I destroyed myself on purpose.

It's the best decision I ever made.

Nothing is more embarrassing for the generalist—the writer, creator, the thinker, the builder, the visionary, the architect, the weaver, the dreamer, the researcher, the theorist, the scientist, the crafter, the maker, the inventor, the entrepreneur, the multi-hyphenate—than to admit that you’ve been your own worst enemy your entire fucking life.

Before I walk you through the viscera underlying this story’s flesh…

I have a confession.

For generalists, in soul and practice.

Speaking to you directly.

Please know, I’ve rewritten this opening paragraph a dozen times.

I’ve stared at each curving letter, ruminated on the shape and pull of each one, and wondered why they were struggling to take form. Wondered why they didn’t make sense. Every word felt pulled from my own tongue. Every description of a generalist that I subscribe to felt natural. Like breathing air. Or drinking water.

I then realized unpublished a slew of them, reframed the vision I had committed to only weeks ago, and sat flush against my chair, staring up at the ceiling with a long haze of noisy internal thought-drumming that I, frankly, had not earned.

I wasn’t planning on writing this today.

Before I opened up page to tell you this story, I was torn between a few priorities:

1. Working out a plan for an obscene tax bill that punched my inner financial trauma goblin awake with rude, greasy fists

2. Writing today’s chapter for my dark fantasy novel

3. Dusting off my microphone and recording the first episode of my podcast

The only reason I didn’t do those things, first, was because the internal urge to finally tell this story overcame those other burning needs.

The story of my failures. The story of my passions, discarded and abandoned. The story of my fractured identity, seeking meaning through the wrong things. The story of love. The story of hatred. The story of my lack of faith. The story of my greatest betrayal. The true, bared-all origin story of why The Oyster—this newsletter, this mission, this open diary—needed to happen, and what it means for you (and me) going forward.

Not to be too dramatic, but the desire to write this open letter tore open my soul cavity, scooped out entrails scorched black with abandonment and overcommitment, and slithered inside a protective cage of bone, forged from what lies ahead.

If you feel similarly—soul cavity and all—you understand that there’s a time and a place you must go through where absolutely nothing makes sense.

If you are a generalist, a writer, or a builder of any kind, you know this feeling very intimately. The signs are buried within the conscience. Their teeth sink into you, and you have no choice but to acknowledge them, long after the breakdowns have stopped and the tears have ceased. These sensations are manacles crafted from diamonds; beautiful to observe, impossible to love, and painful to wield as a self-made prison.

First, the internal noise becomes unbearable. Then, your mind starts telling you painful lies and even more painful truths. What follows is a song of destruction that no one can avoid once they reach this point—where the body starts to fight against you, warring with how you’ve betrayed it with a life you don’t want.

Your energy depletes. Not in a slight dip, but a crash. Your body separates from the endless marathoning of your imagination, and suck up whatever it can through forced rest. Your thoughts scatter more than normal; a twisting labyrinth turned into tentacles of unfinished dreams. Your creative urges wage war against each other; projects and ideas piling on, and on, and on, until they’re stacked into towers of distractions and lost potential. You start to spiral over the smallest changes in this poorly designed map you thought was the “right way to live.”

You start to question everything again, because you had played yourself so damn well, that you couldn’t see how you’d brainwashed yourself until you’re so deep in the caverns of chaos that it will take you years to carve your way out.

Now, imagine looking into the eyes of your Old Self.

The version of you that allowed this to happen.

That bastard. That bitch. That traitor. That figure you love but hate and love.

Imagine telling them they’re so fucking wrong for what they’ve done to you.

How they’re so wrong for what they’ve done to themselves.

Imagine setting fire to their flesh. Their soul. Watching their false hopes and dreams and manifestations of decisions and choices that left you broken spiral into a pillar of smoke. Imagine walking through their ashes with bare feet.

Imagine how it feels, once you finally say goodbye to the version of you that kept you in chains, and you let yourself taste true freedom for the first time.

I’m telling you this so openly, because this is what I’m on a mission to create for myself. I’m a person who is constantly at war with a thousand alternative paths of creation, entrepreneurship, artistry, and money. I’m always questioning the path I’m taking and bullishly pursuing the passions that light a fire within me.

I’ve tried many vocations, have burned them all to the ground, and I only recently started seeing how deeply and horribly I betrayed myself for ten years.

I’m now on a path to building what I fucking want to build—from this newsletter brand, to multiple entrepreneurial ventures, to creating on other platforms, to writing and publishing fiction, to making fine art photographs, and more.

(Always more, and more, and more. If you know, you know)

Maybe you’re feeling this right now.

Maybe you’re an artist who feels lost, or uncertain, or misguided. Maybe you’re a builder, trying to force yourself into the corporate landscape. Maybe you’re a thinker, trapped in a web of fruitless execution. Maybe you’ve built a prison of your own design—like I have—and you’re desperately trying to find someone who understands you. Maybe you’re a multi-hyphenate mind that’s just so damn exhausted and tired of the bullshit.

Regardless of who you are, where you come from, what you’re trying to accomplish, or however you want to take control of the reins of your life and finally build whatever the hell you want to build…

I hope this letter helps you, too.

I hope it speaks to you like it would to my younger self, from six or seven years ago, while she wandered and searched and suffered.

This is the true, unedited origin story of The Oyster.

I guess you could also call it my testimony.

Grateful you’re here.

---

It’s 5:45 AM.

Somewhere towards the end of 2024.

It’s one of many mornings that look almost exactly the same.

They become mindless clones of the other, peppered with the same routine:

I wake up to my alarm. My partner had already left. I don’t eat. My stomach resists appetite, knowing what’s to come. I pull on a hoodie. Sometimes I wear jeans, other times I simply don’t care, and opt for leggings. Twist my unruly curly hair into a tight ponytail. I brace the cold of the outside. Relish the brisk darkness of the morning, how it turns my breath white. It’s winter. I hit the road, knowingly taking a slightly longer route—straight into traffic, hoping for congestion, a reason to make the commute to hell a little longer. Minutes before I take the final plunge, I grab an overpriced coffee from the Starbucks across from my apartment—one of my few safe havens, and the only thing that motivates me to crawl out from my protective cocoon.

It takes 45 minutes to drive to my office: a modern, tall, square-cut tower of glass and stone in Bellevue, Washington. I’m across the street from one of Amazon’s many buildings that decorate the streets in polished, high-tech, beautiful rises. People walk around in the early morning with backpacks slung over their shoulders. They all look the same. Maybe they are.

I’m one of the first people entering the building at this hour. It’s almost empty in the garage. I sit in my heated car, continue listening to my podcast, and savor the coffee I bought. I’m buying every moment I can before I need to head inside. My coworkers won’t join me for another three hours or so.

Sometimes, I head into the gym. Lifting heavy weights often does wonders for my mental health, even if it isn’t a complete solution. (There’s only so much you can control without medication). But, most mornings, I don’t. Not because I loathe the gym—I love it—but because I fear I would waste valuable time.

Valuable time with my creative thoughts, working on projects that kept me sane, before the clock would start, my manager would blow up my Slack channel, and I would be forced to relocate from a private glass-walled cubicle to my open desk.

For two hours, I write. I build. I cold-message. I edit. I rewrite. These hours, I chase my latest escape plan: a ghostwriting business, with emphasis on breaking traditional rules to attract loyalty and partnerships, rather than vanity metrics.

I refuse to be a victim. So, I build a door from scratch. “This is the only way,” I tell myself, every single morning. “This is the only way I can get out.”

Then, the day starts.

The door to hell opens.

Morning light filters through the windows.

The founder of our small health tech startup walks through the front doors. He doesn’t see me. My brief episode of happiness fades. My desire to exist takes a backseat. I slip out of the room and begrudgingly head towards my desk, with a rattled spirit and shaking hands.

On cue, my manager rattles off from a place of pain.

She’s fully remote—I never met her in person, and to this day, I’m grateful this never happened—and typing lightning-blooded messages to me through email and Slack. She says sweet words, then stabs me in the back. Lies and manipulates. Makes me feel insane. Rewrites my work without telling me. Tells me to only share work with her and not my coworkers. Shackles my voice. Rips my soul into pieces. Tries to control my language around others, including her superiors. Backpedals once she’s held accountable.

She has moments of humanity. I feel sorry for her. I wish she didn’t feel the pain she did. I wish she could see how her pain has affected those around her. How her actions have caused my only friends to quit within weeks of working beside me. How her fear has constrained her. How her mind is working against her.

For months and months and months, my heart gallops every time the bubble appears in every private conversation with her, promising a thousand possible scenarios depending on where her mind is that day.

Once these days end, I return home.

Drained. Empty. My only good days are full of anger.

I make sure to greet my partner. I slip into bed. I scroll mindlessly on my phone. I ignore my growing body of work. My fiction. My reading. Projects I loved dearly, and missed more than anything. Still, they are forced to gather dust while I wait for dusk to come, and cry myself quietly to sleep.

This is my life for thirteen months.

---

It’s the afternoon. September. 2025.

I’m about to board a plane with my life partner.

Please understand, that I know I don’t deserve him. I’ve known that since we started seeing each other. He is so beautiful. His mind. His heart. His soul. His everything. He hypnotizes me with his honesty and creativity. He demonstrates love through actions spoken and examined. He sees my pain before I recognize it.

During those precious seconds, before we take off into the air, my manager is messaging me. Blowing up my phone. I try to swallow the lump in my throat and move on from how greatly fearful I am of returning to this workplace after a holiday weekend away.

Tears are rolling down my face. I hear the question pounding within my chest. It joins my heart. It frightens me.

I look at my partner. Ask the impossible.

“If I quit… would you be fine with that? Would you support me?”

He doesn’t hesitate. He squeezes my hand.

I don’t deserve you, I remind myself. I never did. Never will.

“Of course I will,” he says.

We’re gone for five days. I meet his family. I see a part of his life I hadn’t known before, not like this. I’m grateful to have time alone with him, too. To see him navigate time away from a job that was sucking out his soul, as well.

The day after we return home, I turn in my two weeks’ notice.

---

The last two weeks fly by.

I feel a little lighter. On my last day, my manager sends me a bouquet flowers. Bursts of pink, orange, and yellow. Shades of summer. A season of happiness and exploration and freedom. Attached to the flowers, is a card. I turn it back and forth, too floored to react at first.

The first thing I notice is my manager’s name. It’s misspelled.

I reread the card over and over again, baffled. In disbelief. Can’t help but allow the corners of my eyes to crinkle in stupefied laughter. I throw away the card and stride out of that building for the last time, head held high.

I maintain relationships with coworkers who made every day a little brighter. I let them know that I hope they can escape soon, too. I text them often. I’m realizing now, writing this, that I need to call them again soon.

There is no moment’s hesitation.

I’m free.

I dive back into building my ghostwriting business. I cold-message. Prepare custom strategies. I land a handful of clients. I start ghostwriting for them, while building my own personal brand on LinkedIn.

I develop a reputation as a LinkedIn girl who breaks the rules and waxes poetic about it. It does wonders for me. My tiny follower account started getting engagement that people two or three times my size weren’t seeing. They were popping into my DMs, asking me how I was doing it. I told them I was just being honest. I was being myself.

I grind for months. Long days. Longer nights.

The money is decent, but the experience silently chips at me. I’m feeling pulled once more towards the ideas that I left in the forge of my dreams while I was slaving away at the startup.

My clients were kind. Exceptional, even. They respected me, and paid me well. Founders. Venture capitalists. Advisors. People I found fascinating and felt quite lucky to interview. I learned many valuable pieces of knowledge and wisdom from each one.

They were never the problem. They were not the reason (not exactly) that I felt a deep, cavernous hole in my chest. I changed my niche eight times, believing that was the issue—all while ignoring my inner generalist, and building a business on a broken foundation. I designed landing pages, built email lists, and followed so many protocols to try and create a thriving identity that I secretly despised.

Eventually, I meet a scrappy entrepreneur and angel investor named James.

He wanted to hire me onto his team at a venture studio focused on mental health.

He had grown a considerable following on LinkedIn by documenting his journey as a founder, investor, and someone battling mental health stigma, as someone diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder Type II.

I instantly like him.

More importantly, I instantly trust him.

I write about him and name him specifically in this letter, because it’s through him that I was able to finally acknowledge a dreadful, unknown pain festering within me. It was through working with James, getting to know him as a person, and working with his team, that I was able to confront the internal darkness turning my attempts at happiness into sludge.

It’s because of this person—hi James, if you’re reading this—that I was able to finally confront my demons, and fucking honest about the real problems.

Four months into working together, we hop on a call.

This is fairly routine for us. Our dynamic is built on honest back-and-forth exchanges across voice notes, WhatsApp messages, emails, and a mutual understanding that I feel grateful to have forged with someone like this.

During this time, we were struggling growing his LinkedIn account. We had some decent posts, and some notable flops. We had tried every strategy you could think of. Yet, nothing was working.

We pivoted many times, from trying to strategize with AI, to ruthlessly assessing our competition, to investigating the potential leverage of cohorts and paid groups. (This was not something I was recommending, but we were going to explore every option possible)

I was losing confidence in LinkedIn a platform. I was losing confidence in myself as a ghostwriter and personal brander. I felt like I was losing connection with who I wanted to be.

I started to, once again, hate the business I had built.

You must understand that this was not my first business.

It was my third.

Addition to that, I had started, built, and closed several businesses, concepts, and practices over the years, from a B2B brand marketing agency soon after graduating college, to a copywriting and content design practice, to legitimizing a decaf coffee startup that never took off, to a dropshipping athleisure brand that never left the demo Shopify store, and countless others.

Every time I plunged into these business pools of ideation, dreaming, and reckless building, I pursued the kind of adrenaline that only restless creatives understand. The irresistible pull towards yet another sparkling idea powered by the flames of urgency. Magnetic brand stories, images, and concepts, drawn up in the mural of your mind. Awaiting to be born. This is not a feeling you will understand unless you read these words, nod your head along, and understand their truths deep within the marrow of your bones.

This, I am certain.

That all being said…

You can imagine the truth I faced, on this call with James.

All it took was one simple question:

“How are you?”

Something within those words broke the glass vase that had structured itself around my soul. My heart. My internal fortress of idols built on lies.

I shattered completely. I broke into tears. That one question transformed into a three-hour-long conversation that I will never forget. James was not my client, but my friend. He listened with empathy, gave advice and wisdom that I feel I still don’t deserve to hear, and advised I do one thing going forward:

“You need to break the cycle.”

He was right.

I had created a cycle that I didn’t realize I was creating.

This cycle of building escapes, despising the escapes, resenting myself for escaping what I truly wanted to build because I was… what? Too afraid? Too cowardly? Too distracted to realize the uncomfortable truth? Too broken to see through the cracks? Too blind to peer through the darkness?

Whatever the answer to that question is—for I fail to know exactly what it could be, even today—I can only look back on this moment and feel eternally grateful for the unexpected permission I received from someone who truly understood.

This is when I begin the Age of Intentional Destruction.

I burn my ghostwriting business to the ground. Dance in the ashes. Have very difficult calls with my clients. Ghost my personal LinkedIn. Peruse my emotional firestorm with endless curiosity and endless self-attention over the following days. I tell my last client—a brand I do other copywriting for, rather than personal branding (and yes, they are phenomenal, I find their projects stimulating, and I still work with them to this day)—that I was going to disappear for a week to gather my thoughts.

There are many small changes I have not told you about.

The countless ideas I started softly, and then abandoned within hours.

The semi-family business that taught me the lasting, damaging effects of crippling depression, death of identity, undying anxiety, and the looming threat of people I wished I never met. (And how I learned to forgive, detach, and stop the self-victimization thread long after I parted ways with this company and the people within it)

The corporate jobs that I earned, got laid off from, and earned again—across the most competitive global brands in sportswear, tech, SaaS, and fintech.

The novel drafts I scrapped after investing time and love into stories I had rewritten and reframed at least five times in the last decade.

The wedding photography career I pursued for a few breakneck months when I wasn’t sure if what I loved was the business, or the art.

The extreme mental and emotional episodes that I cannot describe with professional diagnostics, because I have not been diagnosed with anything beyond ADHD, but I do feel a direct kinship with symptoms that align with other disorders.

To describe each and every one of these smaller stories to you feels necessary, but also not enough. So, I will have to leave some of these devices to you.

(Perhaps I will share them another time)

What’s most important is this…

… this dire change leads us closer to the present.

---

I’m not sure when I rebranded my Substack.

The time. The day. The season. The month.

It’s felt blurry since then.

I never paid much attention to my calendar, or time, or the threads in-between. I tend to view things with a grandiose vision, and struggle to put together the building blocks that lead me to a specific date, or destination.

All I know is I’ve rebranded The Oyster many times.

It started from a distant place, focused on modeling after a generalist identity.

Perhaps you will understand this. To be clear, I was going through a positioning crisis of my own, after following traditional marketing and sales education that told you that you were not allowed to embrace your Renaissance callings if you wanted to succeed. You were not allowed to be more than one thing. You had to carve out the parts of you that yearned for attention, stomp them into the cement, and abandon them in order to achieve monetary success.

This was touted as more of a harsh, necessary truth, than a fabrication.

When I realized that this should absolutely not be the case, and I was bullishly committed to unraveling my generalist self, I wrote my first few pieces around that. These actually did fairly well—far better than recent letters I’ve written—and people seemed to resonate.

Substack is, unsurprisingly, flooded with people who relate quite well to these experiences. Finding generalists on Substack is as simple as visiting a next-door neighbor. They are everywhere. You, are everywhere.

However, while some of these pieces did well… I didn’t like them.

They didn’t bring me that sense of satisfaction, or joy, or delight that I had expected. I’m a competent writer, and I write to think, so drafting these essays was not too much of a chore. But, I didn’t feel connected to them after publishing. They felt more performative than actually honest.

That revelation, on its own, was quite devastating to realize.

What followed this period of unhappiness was a process of reckless abandonment, transformation, revisiting, and reshaping. I was chiseling away at the marble until I could find an answer that satisfied my unseen desires.

You’ll notice that the one thing I never changed was the name.

The philosophy behind it—the story, the bones, the meaning, the beating heart, the underlying muscle, the tissue, the soul—meant too much to alter. To this day it reflects the true core of what this place—this universe—is supposed to be.

The name of this Substack, the one you’re reading right now, came from a quote said to be as a child. From my father.

To know the full gravity of this quote, I must take you through how they’ve threaded through my entire life, and how the greatest self-betrayal I ever committed was forgetting what these words meant to me.

---

“The world is your oyster.”

My father said these words to me when I was old enough to understand how impactful they would become. I was young at heart and old in soul. He knew this. Still does. He demonstrates a belief where you can be whoever you want to be, build whatever you want to build, and pursue your passions relentlessly.

These words have followed me well into adulthood.

They’ve followed me through learning to write for the first time around six years old, because I needed a way to channel the stories and characters in my head to the page (and talking to myself on the playground, with no awareness of my surroundings, wasn’t exactly winning me any friends). They’ve followed me through cutting my teeth on the tennis court—every loss, every win, and every hour of blood, sweat, and tears. They’ve followed me into my first experiences with love and heartbreak. They’ve followed me into my first friendships, made with people I still talk to ten years later. They’ve followed me into creating without permission, from fiction, to photography, to music, to business, and more. They’ve followed me into my parents’ divorce. They’ve followed me into a tumultuous relationship with my former stepfamily. They’ve followed me into working for people who made it their mission to destroy me, because they didn’t see any answer outside of taking others down with them. They’ve followed me into building and sacrificing temporary businesses that served as stepping-stones. They’ve followed me into working with clients I hated, and clients I loved. They’ve followed me into creating my first MVP for a business I truly believe in. They’ve followed me into every mentorship, every course, and every failure. They’ve followed me into the essays I’m creating with you.

Recently, I turned 30.

Still, these words follow me.

I feel both energized, and anxious. I’m in the middle of letting go of what I thought worked, and seeking to embrace my intuition further.

My tendency to overthink leads into spiraling that dismisses any productive contribution to my goals—physical, mental, and spiritual. I know this.

My eyes are welling up with tears as I write this. I’m letting them fall.

The journey to get here has been so, so trying. So difficult. So hard. I’m nowhere near where I want to be. I’m also nowhere close to how broken I was only six months ago. I’m repairing myself, little by little, piece by piece, and accepting that the brokenness was a step forward. Into the unknown. Into the future. Into the lessons destined to teach me, break me, and build me back up again. Because life is not worth living without suffering.

I betrayed myself for such a long time.

I went against everything I wanted. Sacrificed who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to create, in order to mold myself into what I believed was necessary to achieve monetary and soulful freedom. Brainwashed myself so vividly, that when the spell finally broke, I had no choice but to unleash the emotions, the anguish, and the memories of promises I made—and broke—flood to the surface and break the fucking dam.

My hope is that you do not do the same.

I had to destroy myself to see the truth. I needed to face the demons, without armor and without weapon. I needed to acknowledge the pain, the darkness, and the light I had shut out. I needed to make peace with my faults, my mistakes, my shattered heart. I needed to be honest, in the most brutal way possible. I needed to rip apart the body of the Old Self, set it aflame, and carry the soul into the Now—the time where I have the choice to make the changes I need to make.

This brings us to today.

---

Originally, The Oyster was too distant from me.

It was a publication. It was a place stitched with essays that weren’t quite right. It was unfinished. I was overcomplicating the mission without meaning to. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was going against my intuition due to old, disgusting habits that refused to be quenched.

But, it simply needed to be like… this.

Something raw. Something honest. Something brazen. Something torn between a personal column, an open letter, and raw thoughts dropped from the cuff. Something aligned with who I am as a person, not just the idea of me that I believed was true for so many years.

I’m at my happiest when I write like this.

When I share these thoughts with you in hopes of uncovering an answer, together. When I write my fiction and explore themes and concepts that normal writing simply doesn’t allow. When I obey my ambition and chase after new ideas, like fable. — a platform that I believe can take on Amazon KDP, and win.

This is a place for you to feel at home, too.

As a person battling their passions, and knows they are finished going against their intuition. As a person who loves hustle and what the future holds in technology and humanity, but who also values the realms of deep thinking and even deeper contemplation. As a person who appreciates and yearns to understand the most brilliant minds in history, from artists like Michelangelo to writers like Dostoevsky.

As I learn, you will learn.

My ambitions for The Oyster and fable. are honestly quite ridiculous.

But, I firmly believe the only way to achieve remarkable things is to be a little bit delusional.

My hope is that you will feel compelled to come along on this adventure of unraveling and self-creation and building with me, post-self-destruction.

I’m finally building things I give a fuck about.

Consider this my open, raw, unedited diary.

For all the things we’ve talked about, and the new discoveries in-between. You will get to know me on a much deeper level, and I expect to learn more about you, too. I want to build this together, to be something truly extraordinary.

Please don’t make the same mistakes I did.

Listen to what you truly want.

Tell your doubts to go fuck themselves.

Then, break free.

Forever.

I will see you next week.

Thank you for being here,

Taylor

I can’t thank you enough for being here. Whether you just recently subscribed, started following me on Substack, or somehow found this piece through the multi-webbed universe of the internet, thank you.

Up until now, all of my essays have been free. However, if I want to make The Oyster as big as I want it to be—for you, and me—I need to make changes around here.

From now on, free subscribers will get access to a Monday essay every week, and occasional free podcast episodes. Paid subscribers will get access to Monday and Friday essays, all podcast episodes, and the private community—a place I’m very excited about.

If you’re interested in upgrading your subscription and supporting The Oyster, I’ll follow up with a personal thank-you message. I want to get to know you on a human level. We’re not NPCs on here, as you know.

Thank you so much.