Reinvention Is Taboo

And why I’m choosing to change in public anyway

Reinvention is a taboo we don’t talk about.

You’re allowed to “build in public,” but you’re not allowed to fail in public. You can announce a transformation, but you can’t let anyone see you while it’s happening -while you’re unraveling, doubting yourself, starting over again, not knowing what the hell you’re doing.

Online, you’re either successful or invisible. Recognizable or unworthy. Complete or irrelevant.

And all the real work - the work behind the screen - stays unwitnessed.

• The breakdowns.

• The half-truths.

• The drafts you write at 11pm and delete at 11:06.

• The days you don’t get out of bed.

• The identity you keep molting through and pretending is stable because that’s what “good writing” and “good branding” looks like.

But here’s the truth we’ve collectively buried:

We are dying and being reborn every second. And almost no one ever sees it.
Least of all us.

I spent years trying to present the “right” version of myself. Polished. Thoughtful. Strategic. Half-true.

I watered down my voice and hoped people would catch glimpses of the diamonds buried underneath. When they didn’t, I blamed the world. And then I’d reboot with the next incoherent iteration.

How could anyone follow me?
I didn’t even know who I was. And I judged myself for that.

It wasn’t safe to be lost.
It wasn’t safe to be unfinished.

Then something changed - slowly, quietly, painfully:

I realized that being lost is a posture of wisdom. Lost is guidance. Lost is what happens when you’re no longer pretending you’ve arrived.

And suddenly the pain softened. My back still twinges when I sit down to write, but now it’s just sensation, not punishment. The shame evaporated once I understood that my path isn’t supposed to look like anyone else’s. Not in a rebellious way. In a truly unprecedented way.

The problem is that we’ve been trained by movies and self-help structures to expect completion.

• Three acts.

• A moral.

• A neat arc.

But real lives don’t work that way.

Because life is a gradual series of revelations
That occur over a period of time
It’s not some carefully crafted story
It’s a mess, and we’re all gonna die

If you saw a movie that was like real life
You’d be like, “What the hell was that movie about?
It was really all over the place”
Life doesn’t make narrative sense

-The End of the Movie, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Dead ends and false starts aren’t failures. My only real mistake was thinking the story needed to finish before I could begin telling it.

So here’s the part that scares me the most:

I’m reinventing myself in public because I don’t know how else to live anymore

I’m tired of collapsing myself into something recognizable. I’m tired of grinding myself to exhaustion trying to be understood. And I’m tired of pretending the public self is for anyone other than me.

If I’m going to be free - truly free - then the version of me who hides has to die.

So welcome to his funeral.

I don’t know who will read this. I don’t know who will stay. But I’m asking you:

If tomorrow I change, will you still see me?
If tomorrow the old patterns return, will you stay?
If tomorrow I don’t get out of bed, what will you do then?

Because this - this messy middle - is what reinvention actually feels like.

It’s not clarity. It’s not a glow-up.
It’s not a niche.
It’s not a brand.

Reinvention is freedom.
Not because you become someone new,
but because you finally let yourself be seen while you do.

And after I post this my mind will immediately try to create a consistent narrative where I’m “the reinvention guy.”

But I can’t go back to work at the content factory.

I can’t box this.
I can’t shape it into a bucket on an endless slop machine.
If I try, my soul will rise up and delete it all, and I’ll let it.

Because none of this is meant to last.
Only the becoming is.

If you’re reinventing yourself right now - whether it’s quiet or messy or terrifying - I hope you know you’re not alone. You don’t owe anyone a polished version of your becoming. You only owe yourself the truth.