Joy In The Midst Of Trials Is A Blessing. And The Charcuterie Board Is Not Going To Eat Itself.
Let me be honest with you.
The soft life is not my reality. Not yet. Chile, I want it so bad I can taste it — and it tastes like a custom piece of furniture I did not have to think twice about buying and a man who is absolutely besotted with me and a bank account that claps for me instead of crying. It tastes like monkey-picked rare tea on a balcony with the wind blowing ever so slightly.
That is not where I am right now. Damn it.
But you know what I am doing anyway? Faking it. Enthusiastically. Without apology. Till the wheels fall off.
What The Soft Life Actually Is
Let us be clear about what we are talking about. The soft life is not just aesthetics and linen sets and rare tea on a balcony — though I will take all of that immediately. It is ease. It is the absence of constant grinding and bracing and holding your breath while you check your bank account. It is a life where the struggle proved worth it and you are finally on the other side of it, exhaling.
I am not there. Most of us are not there. We are in the middle part — the part where the struggle is very much still in progress and the ease is more of a vision board situation than a daily reality.
Fine. We vision board then. Out loud. In public. With wine.
What Faking It Actually Looks Like
I go to brunch with my girls and we have a fabulous time. A full, loud, two-hour, mimosa-fueled, good-shoes-on fabulous time. Does it solve anything? No. Does my bank account feel some kind of way about it? Absolutely. Do I care? Not on brunch day.
I invite the girls over and we do a craft project with wine and a charcuterie board like we did not just survive a horrible week at work. We laugh. We create something. We sit in somebody’s living room and for a few hours the week does not exist. That is not denial. That is necessary.
I travel. Even when my bank account wants to slap me in the face — and baby, sometimes it is really trying to slap me — I go. I immerse myself in the experience. I eat the food. I sit somewhere beautiful and let myself feel like a woman who does this all the time because I am a woman who does this when she can and that is enough.
Joy in stress is something. Joy in the midst of trials is a blessing. I am not waiting until everything is perfect to access mine.
Why This Is Not Delusion — It Is Strategy
Here is the thing about faking the soft life. You are not lying to yourself. You are practicing.
You are training your nervous system to recognize what ease feels like so that when it actually arrives, you are not too rigid and too survival-mode to receive it. You are reminding yourself what you are working toward. You are keeping joy alive in the middle of the hard part so it does not die waiting for better circumstances that may take longer than expected to arrive.
That brunch is not frivolous. It is evidence that you have not given up on yourself.
That craft night is not avoidance. It is you deciding that your life deserves pockets of beauty even when the bank account is being dramatic.
That trip is not irresponsible. It is you betting on your own future and taking the joy now because later is not guaranteed to anyone.
The Bottom Line
A man who sees me and does not recover. Exactly, sir. A bank account that is happy for me. A life where the struggle was worth it. Yasss. That is the destination.
But we are not waiting at the station with our arms folded until the train arrives. We are out here living — imperfectly, joyfully, with a glass of something good in hand and the girls by our side — until the soft life stops being a vision and starts being everyday.
Fake it till it gets here, beloved. With your whole chest.
