Be Cringe About Your Blocks

Month 3 of our journey to step into our most authentic selves, a recap of how powerful wanting something is, and some huge life news.

Be Cringe is a year-long experience centered on showing up more authentically — even when it feels embarrassing. Each month, I share a theme, reflect on how I’m working with it in my own life, and invite subscribers to explore it alongside me. Welcome to Month 3: Be Cringe About Your Blocks. Below, I’ll share insights from our second month, Be Cringe About Wanting, as well as how our third month will unfold.

You can read about Be Cringe, and learn how to join us.

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Month 2 Recap: Be Cringe About Wanting

When I came up with the theme for the second month, I expected to face some discomfort in naming what I actually wanted out of this one precious life I get to live. I expected to have to face a few realities. I knew I’d need to take inventory and be honest about whether I was living in a way that would move me toward and away from those goals. I knew there’d be things I said I wanted that would require me to be a bit louder, a bit more unapologetic. A bit more cringe.

I expected to come to the realization that there’d be some level of sacrifice I’d need to make to get what I wanted.

But I didn’t expect how forceful naming what I wanted would be, how it would catapult me forward, shake me to my core, and not let go until I listened.

I thought I’d walk out of the month clear on what I wanted and, if I was lucky, a few small steps I could take to start getting there. In reality, this has been one of the most profound months of my life, and I’ve made some big moves.

That wasn’t the point of wanting, and if that’s not what your month looked like, that is more than okay. Whether this month led to sweeping changes or a shift within, I’d argue both are incredibly powerful.

The goal of being cringe about wanting was to allow ourselves to fully step into the things we want out of life, naming them without the qualifiers (no maybes, no some days, no “wouldn’t it be cool if I…”) and letting the dust settle.

At the start of the month, I wrote down all the things I wanted in my journal. Those included things like “I want to start a Podcast,” and “I want to write a book,” and “I want to run a marathon,” and “I want to build more of a portfolio career¹ and to be my own boss.”

Once I said these things to myself, it became easier to say them out loud. At some point, I told my husband about my podcast idea. A few weeks later, he gifted me a podcast microphone. Later that day, I published my teaser episode.

The idea for my book is also becoming clearer — for starters, there are actually two books! I’ve done some outlining and have found myself able to put some pen to paper, without planning or trying. It’s really early stages — I wouldn’t expect to have anything done for a very long time, but putting my want out there really made it impossible to ignore. Small steps are very much still steps (and again, more than I expected at this stage).

I also entered the lottery for the 2026 NYC Marathon. It is notoriously difficult to get into, so I’m not expecting it, and I’m already making moves to run in ‘27 (or ‘28), but I’ve also realized if I had the chance to run it this year, I totally would.

I have a lot more to say, including one last thing I admitted to wanting and what happened after I did that, which you can read below the paywall.

But the meta-lesson here is that wanting isn’t just a passive mechanism. I thought it would be the groundwork for the rest of the year, that admitting to wanting would help me organize what to chase after, but instead, I learned that wanting forced me to act before I knew what was already happening.

So if all we need to do is admit to what we want, why does doing even that feel so hard? Why has it taken so long, and what was happening during all of those “maybe someday” moments?

And why did I find myself in this space where, once I named my wants, many of the barriers I once encountered seemed to melt away?

There isn’t one answer to this, and it likely looks different to all of us. But one thing I think is universal — we all have our blocks, things that have happened throughout our lives, beliefs we’ve picked up along the way, and unique-to-us ways we navigate the world and our own fears.

In order to figure out what that is for you, it’s time to be cringe about your blocks.

Be Cringe About Your Blocks

We all have blocks in our lives; we just don’t all know how to face them. These impact how we move through the world and affect how we see relationships, self-care, mental health, money, and our time (to name a few).

When I named the things I wanted last month, I also realized what I didn’t want, or what I wanted more than. I want to start a podcast more than I care about being embarrassed or made fun of — something that comes from my past of being bullied.

So, I started the podcast.

I want a portfolio career and to ‘be the boss’ more than I want the security and safety that comes with a W2 job — something that comes from some deeply-seated blocks I have around money and security.

I took some small steps toward an eventual life as my own boss. I spun up a new consulting offer on my website and started journaling and ideating about what it could look like to be my own boss.

Unfortunately, that didn’t feel enough, as much as I tried to bargain with myself and say it was. I wanted wanting to be enough, but I realized I was hiding behind my need for safety and security.

So I did something else, something that very well may have blown up my entire life.