The world you grew up in isn’t the world you live in now. From mental health awareness to gender fluidity, from the collapse of hustle culture to the rise of AI, the way we define identity, success, and reality has radically changed. If you were raised in Midwestern Evangelical purity culture, these shifts can feel especially disorienting. This is a look at how core cultural beliefs have evolved—and what it means for you.

Culture has shifted dramatically over the past few decades, from our understanding of mental health and gender to how we navigate work, relationships, and technology. If you’re feeling out of sync with modern trends, it’s not just nostalgia—it’s the world evolving at an unprecedented pace. Here’s a breakdown of key societal shifts and what they mean for you.

It’s natural to fear that younger generations will see you as outdated, irrelevant, or even laughable. But this fear isn’t about them—it’s about whether you believe it yourself. Every generation thinks the one before it is cringe until they, too, become the older generation. Aging doesn’t erase your relevance; it deepens your perspective. The real power lies in embracing that shift rather than shrinking from it.

Your sense of self isn’t a fixed thing—it’s more like a river, constantly moving, shaped by experiences, emotions, and time. The more you become aware of this flow, the more you realize that change isn’t a loss of identity but part of its natural course.

If you've already questioned reality, human minds, and the illusion of control, you might think you've hit all the big existential revelations. But paradigm shifts tend to keep coming. From realizing the self isn’t a fixed entity to questioning free will, these realizations can be unsettling, liberating, or both.

Shadow work is the process of uncovering and integrating the parts of yourself that you’ve suppressed—whether out of fear, shame, or the need to fit in. These hidden aspects don’t disappear; they influence your reactions, relationships, and sense of self in unconscious ways. By exploring them, you can move toward greater authenticity and self-awareness.

I used to feel like every small update in my life needed to be shared, like I needed someone else to feel the emotion for me. But lately, I've been pausing before reaching for my phone, realizing I can hold these moments on my own. It’s a shift—from needing immediate connection to trusting my own experience, and from measuring my worth by productivity to letting myself rest without guilt.

I keep collecting words that move me, imagining them framed and displayed, yet I never make the art. The impulse to create is there, but something stops me. Is it perfectionism? A fear of not measuring up? Or is the act of imagining enough on its own? This is an exploration of creative inertia and how to gently move through it.

Modern witchcraft and crystal culture have become a mainstream aesthetic, blending spirituality with self-help and consumerism. While it offers accessible self-exploration and empowerment, it often prioritizes aesthetics over depth, borrows heavily from marginalized traditions, and turns spiritual practices into trendy commodities. This critique unpacks the movement’s appeal, its flaws, and what it says about American culture today.

Lately, I’ve been quiet in my relationships—not because I don’t care, but because I don’t know how to explain what’s happening inside me. These dialogues, these realizations, they feel too vast, too deep to translate into casual conversation. So for now, I wait, holding my thoughts close until they form into something I can share.