Nothing to prove. Just begin.
You don’t have the map, but you have enough to take one step.
“Papaya and I” by my best friend Haridian Arnay
Opening
A pause before meaning.
The year didn’t start with a plan. It started with a blank page.
And a quiet question that keeps coming back:
What am I afraid will happen if I start imperfectly?
Preparing the space for an Ideation session a few days ago!
Looking Back
On nostalgia and movement.
Stay with one moment. Walk through it honestly. OMG. OMG.
I love making plans. I plan everything. I spend a lot of my 2P Time (Personal & Professional) creating scenery on paper before I even start. Like with this newsletter: new tools, new dramatic arc, new pillars, new framework, a new way of doing things.
And suddenly I’m here thinking:
What the hell am I doing? Why did I complicate this so much? Then a voice appears.
— Shut up.
I recognize it immediately. This is the voice that shows up every time I start something for the first time. Or every time I try to do something differently. Nothing dramatic, really. Same person. Same values. Same voice. This newsletter isn’t suddenly going to become something else. But the process of making it?
Yes. That has changed.
So here I am, putting things on the table: Thoughts I've been carrying around + Things I've heard + Things I don't quite understand yet, and then I randomly combined them. It's like "cooking with what I have” — including my favorite ingredient: the actual Time I have available.
The beginning of 2026 has arrived mixed with many things. One of them is Nostalgia.
You’ve probably noticed it too. The collective tendency to look back to 2016. We love numbers. Milestones. Ten-year markers. But for me, 2016 isn’t even visual. Back then I had a very basic phone. Tiny screen. Almost no photos. Living in Qatar. Later California. Then Cambodia. Between 2016 and 2018? Almost nothing remains. From 2019 onward — BOOM! Images everywhere.
Looking back now, I see someone younger. Smarter (or maybe just more naïve). Full of energy. Always wanting to make everything better with very small resources. I still want that. But after fifteen minutes scrolling, something became clear:
Nostalgia can be a soft trap if we stay there too long.
It often appears in times of uncertainty. It becomes an emotional refuge. And yet — looking back only really matters if it helps us move forward.
My first perfect knife cut at Evergreen (Qatar)
And moving forward always starts the same way: with a first gesture.
Like when you cook cabbage for the first time.
The first time you hold one, you pause: You observe. The shape. The layers. The density. You ask yourself: What can I do with this?
A cylinder. Layered. Crunchy or soft. Watery. With a flavour many describe as “insipid” — which I completely disagree with. Cabbage is not boring. It’s versatile: from Brussels sprouts to pointed cabbage. From pale green to deep purple. Can be roasted, grilled, stuffed, fermented, pickled (and juiced as a coloring agent). Every part can be used — even the ones we usually discard.
And maybe that’s why cabbage is quietly trending again in 2026:
its ability to transform. Like us!
Not in perfection. Not in mastery. But in Activation. Cutting the cabbage. Making the first slice. Accepting that you won’t know the dish yet. Just the gesture.
An Image That Opens a Door
I felt the same the first time I watched A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès.
If you love reading biographies, the story of Meliés is one that will inspire you.
That impossible image — the capsule landing straight into the eye of the man on the moon.
Crude by today’s standards. Handmade sets. Visible tricks. And yet unforgettable.
Méliès made the first science-fiction film using gestures that would later become cinematic language: superimpositions, crossfades, imagined worlds. He transported audiences to places humans wouldn’t reach for decades.
That first gesture proved something simple and radical: that a film could tell a story. And something even more enduring: an imperfect beginning can create images that linger for more than a century — even when the details themselves fade.
I was reminded of this while reading a short passage from Petit traité bien cuit, by Jean-Pierre Ostende. He writes something simple and powerful:
The act of cooking becomes a way to escape reality. Can’t stand reality? You go into the kitchen and forget about it.
Yesterday, a friend told me that since she started working “normal hours,” she no longer has time to meditate. That made me smile. Because this is exactly why I always leave space in my day for cooking. For me, it is meditation. My brain truly switches off during the process: The chopping. The heat. The rhythm.
I think I’ve told you before:
I am my favourite person to cook for.
And while reading again, I realised WHY. Cooking gives me what I’ve been circling around all along: Belonging, instead of having. Going to a restaurant often belongs to having. Cooking for yourself — or for people you love — belongs to belonging.
A gesture.
One we quietly miss from 2016, even if we don’t always name it (belonging).
A Humble Ingredient
To write this, I randomly combine (my favorite creative technique):
A trend: looking back to 2016 + An ingredient: cabbage + A sentence that kept returning: Belonging, instead of having + A sudden image: A Trip to the Moon (1902) by Georges Méliès + One guiding question: What am I afraid will happen if I start imperfectly?
Preparing the space for an Ideation session a few days ago!
The Gesture
Making starting possible.
Lately, I’ve exchanged a few emails and had a session with a future client. There were doubts. I’m not sure if they come from my ambiguity — or from the fact that we’re about to start without knowing exactly where we’ll end up.
And that made me notice something. We’re still obsessed with knowing what we’re going to get before we even begin. But STARTING is the hardest step.
Once you start, half of the path is already behind you. It never really ends.
You may close chapters, yes — but not what moved you to begin in the first place.
If you build that first milestone — no matter what happens after — you’ll be able to mutate, adapt, and transform.
Just like cabbage.
If you know why you’re cooking,
you’ll find the way to cook it.
The Resonance
What remains.
A long time ago — really long ago — when I was working on my first project, Cultura Visual, I spent endless hours talking with my partner. My mind was constantly active. Overflowing with ideas. We had millions of them. A friend of his was very different. A maker. An activator. Whatever he thought of, he tried. He sold it. He tested it. Even if the idea was half-formed. Even though he wasn't very good. And once he said something that stuck with me (although at the time it bothered me quite a bit):
Many people have ideas. What matters is who makes them real.
Writing this newsletter/blog is very important to me. Not because it takes hours (brutal hours), but because I'm doing it for REAL… Even though there are only 50 subscribers (counting myself twice, my boyfriend too, minus a few friends...), even fewer. What does the number matter!
I’ve been doing this work since 2015. But what I’ve truly left in the world has happened in the last two years.
So please — whatever is living in your mind right now, try to make it REAL.
The form doesn’t matter.
You create life in the shape you can hold today.
A Human Exchange
An open door.
Since last year, I’ve been offering something very simple: Let’s explore (over a coffee). It’s a small space to move from the blank canvas to the first gesture. To activate what you’ve been ruminating on — without needing a full plan, a polished idea, or the “right moment.”
Just presence. Just a gesture. If this resonates, the table is set.
Manifesto on "La Concha" beach. Written every day at low tide (San Sebastián, 2025)
Support My Work
If this helped you, consider sharing it with a friend, subscribing to my newsletter, or buying me a coffee. This space is a labor of love—and your support helps me keep building it.
