Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about time.
How fast it moves.
How none of us can ever get it back.
And how easy it is to miss our own life while we’re busy watching everyone else’s.
This realization didn’t come from reading a book or listening to someone talk about slow living or mindfulness.
It came from something much smaller.
I was walking outside with my dog.
Snow was falling.
I had a warm coffee in my hand, and I was listening to old music I used to play when I was younger.
And out of nowhere, I felt that familiar heaviness in my chest.
My eyes filled, and I started to cry. Not loudly, not dramatically.
Just that quiet kind of crying that feels like a memory hitting you in the heart.
When life starts to feel louder than your own thoughts
I miss those years when life felt slow.
When I didn’t feel the constant pressure to be someone.
When I wasn’t comparing my life to thousands of strangers online.
When there wasn’t a new trend every week telling me how I should live, work, think, or look.
I miss the version of myself who didn’t care about goals or plans or “optimizing” anything.
I miss the girl who just lived without even trying.
It’s strange how a song can bring all of that back.
One melody, and suddenly you’re standing next to your younger self again, feeling everything you forgot you ever felt.
And that’s when I realized something I didn’t want to admit:
Somewhere along the way, I stopped hearing my own thoughts, and slowly started losing touch with my real life.
If this feeling sounds familiar, you can start here. A gentle introduction to what Wander Balance is really about. 👉 start here
Not because I didn’t have thoughts,
but because the world has become so loud that it’s hard to hear anything softer than a shout.
How social media slowly pulls us away from real life
Social media became a constant background noise.
Scrolling filled every quiet moment.
Comparison replaced curiosity.
Performance replaced presence.
Even when I wasn’t posting anything, I was thinking about it.
My mind wasn’t mine anymore.
It was online, all the time.
I think a lot of us live like that without even noticing.
The world teaches us to be “on” every second.
To measure our worth through likes, views, productivity, and achievements.
To be perfect, polished, impressive.
And the worst part is.. we start believing there’s something wrong with us if we’re not keeping up.
The hustle.
The pressure.
The constant wave of “act now or you’ll fall behind.”
The gurus selling fear disguised as motivation.
You don’t realize how heavy it all is until you step away.
The quiet that comes after stepping away
When I deleted my personal accounts, something strange happened.
The silence felt uncomfortable at first.
Then confusing.
Then surprisingly peaceful.
And suddenly, the thoughts in my head were mine again.
I could hear myself.
My real feelings.
My real voice.
Not the filtered, curated, optimized version I thought I had to be.
It was sad, because I hadn’t noticed how far I’d drifted from myself.
But it was hopeful too, because for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was coming back.
Coming back to real life, slowly
Coming back to my own life.
My own pace.
My own rhythm.
My own world.
It made me see something clearly:
We spend so much time looking into other people’s lives that we forget to live in our own.
We forget to feel our own moments.
We forget to slow down.
We forget that we are allowed to be real, even if real isn’t perfect.
I don’t know exactly why I’m writing this.
Maybe because I want someone else to feel less alone.
Maybe because I want to say out loud the things we all feel but rarely talk about.
Maybe because I don’t want to pretend anymore.
Life is moving fast.
But we don’t have to.
We can choose softness again.
We can choose our inner world again.
We can choose to exist without performing all the time.
A coffee by the window.
A walk with the dog.
A song that makes you cry.
A moment when you’re honest with yourself.
These small rituals are what bring us back. Simple, physical reminders that help us slow down and stay present in real life. 👉 small rituals
These small things matter.
They bring us back.
They remind us that our real life — the one happening offline, right in front of us — is still here, waiting to be lived.
And maybe that’s why I created Wander Balance the way I did.
Not to add more noise.
Not to sell a perfect lifestyle.
But to create a space for slow living in real life, where slowness is allowed, where being human is enough.
If you’re reading this,
I hope you find a small moment today that feels like coming home to yourself.
We all deserve that.