👁️ Oh, I really don’t like this…
That was the thought.
Midway through a painting, brush locked in a death grip, everything tight and precious like I was applying for a job with each stroke. No breath. No flow. No music in it. Just performance.
The thing about painting; real painting—is that it’s got a smell, a pulse, a tempo. The studio hums when you let it. Lavender terpenoil in old jars. Oily brushes clinking like tired bones. Light pooling across the floor like it’s been here longer than you have. That’s when I know I’m doing it right.
But this? This was just control in fancy pants.
It took me weeks to come back. I grabbed a roller, full of gesso, and erased the whole thing. Left one thing behind: a pattern for the dress I wore that day.
That stayed. Everything else? Blur it. Let it breathe.
That’s kind of the season I’m in.
In 2020, when the world got weird, my sister Udochi and I were neck-deep building Chill Jane—a health and wellness brand that was never meant to be perfect, just real. We needed a phrase that could hold opposites. Something with rhythm. We landed on:
Relax. Relate. Release.
Big Mood by Chill Jane
We laughed when we said it at first. It felt too easy, too obvious. But like any good mantra, it stuck. Made its way onto our soda cans. Then into our joints. Then into our decisions.
And now, in 2025, it’s back. This time, whispering through all the mess of building Helical Healing Habitat from scratch. All the pitch decks. All the half-broken prototypes. All the nights we’ve been sprinting toward a vision that still doesn’t have pavement.
August hit like a plateau; but, not the burnout kind.
The kind where you look around and go, “Damn. we built this far? Let me actually take in the view before I forget what it feels like.”
So I’ve been doing that. Watching myself move. Loosening up.
Relax. Relate. Release.
Painting again.
Falling back into kundalini; those odd little poses that somehow crack me open.
Sitting in silence. Marking things down. Writing like this. Just to remember.
Relax. Relate. Release.
Not an order. Not some guru mantra I’m trying to sell you.
Just an invitation.
Let go—just enough—and see what starts to move.
Because the truth is, nothing good was ever built from clenched fists.
