Niyo

5:00 A.M. Florence, Italy. 

What do I want my life to look like one year from now? 

I'd ideally like to still have modeling as a stream of income, make much more money, wrap up my graduate degree in London, hopefully make incredible music, and be financially comfortable.

I've been handling life's curveballs pretty well lately, and I hope that my mental fitness is on par with my physical fitness. I don't want to lose any more people in my life, and I'd like to continue deepening all of my relationships. A nice-to-have would be being in a position where I can give myself to someone, date, and take steps towards a long-term partnership. But I'm not married to the idea that that has to be my life. Everything in me feels like I should have a lot more expectations for my last year of my 20s, but I generally just feel so underwhelmed by most things lately. I also feel confident that I will be okay regardless. Everything works out in the end. If it's not working out, it's not the end. And if things end without working out, oh fucking well, really. 

Research from cognitive neuroscience describes grief as a learning process. During a relationship the brain builds a predictive model — a neural map of that person’s existence in your life. Their patterns. Their presence. The version of your future that included them. And the brain runs this model constantly. Predicting their presence even in their absence. Which is why you reach for your phone to tell them something before you remember. The prediction is still running.

Grief is the process of the brain updating that prediction. Learning at a cellular level that the person is gone. That learning requires repeated exposure to the evidence of their absence. The hippocampus integrating the reality of the loss with the emotional memory of the relationship. And research shows this process cannot be shortcut.

The brain has to hold two conflicting truths simultaneously. The knowledge that this person is gone. And the deeply encoded reality that they are permanently significant. Grief is learning to hold both without the same level of alarm.

Sure, we have bastardized the fact that grief is just evidence of love with nowhere to go. That doesn't change the fact that I see you and everything. I want you to be with me everywhere that I go. On the bright side, I carry little pieces of you with me in all that I do.

I still think of you a lot, and it's only been 15 days, so I guess that's customary. But rather than harping on all the things that I could say to you, I realized I could just make a playlist of all the things that I'd want to say that come to mind right now. And should you ever find this, I guess you'll take a listen.

Currently listening to the audible honey that is Samara Joy, sitting in Hudson's apartment in downtown Brooklyn. Today is an exciting day, but doesn't necessarily feel like a new beginning. But I do feel a shift; 2026 feels like a second act to 2025. So many unfinished stories carry over after an intermission of solitude.

Today will be the first day that I test my new systems. I'd love to start my day with mobility training and sometimes the sauna, but I'm taking it glacially slow as I recover from my surgery in Turkey. If I start any traditions today that become our daily rituals, it'll help me make sure I have a 365-day streak. As annoying as it is, I know it pays dividends in my life to meditate for at least 5 minutes a day, and I owe it to my mental health. Other than 5 minutes of daily meditation and keeping up this daily journaling practice, I do not have any bona fide rituals that I consider to be non-negotiable.