Let me tell you something embarrassing.
I am a grown woman. I have a podcast. I have a Substack. I have opinions about skincare routines and soft life discourse and the psychology of why we stay too long in things that have clearly expired. I have read the books. I have done the work. I am, by most measures, a fully functioning adult who makes decisions based on logic and research and at least three business days of consideration.
And yet — for months — I told myself I was too old to start creating content seriously.
No one said this to me. Not once. Not a single person looked me in the face and said “Joyhdae, the window has closed, you had your chance, please log off.” The algorithm has never checked my birth certificate. TikTok does not have an age verification system that slides into your DMs to inform you that you are no longer the target demographic for your own ambitions.
I made that up. Completely. Did it myself. Cooked it up in the back of my brain with zero outside input and somehow turned it into a policy I was actually following.
Which is insane.
Because if you think about it and I have thought about it, extensively, while pretending to be productive; the whole premise doesn’t even hold. The women I watch are in their thirties and forties. The ones who feel the most settled in who they are, the most clear on what they’re making and why — they are not twenty-two. They have context. They have lived something. They have something to say that isn’t borrowed from whoever is trending this week.
That is actually the thing people are looking for.
And I have it. I just spent the first three months of this year acting like I didn’t.
I am forty two. Which I will acknowledge with my whole chest, because the alternative is being coy about it in a way that helps exactly no one. I am building something from scratch — publicly, in real time, with very little idea of what I’m doing on most platforms and strong opinions about all of them. I am learning to drive. I have a Yorkie who has never once encouraged me to give up. I am, genuinely, at one of the more interesting chapters of my life.
And I almost didn’t document it because I was waiting for a permission slip that was never coming.
That’s the real embarrassment. Not the age. The waiting.
Here’s what I’ve landed on: I didn’t need more time to be ready. I needed to stop conducting an internal audit every time I had an idea. I needed to stop asking “but is this still for me?” about things that were, clearly, still for me. I needed to just — go.
So that’s what I’m doing.
This year my word is audacity. I have been very polite about it. That changes now.
More on that soon.
Joyhdae writes Life, Styled — a digital magazine for women building intentional, self-aware, stylish lives. New issues drop regularly. You’re already here, which means you already know.