As a young adult, and especially as a young woman, I find myself constantly wondering: why do I have to be one thing?
There’s this unspoken pressure to shrink ourselves into neat, recognizable categories. To pick a niche. To create an identity that fits cleanly into an algorithm . The artistic girl. The clean girl aesthetic. The instagram baddie. These labels are endlessly circulated. Through social media feeds and reinforced by the people around us, until it feels like choosing one is mandatory.
But for me, that expectation has created a quiet conflict with my own self-image.
Even my major and hobbies feel like they’re constantly being put on trial. I’m a biomedical science major, and somehow that comes with the assumption that I can’t love English, or writing or storytelling. As if science and creativity exist on opposite ends of the spectrum. As if you haven’t been writing weekly articles since freshman year. As if I don’t spend my time stitching together film clips almost every month, finding meaning in both structure and art.
It is strange how quickly people decide what should make sense for you.
And maybe that’s when it finally clicked: I don’t actually want to belong to an aesthetic at all. I just want to feel good. I just want to look good, on my own terms.
If one day that means muted colors, a slick-back bun and almost overly dewy makeup, then so be it. If another day it means dressing like a gym bro in baggy clothes, blasting NOLA bounce music through my headphones while I lift, that’s okay too. And if I want to throw on a cute matching set and head to a Pilates class, I don’t need to justify that either.
I’ve never fit neatly into one box people set out. I’ve always existed somewhere in between, science and writing, discipline and creativity, softness and strength. And I’m finally realizing that there’s something wrong with that.
So I’m deciding that 2026 is the year I stop chasing niches. The year I stopped asking myself which version of me is the “right” one. The year I let myself exist freely, fluidly and without explanation.
A year to just…be.