I had all this “free time” in theory, but none of the creative spark I thought would fill it.

I’d scroll on Pinterest and nothing would stick. No ideas were clicking. Even editorials—something I usually feel a pull toward—weren’t resonating. I didn’t know what I wanted next from my portfolio. Even though I technically had fewer shoots, days seemed to go by quickly. I had a few lingering deliverables hanging over my head, I gave more time to my retainer client, and most significantly, I finally finished my visa documents and submitted them to the French government mid month.

The month that followed (March) ramped up again with work, turning out to be my most lucrative month I have ever had to date. While this felt like an amazing accomplishment, the constant deliverables hanging over my head definitely took a toll. Substack naturally fell to the waist side again, because 1) I was just too busy to sit down and write, but mostly 2) I just didn’t really feel like I had much to say or anything new that I had learnt. While having consistent clients and being in a position where I hadn’t had to search for a job or pitch myself in quite some time truly felt like a dream, the jobs started to feel a bit redundant. I wasn’t feeling challenged, I knew the work I was making wouldn’t land on my portfolio, I wasn’t feeling like I was leveling up. In the same ways that I was feeling “stuck” in LA having outgrown the city, these jobs were increasingly not fulfilling me. I did manage to do two test shoots that month, which did bring joy and excitement, but with it came the familiar feeling that what I wanted most was to be paid for jobs that filled me with that kind of excitement.

While Paris was appealing for many reasons, one is that I felt it could be an opportunity for just that. Though there was fear in turning my back on the clients I had worked so hard to get in Los Angeles (I urged them that I would come back throughout the year however) part of me knew that cutting myself off from them could in turn open up my time for bigger and better things (such as bigger clients in amazing European locations - the ultimate dream).

By mid April, I reached full burnout for the first time in my life since going full time freelance. I felt stressed every single day. I felt like even if I ran away for an hour or two to the park to try to decompress, I couldn’t really relax, feeling the weight of my never ending to-do list. The utter panic that set in was scary. I would feel dread every time I had a new inquiry in my inbox and that’s when I knew something was wrong. The capitalist monster had fully taken over and my workaholic brain had a hard time comprehending that a real break was needed. I was worried about losing opportunities. ‘Will clients come knocking again if I say no?’ I thought to myself. I think within the freelance life, it’s easy to get sucked into the scarcity mindset. In my more healthier frames of mind, I’ve learnt to enjoy the waves of work. Some months are super busy, while other months would be slow and you can use that as a reset to recharge. But what if the slow month never comes. I landed in a place where I was no longer at the whim of the rhythm of freelance, but needed to take control and carve out time for myself. Thankfully the utter panic only lasted a week or two. It’s funny how much just giving yourself permission to take a break does almost as much as the break itself. After saying no to a few jobs, finally having a week where I didn’t have a long list of deliverables or clients texting about when things would be ready, I could feel my stress leaving my body and my creative brain coming back online. And of course, with that I pulled together a last minute editorial that is most definitely my favorite of the year so far (more on that at a later date).

On top of all this, my physical health was certainly not at its best for the first half of 2026 either. From February through May, I got extremely sick for 1 week out of each month. Perhaps it was the stress, or the mold we think my LA apartment has (we even got mold remediation done, but nothing changed). Again being a single person, having to care for one’s own self each and every time I fell ill, had its own weight in itself.

On May 7th I officially got my visa to move to France approved (I am planning to make a substack post all about this process at some point). When I opened up my passport, true relief and calm set in. Finally this feeling of limbo could come to an end. But like all things in life, nothing is quite so simple. The two months that followed consisted of a new set of to-do’s, the kind required to uproot your life and start over in another country. “Find Sublease in Paris. Find Subletter in LA. Ship things to Paris. Get new drivers license before it expires. Figure out where my car will go. Cancel US Health Insurance.” Luckily my list making habit came in handy. I couldn’t really focus on the reality of it as I simply just had too much to do - operating on a strict “one foot in front of the other” type of mentality. June flew by just as fast in a whirlwind of final goodbyes and last minute prep.

I arrived here in Paris on the 18th of June. The first month here has been interesting to say the least, definitely a harder transition than I expected. Here I am again, just putting one foot in front of the other - 3 heatwaves and 1 heartbreak later (I ended up unexpectedly meeting someone just after writing that February diary and fell in love in LA - the universe is funny that way). I don’t really have any final conclusion to this rant. Most days, I feel more lost than I have in the last six years. I haven’t picked up a camera since I got here, I let possible email opportunities from June slip away, left unreplied to in my inbox. I spent months preparing for the logistics of moving across the world, but I don’t think it ever occurred to me that the hardest part would be arriving. I know with all things in life, these feelings are temporary and change as much as we may prepare for it or crave it, is hard. So for now, I’m holding onto that.

xx
Heather