TikTok Was Stealing My Life

I shut this blog down when I was trying to land a new job. I didn’t want anyone combing through my thoughts, measuring my insides for worthiness. I figured my character and my work ethic were loud enough without inviting debate over my inner world. So, I stopped writing and clocked into a 9-5.

Let me just say this plainly: 9-5 is not good for me. I don’t function well in a cage. Sitting at a desk for eight hours a day makes me feel like I’m slowly disappearing. I crave freedom, movement, creativity, space to breathe. But I was lucky. I had options. I got offers. I could chase the money, or I could choose to work somewhere I actually liked. I chose the latter.

And no, I don’t get paid what I’m worth. Half the time I’m doing more than what’s expected. But truthfully, I don’t care. I have the best boss a girl could ask for, and I genuinely enjoy most of the people I work with. That was my non-negotiable when looking for a new place to spend my days.

But, as it tends to go, the things I love started slipping away as my family adjusted to me not being home. And what I didn’t expect was how deeply my kids felt that shift. The emotions they were navigating, the way they expressed them… it was all so unexpected and overwhelming.

So, I did what most mothers do: I stopped tending to my own soul in order to show up for theirs.

My art, my writing, my creative spark, they all took a backseat to the breakdown that was quietly happening in our home. And when I wasn’t in the thick of emotional triage, I was drowning in the onslaught of responsibilities that now had to be squeezed into a few short hours after work. I was in over my head.

At the beginning of this year, I finally sat down and asked myself the hard question: What do I want my life to actually look like? Not what should it look like, not what does everyone else expect from me, but what do I want?

Three months into the new job and knee-deep in my family’s unraveling, I made a list. I wrote out goals. I created checkpoints. Every month, I look back to make sure I’m still pointed in the right direction. Every day, I make lists to keep the wheels turning.

One of my goals was simple but profound: Be Here.

I wrote it in all caps, like I needed to shout it into my own heart. Be. Here. Stop floating above your life. Stop running. Be here.

One step toward that goal was to reread a book I used to love. How To Be Here by Rob Bell. I finally got around to reading it in June. Better late than never. I highlighted and scribbled in the margins and let the words sink in. But even with that clarity, I still didn’t know how to untangle the stress of my schedule or how to make the chaos feel more present and less like I was sprinting through life on fire.

Enter: ChatGPT.

I spilled out a huge paragraph one day. Just unloaded everything I was feeling. And this AI, this weird little internet brain, came in clutch. Every day since, I’ve been using it to build rhythms, create checklists, reframe how I spend my time. It reminded me that life can be shaped. That I don’t have to just survive the day, I can live it.

And then came the real gut-punch: I realized how much of my so-called "free time" was going to… TikTok.

Yeah. All that time I thought I didn’t have to write? Gone. All that space I could’ve used to paint, to photograph, to create something that feels like me? Spent watching people I don’t know lip-sync and organize their pantries.

When I started intentionally structuring my time again, everything began to shift. I’m writing again. I’ve curated outfits for work that make me feel good, instead of defaulting to jeans and a T-shirt. I’ve decluttered corners of my home that used to scream with chaos every time I passed by. I’ve moved my body, started working out, and lost weight, not out of shame, but because I wanted to feel alive. I reopened this blog because I finally have the time and more importantly, the desire, to give it space again.

And that leads me here. To this moment. To this truth:

We are wasting our lives scrolling.

We’re living vicariously through strangers and influencers and moms with aesthetic snack drawers. We’re numbing. We’re comparing. We’re pacifying ourselves with someone else’s highlight reel while ignoring our own story, our own family, our own art.

This isn’t just about TikTok. It’s not about Instagram or YouTube or whatever other app is devouring your time. It’s about choosing you. Your voice. Your breath. Your presence.

Put the damn phone down. Look around. Sit with your kid. Light a candle and write a poem. Paint something terrible and hang it up anyway. Stand in the kitchen barefoot, sipping coffee, and thank God for the miracle of a Tuesday.

You have one life. One. Don’t waste it watching other people live theirs.

You don’t need permission to show up for your own life. But if you’ve been waiting for a sign?

This is it.