A promise, when you first make it to yourself, feels like a blueprint. It’s clean, crisp, and full of elegant lines that map out a direct path from where you are to where you want to be. You hold it in your hands, this beautiful architecture of a better life, and it feels solid. Possible. Inevitable, even.
Last year, I wrote about making such a promise. I laid out my own blueprint for a more intentional life, a life built on my own terms. I held it up to the light, and the future it projected was bright.
But blueprints are drawn in a quiet room, on a steady table. They are not drawn in the middle of a storm or in the aftermath of a demolition. And they certainly don’t account for the moments when the architect, exhausted and worn, begins to doubt the design itself.
This is the story of what happens next. This is the part they don’t tell you about in the self-help books. This is the part about the mud, the debris, and the bone-deep weariness that comes with trying to build from a blueprint when the ground beneath you won’t stop shaking.
This is about the simple, brutal, and undeniable truth: keeping promises to yourself is hard as hell.
The Demolition and the Debris
To understand the weight of the promise, you have to understand the wreckage it was built upon. 2024 was not a year of setbacks for me; it was a year of demolition. It wasn’t a feeling; it was a fact. My business, the one I had poured my life into, was hacked. The digital ground crumbled, and everything I had built fell with it. Clients, income, identity gone. It was a forced reset, a gut-wrenching clearing of the slate.
From that wreckage, 2025 became a year of careful, deliberate reconstruction. But I wasn’t rebuilding the same structure. The trauma of the hack, combined with a desperate craving for a more present life, led me to a new promise. I vowed to build something that wasn’t tethered to the relentless, precarious world of being constantly online. It was a promise born partly of fear, yes, but mostly of a deep, soul-level desire to live intentionally. To be online less and in my life more.
And for a while, the blueprint was working. The foundation felt solid. I was back on track, not just financially, but emotionally. I was building a life that felt like my own.
Then, in October, a literal storm tore through Jamaica.
When you live on an island, a hurricane is never a distant news story. It is a visceral, communal event. The wind and the water don’t just slow things down; they rearrange reality. Business stops. Life contracts. The world shrinks to the safety of your home, the well-being of your family, and the state of the roads. The storm passed, but it left behind a heavy stillness, an economic and emotional slowdown that lingered for months.
The blueprint, once so clear, was now water-stained and covered in mud.
The Collision with Reality
Entering 2026 felt like waking up with a profound sense of vertigo. The momentum I had painstakingly built was gone, stalled by the storm’s aftermath. And then came the final blow: a piece of information, a shift in circumstances, that made my new, offline-focused business model untenable for the immediate future.
My bank account hit zero.
There is a unique silence that accompanies a zero balance. It’s the silence of options disappearing. It’s the sound of the walls closing in. And in that silence, the ghost of my old life came knocking. The only way I knew how to make money fast was to go back. Back to the very online work I had promised myself I would leave behind. Back to the hustle that I knew, from painful experience, did not serve my soul.
It felt like a profound betrayal of the promise I had made. It felt like a step backwards into a life I had fought so hard to escape.
And in the midst of this brutal calculus of survival, I had to confront an even more uncomfortable truth. In the months after the storm, in the quiet lull, I had gotten comfortable. After years of living in survival mode, the simple act of not surviving felt like a luxury. I got comfortable with the minimum. I got comfortable with the basics. I got comfortable with not pushing, not striving, just… being.
Comfort is a warm, heavy blanket. And I had let it become a shroud. I had mistaken a necessary pause for a permanent destination. Life, in its infinite and often brutal wisdom, was now reminding me that to be is to move. And I had to move.
The Reckoning: A Confrontation in the Mirror
This is the hardest part of the story to tell. It’s the moment you look past all the external factors the hack, the storm, the economy and you are forced to face the one variable you can actually control: yourself.
I was standing in my own way.
The new path, the new promise, required a level of ferocious consistency and unwavering faith that I simply hadn’t been giving it. I was dabbling. I was showing up when I felt like it. I was treating it like a passion project, not a lifeline. I was waiting for the conditions to be perfect, for the inspiration to strike, for the path to be clear.
But the promise wasn’t to walk a clear path. The promise was to clear the path myself.
The realisation hit me with the force of a physical blow. The frustration I felt with my circumstances was a pale shadow of the frustration I suddenly felt with myself. The feeling of life being unfair was eclipsed by the stark reality of my own complicity. I had allowed my comfort to become a cage, and now I was rattling the bars, wondering why I wasn’t free.
It’s a terrible and wonderful moment, that reckoning. Terrible because the weight of responsibility is immense. Wonderful because it’s the only place from which true power can be reclaimed. You cannot change the storm, but you can change how you build.
The Strategy: The Lifeline of “One Thing”
My mind was a chaotic storm of gurus, strategies, and motivational quotes I’d absorbed over the years. “Manifest your reality!” “Build a sales funnel!” “Leverage your social media!” It was a cacophony of well-meaning advice that left me paralysed.
Then, on a particularly bleak afternoon, I was listening to a YouTube video from a woman whose quiet wisdom I admire. She said something that cut through the noise like a lighthouse beam. She said that when we hit rock bottom, we try to do everything at once, to climb out using every piece of advice we’ve ever heard. But the real strategy, she said, is to just pick one thing.
One strategy. One move. One promise. Focus on it. Get good at it. Do it until it becomes a part of you.
In that moment, I knew what my one thing had to be: Consistency.
Not perfect content. Not viral growth. Not a six-figure launch. Just the simple, unglamorous, back-breaking act of showing up. Every. Single. Day.
I looked at my blog. For the first time ever, it showed a 10-day streak. I looked at my Instagram. I had started posting again on February 10th, and I hadn’t missed a day since. Sometimes twice a day, when the energy surged. It had been 15 days. It wasn’t a lot, but it was an unbroken chain. It was proof.
It was a new promise, forged in the fire of the old one’s apparent failure. A smaller, more manageable promise: I will be consistent. That is all I can commit to right now, but I will commit to it with everything I have.
The Uncomfortable Truth: Consistency Doesn’t Pay the Bills (Yet)
And so, I started. I poured my energy into this one thing. I wrote. I posted. I created. I showed up. The streak on my blog grew longer. The grid on my Instagram filled up. And for the first time in a long time, I felt a flicker of momentum, a sense of agency.
But then, the inevitable, terrifying question crept in, usually in the dead of night: “Will this pay the bills, though?”
Will my 15-day streak of consistency deposit money into my zero-balance bank account by March 1st? Will it pay off the debt that looms over me?
The honest answer is: probably not. Not yet.
And this is the brutal core of why keeping promises is so hard, because the effort is immediate, but the reward is not. You are planting seeds in a field while the landlord is at the door demanding rent. It requires a level of faith that feels almost delusional. You have to show up for the future version of yourself while the present version of you is scared and broke. You have to honour the blueprint while you take on a side job mixing cement just to keep the lights on.
So yes, I am putting my wants and desires aside. I am looking for the old work. I am slipping back into the world I tried to escape, not as a permanent resident, but as a temporary visitor on a mission. A mission to fund the real work. A mission to buy my future self more time.
It feels like a compromise. It feels like a step back. But I am choosing to frame it as a strategic retreat. I am gathering supplies so I can continue the main journey.
The Declaration: I Can Do Hard Things
There is a universe of uncertainty in my reality right now. I do not know how the bills will be paid next month. I do not know if this new path will ever become a sustainable highway.
But I also know this: I work best under pressure. I am capable of doing incredibly hard things. It is always in these moments of immense pressure, when I am stripped of all my comforts and excuses, that I discover the true extent of my own strength. The fire doesn’t just threaten to burn the house down; it also forges the steel of who you are becoming.
The promise I made to myself last year has not been broken. It has been tested. It has been battered by storms, both literal and metaphorical. It has been stretched to its breaking point by reality. But it has not broken. It has simply been revealed for what it truly is: not a static blueprint, but a living, breathing commitment that must be fought for, adapted, and renegotiated every single day.
So I will keep going. I will do the work that pays the bills, and I will do the work that feeds my soul. I will honour my one thing: consistency. I will keep showing up, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard. Because living intentionally is not a passive state of being, it is an active, daily, and often exhausting choice.
I will keep pushing forward.
I can do this. I am capable. Good things happen to me.
Are You Planning Your Next Trip? Here’s What I Use
These are the tools I rely on to make every trip smoother, safer, and more meaningful. If you use the links below, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting this blog and my journey as a full-time traveller 💜
1. Learn the Local Language
I use Babbel to practice Spanish, French, and Portuguese while travelling. The app makes it so easy to learn useful phrases on the go.
2. Travel Insurance is a Must
I never leave home without SafetyWing — they’re affordable and ideal for frequent travellers or digital nomads.
3. Book Your Tours & Experiences
For unique local tours and must-see experiences, I use:
→ Viator
→ Get Your Guide
4. Always Stay Connected
No matter where I go, Keepgo helps me stay connected with international data SIMs and eSIMs that actually work. A lifesaver when Wi-Fi fails!
5. Organise Your Itinerary
I use Tripsy to plan and store my itineraries, documents, and bookings in one clean app. It’s perfect for keeping track of everything in one place.
Until next time, travel softly,
Destiny 💜
