Update: Life Is Unexpected — And That’s Okay

Aloha i ke ola āu e ola nei, E ola i ke ola āu e aloha ai. Love the life you live, Live the life you love.

Let me be honest: this blog post wasn’t supposed to be this late.

I had every intention to show up here last week with a new post, a fresh photo, a story worth sharing. But, as life often does, things shifted. My laptop — the one I use for school, content, writing, podcasting, dreaming — decided it needed a break. Or a repair, at least. And when your entire creative flow lives in a screen, a keyboard, and a charging port… well, everything kind of pauses with it.

But maybe that pause wasn’t a bad thing.

These past few weeks, life has reminded me that control is an illusion — and that’s okay.

Even with my laptop down and deadlines floating in the distance, I’ve been living. Really living.

I’ve spent days soaking in the sun that I forgot I missed so much — vitamin-sea and all. My color’s coming back. The dullness that Minnesota’s snow drained from my skin is slowly being replaced with warmth, with brown shoulders, with saltwater curls. That alone feels like medicine.

And yet, even in the midst of healing and returning, I’m working. Because adulting doesn’t clock out for summer vacation. I picked up an overnight job — something I never imagined doing — and I’ve been navigating this new rhythm of rest when the world is awake and hustle when it sleeps. It’s exhausting, but it’s necessary. I’ve got bills to pay and dreams to fund. And I know this chapter is temporary.

Somewhere between late-night shifts and early-morning waves, a strange thought hit me: I’m going to be 19 soon.

Like, what? Didn’t I just graduate?

It’s wild how fast time moves when you’re focused on survival. One day you're a kid making graduation lei with your cousins, and the next, you're budgeting your paycheck, fixing your laptop, and juggling adult responsibilities like it’s second nature. I blinked, and now I’m here — not quite who I was, but not yet who I’ll become.

And that in-between space? It’s uncomfortable. It’s beautiful. It’s real.

So if you’re wondering where I’ve been — I’ve been here. Living through the plot twists, letting go of perfection, embracing the unexpected.

And in the spirit of embracing the unknown, I’m trying something new. Instead of just posting once a week on Tuesdays, I’ll be writing and publishing letters twice a week — until I head back to my life in Minnesota. It’s a little experiment. A stretch of my limits. A chance to see what shows up when I stop overthinking and just write.

These letters will be raw. Unfiltered. Unsent messages and soft confessions I’ve kept tucked away for years.

So if life feels out of sync for you too, I hope you know this: 

You don’t have to have it all figured out. 

You can miss a week. 

You can fall behind. 

You can break down — and still be becoming.

I’ll be back soon with the letters I promised. But for now, thank you for being here — through the delays, the repairs, and the becoming. I’m still writing. I’m still healing. I’m still learning how to be soft with myself when things don’t go as planned.

Because life is unexpected. And that’s okay.

With ʻUhane From Me to You,

ʻUhane Hawaiʻi