Romanticising My Life Didn’t Fix It

The internet makes romanticising your life look deceptively simple. Light a candle. Make a matcha. Buy the linen bedsheets. Suddenly, everything is supposed to feel cinematic. But somewhere between the third aesthetic morning routine and a badly edited reel, I realised something uncomfortable: I wasn’t actually happier. I was just better at staging my days.

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Romanticising your life, as it’s sold online, often confuses beauty with meaning. It asks you to aestheticise the surface without questioning the substance. I did the rituals, the playlists, the walks, the quiet dinners alone; and while they looked lovely, they didn’t touch the parts of my life that actually felt heavy. What helped wasn’t the romance. It was the recalibration.

The first thing that changed everything was paying attention to friction. Not the obvious kind; deadlines, conflicts, exhaustion, but the quiet resistance I felt before certain conversations, tasks, or commitments. Instead of masking that discomfort with “soft girl” routines, I started asking why it existed. Was I avoiding something? Overcommitting? Saying yes out of habit instead of choice? Naming friction turned out to be far more effective than trying to smooth it over.

The second shift was redefining what “a good day” meant. I stopped measuring my days by productivity or aesthetic output and started measuring them by nervous system cues. Did I feel rushed? Did I breathe properly? Did I eat without multitasking? These were small, almost unglamorous questions, but answering them honestly brought more peace than any curated routine ever did.

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I also learned to romanticise selectively. Not every moment needs to be special; some just need to be functional. Folding laundry doesn’t need a soundtrack. Some days are for efficiency, not enchantment. Letting that be okay removed a surprising amount of pressure. When I did choose to slow down; a long shower, a walk without my phone, a meal cooked properly, it felt intentional instead of performative.

Another thing that helped was separating identity from optimisation. I didn’t need to become a “main character” to deserve a good life. I didn’t need to document my mornings to validate them. Living well, I realised, is often quiet. It’s choosing fewer things. It’s leaving earlier. It’s cancelling plans without guilt. None of this photographs particularly well, but it feels stable in a way trends never do.

Romanticising your life isn’t inherently useless. It just works best when it’s a byproduct, not a strategy. The moments that began to feel beautiful weren’t the ones I tried to curate, they were the ones that emerged after I reduced noise, respected my limits, and paid attention to what actually calmed me down.

What helped wasn’t turning my life into a movie. It was editing it.

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