We Did Everything Right. It Stopped Working.
On the messy middle, the inner critic, the death of quiet luxury, and what's worth choosing when the script runs out.
Rich in taste 💅🏻
This week, I kept running into the same conversation about “the millennial crisis,” about “becoming,” about things being “in progress.”
The dynamics have shifted for us. Millennials were taught to follow a blueprint: school, university, job, marriage, kids, loyalty. The promise was that education and fitting in were enough, that the blueprint was the success. That promise no longer holds.
We’re what Marie Forleo calls being “in the messy middle of a becoming.” We’re reaching for a different kind of life, one where purpose and fulfillment thrive, where we live on our own terms.
But here’s the question I’ve been sitting with: is the messy middle keeping us stuck?
Because in transformation, doubt does what it’s designed to do. Your brain’s job is to keep you safe, and the unknown is, by definition, unsafe. The result is a low hum of resistance disguised as caution, of hesitation disguised as preparation.
So this week, let’s work through it together.
What's Worth Your Attention
Worth sitting with
Three frameworks I came back to this week, each one a tool for the messy middle.
Identify your inner critic, and recognize it isn’t you. When that voice shows up, ask: what values is it holding onto? Then ask: what are mine? The gap between the two is the gap you’re being asked not to fall into. The critic is loudest when you’re closest to becoming someone she doesn’t recognize.
Experience doesn’t equal confidence. The education system trained us to prepare endlessly: to credential, to certify, to get ready. Learning matters, and there are fields where practice is non-negotiable. But most of us aren’t there. Most of us are exhausting the world’s knowledge as a strategy to avoid starting. Permission slip: begin imperfectly. Things settle as you go.
Connect to your inner mentor. On Aspire with Emma Grede, Tara Mohr offered this exercise: close your eyes and picture yourself twenty or thirty years from now. Notice how she moves. Her energy. What would she tell you? How would she approach this? Your inner mentor already exists. The work is tapping in.
And the through-line, from Barbara Corcoran: build toward the vision of yourself. A business plan will change. A market will change. Even your goals will change. But the image of who you’re becoming.. that one’s yours. Nobody can edit it. That’s your North Star.
Worth filtering
In the messy middle, trends are seductive, they offer the appearance of certainty when you have none. Here’s what’s emerging, and how I’m holding it.
Printmaxxing - the death of quiet luxury. The quiet luxury era trained women to disappear into beige. Printmaxxing is the rebellion: layered prints, clashing patterns, individuality as the new flex. The thesis is simple: restraint isn’t taste anymore, it’s camouflage. After years of “clean girl” minimalism, the pendulum is swinging toward character, toward 2000s nostalgia, toward bold textures and statement jewelry.
But here’s the filter: trend-following is just a different kind of conformity. Quiet luxury asked us to disappear. Printmaxxing asks us to perform. The self-defined woman doesn’t choose between them, she chooses what makes her her, then wears it on purpose.
Everything-maxxing. Why are we obsessed with maxxing? For the same reason we’ve always chased more: levelling up. Different language, same impulse.
But I keep coming back to an idea I heard recently: not every year is a year for results. Some years are for learning. Some are for trying. Some are for the unglamorous work that produces the outcomes you’ll celebrate later.
So the question isn’t what should I be maxxing. The question is: what season am I in, and where does my energy actually need to go? Relationships? Style? A career pivot? A creative practice? Maxxing without that clarity is just optimization in costume.
Worth Curating
What you surround yourself with in this season matters. Two finds worth your attention this week.
Bathroom personality. Why does the bathroom get less attention than the rest of the home? It’s where many of us start the day; where I do my makeup, take the everything-shower, run a bath when the week has been too much. The bathroom has been treated as functional infrastructure, but the modern read is different: the bathroom as wellness corner, as private spa, as a room with its own mood.
If your home is a sanctuary, every room earns the right to express something. The bathroom included.
The Vintage Edit. Curating pieces and giving them a second life, with intention, is its own kind of luxury.
I spent the day at the Sunday Variety Market at St. Lawrence, and it was a portal. Pieces from the 1940s and the 1970s, sitting next to each other, telling completely different stories about how women dressed and what they valued. I came home with a few accessories that felt right for the season I’m in, pieces that lean into self-expression rather than performance.
From the salon,
— Sabina