This was Wander Sober.
It started as a quiet space for me to write about my day to day life.
Places I went,
how it felt,
the little wins,
and the really rough days.
Old stuff from the past
that kept coming up,
trying to make sense of it all.
Just me getting those thoughts out,
being creative for once,
figuring shit out by writing.
A notebook to escape when my feelings got heavy,
or when the world felt too loud.
I loved that version of it.
Felt honest.
Felt like mine.
But I fucked it up.
I turned it into a project.
Metrics, “scale”, “growth”,
always chasing the next thing,
making it bigger,
forcing it to be something it never asked to be.
I hit a target that meant something incredibly important to me, i’d be working on for years,
I got that rush of “yes, this is it”,
That little ping of proof that maybe, just maybe, the years I poured my soul into,
the thing I really cared about,
wasn’t wasted
somehow show that the love,
the effort,
the pain
wasn’t for nothing.
It stopped making me happy.
Stopped being fun.
Stopped feeling like mine.
I was always chasing the next thing instead of just letting it be what it was,
a journal.
instead, turning something beautiful (and broken),
into something that worked.
And when it didnt, It felt like proof that I couldn’t make the things I love survive.
Then came the second layer:
wanting to prove to someone else that dreams can happen.
That you could follow your heart and it would lead somewhere good.
That if you just kept pushing,
grinding,
burning out,
eventually you’d show the world
(and maybe that person)
you were worth it.
Worth believing in.
Worth loving.
Worth something.
That “I have to prove my worth” feeling?
It’s brutal
It’s about the little kid inside who’s still trying to earn love,
earn approval,
earn the right to exist without apology.
And every time the site didn’t hit,
every time a batch didn’t flip,
every time metrics went up but happiness didn’t follow
it felt like another piece of evidence that i’m not enough.
Then the soul left.
2025 also kicked my ass.
ADHD meds up and down,
new ones not quite right,
lost a 15-year friendship that still hurts,
deep psychodynamic work that dragged up shit I thought was buried,
homeless for a stretch,
autism assessment hanging over everything, money tight,
support falling through,
end of a relationship on top of it all.
I feel like I lost a lot.
Communities,
friendships,
a sense of where I belong.
I don’t feel part of many things anymore.
I’m not afraid to say,
i’m a little lost right now.
One thing I know for sure:
if my heart isn’t in it anymore,
I can’t fake authenticity.
Can’t keep going on something that feels hollow.
Sometimes you just gotta let go,
remove the ego,
and,
accept that the pursuit of happiness…
sometimes is the happiness itself.
Chasing more just kills what was good.
So I’m letting it go.
I want to say a proper thank you to everyone who was part of it,
even quietly.
and to the 35,000 people that briefly stopped by
To the assistants who worked behind the scenes, you did incredible work,
often without much thanks or credit.
You helped shape this thing,
kept me going when I was stuck,
and made it feel less lonely.
I’m genuinely grateful for every bit of effort,
every idea,
every nudge.
You made it better than I could have alone.
If you landed here looking for travel stuff,
thank you.
Hope something I wrote helped,
even a little.
Thanks for being part of it, even if it was just for a moment
Aaron
January 2026