Don't forget to live
How the highlight reel turned “go for it” into “make sure you get it right”
A weekly publication on self-agency, identity, and taste, exploring what happens when we stop following the script and start deciding for ourselves.
I was sitting with my husband on the deck the other night, doing what we do with any big life decision: overthinking it. Talking ourselves out of it. Talking ourselves back into it. Thinking of everyone else it might affect and then thinking of us again. Back and forth, over and over, the way you do when a decision actually matters.
And then it hit me. That hot, sit up straight, bottled up feeling of lightbulb conviction.
I said, you know what? I’m done with all this back and forth. And I said it:
YOLO.
We only live once. We only get one shot at this. Even if we get some of the chapters wrong, sometimes the messiest ones end up being the best ones. And how are we ever going to teach our boys what’s right? what’s worth trying? What it means to say yes.. if we never do it ourselves? Its our life stories that build the knowledge not the hypotheticals.
Before YOLO became a punchline or got reduced to a caption under a regrettable tequila shots pic, it was doing some real cultural work for all of us. It was the nudge we needed when we needed it. It was the whole argument collapsed into four letters: you only live once.
Somebody offered you a promotion that scared you? YOLO say yes. Your friend invited you on a trip you couldn’t really afford? YOLO go anyway. You had the founder idea sitting in your chest for too long? YOLO build it. Standing on the edge of a cliff on vacation and everyones below you already in the water? YOLO jump.
It was everywhere. Almost like it was the collective hype-man for every big, scary, life shaping decision. And underneath it’s layers was something real: a shared cultural green light to take the chance, say the yes, and do the thing.
And somewhere along the way.. we lost it.
What we didn’t see coming
We didn’t lose the YOLO mindset because we stopped wanting bold lives. I’m going to blame social media for drowning out the message. Stay with me.
The YOLO mentality was at its peak in 2012. Drake’s “The Motto” completely revived the phrase and it became the cultural go-to used for everyday courage: go for it.
And at almost the exact same moment, Instagram was making its sweet debut into our worlds.
Launched in 2010.. back when most of us were just taking pictures of our food and running it through the Lark filter.
By 2012, the influencer era was entering the chat and suddenly we were flooded with perfectly curated outfits, vacations, families, careers, lives. And these weren’t celebrities. They were regular every day people. Except somehow.. not.
For the first time we weren’t just living our own lives. We were constantly exposed to other people’s versions of what a great life could look like. And it was the most polished version of perfection we’d ever seen.
So subconsciously the message started changing. Instead of: “You got this. Take the chance. Failing’s how you learn. Get up. You survived. Now try again.” We started subconsciously hearing: “If you’re going to do it, it has to work. And it has to look like that. Otherwise people will see you fail.”
We went from “what if I do it?!” to “what if I don’t do it perfectly?”
We forgot that YOLO was never meant to be a promise that it’ll all work out, it was an energy spark to just start.
Comparison doesn’t inspire us, it makes us question our own path.
It’s one thing that other people can see our decisions. It’s another that we can see everyone’s, all the time, at a scale no other generation before us ever had to process.
And instead of it inspiring us, a lot of the time it loops us into paralysis. We see someone else’s trip, their business, their “yes’s” and instead of thinking “I could do that too” we think: Should I be doing that? Is that the route? Is that what mine is supposed to look like?
And we just stay there. Scrolling and comparing.
I’m guilty of this right now. I caught myself looking at somebody else’s version of a good life and measuring my own against it. And had to stop and ask:
Whose story am I actually trying to live?
Different authors, different stories
We only get to do this once. One life, one shot, one story (cue Eminem in my mind.. lots of music references here).
Every single one of our stories is built from a completely different foundation. Different pasts. Different wounds. Different wins. Different things we’ve already survived that shaped what we want now and what we want next.
I had an epiphany this week when I was caught in a “comparison loop” that I told myself and now I want to share it with you:
The history that shaped someone else’s dream is not the history that shaped yours. So when you hold their highlight reel up next to your actual life and ask “should I be doing that?” You’re comparing two different stories with two different authors, expecting them to match. They won’t and they aren’t supposed to.
Social media isn’t at it’s core the villain here. It can be a tool that shows us what’s possible: the trip we didn’t know existed, a business model we never heard of, the proof that someone with a story kind of similar actually pulled something off. Used that way, it expands what we believe we’re allowed to want.
But the second we let it be a closed door instead of a window to possibilities is the second it becomes a guardrail.
The math that should scare us all
Here’s a wild realization I had. I’m almost 39. If I’m lucky I’ll live to be 90. Out of curiosity, I checked my average screen time this week: 5.5 hours a day.
So I did some math. If I stay at this pace for the rest of my life, that’s close to 12 years of my one, single, non-repeatable life spent on my phone.
Twelve years of YOLO.. watching other people live their version of life instead of living mine.
I hope you let that sink in and then run your own number.
Saying yes is the win
We keep asking: is this the right decision? Is this what success is supposed to look like? Should I be doing what they’re doing?
Maybe the question is easier than that. Maybe it’s simply: Do I want this?
That’s might be the grown-up version of YOLO. Not saying yes to everything but saying yes to the life we want.. even when we don’t know how it will turn out.
Because saying yes to life is the win.
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