What a girl can’t and won’t deny: her love for a sweet treat
dark chocolate ganache sheet cake
One of the best things to come out of my friendship with two of my dearest friends (shoutout Gabi and Ashley), is the discovery and love for the Trader Joe’s sheet cakes.
The Trader Joe’s sheet cake has single-handedly deepened our girlhood and connection - it is the common experience that continues to bring us together. Read more about girlhood here.
Background
On a trip to one of the girls' cities, we took a grocery run to Trader Joe’s. The Trader Joe’s mini sheet cakes had just made their debut and our sweet treat lovin’ selves couldn’t resist a chocolate cake, especially a dark chocolate cake.
As we were checking out, the cashier had asked about our plans, and our plans were to chill and eat our snacks, but specifically this dark chocolate sheet cake. The cashier had only positive things to say about the cake, even mentioning that he could eat the whole thing himself. With that in mind, emotions heightened and excitement filled me up.
Whatever happened between leaving Trader Joe’s and eating that cake is just the space between because all thoughts and feelings came to a halt once having a spoon full of that dark chocolate sheet cake.
You’ve heard of dream blunt rotation, but have you heard of dream sheet cake rotation? Between the three of us girl friends, there was more than enough to go around. The timing between each bite from passing her (the sheet cake) around was the perfect interval, with time to savor each bite as well as slow down to not have the urge to finish the entire tray - not to mention, the sweetness could use a cleanse with a sip of water.
Before I continue to confess my love for the dark chocolate sheet cake, let’s please mention that it could be considered too sweet without possession of a sweet tooth, especially for chocolate. But, fear not, there are other options for whatever sweet tooth you possess.
For you: page? No, for you: flavors.
The two flavors that dropped were: dark chocolate and vanilla (technically dark chocolate ganache and chantilly cream vanilla bean). I naturally gravitate towards chocolate sweets, so that wins every time. However, that is completely biased considering I’ve yet to try the vanilla bean one.
Pitting those two flavors against each other isn’t fair for a multitude of reasons, but my top reason being that they serve different purposes. What those purposes are can be up for debate at a different time because more importantly, dark chocolate and vanilla are not the only flavors.
My next flavor discovery was during the -ber months, and it completely changed the game, bumping dark chocolate ganache to second place: pumpkin spice.
Pumpkin spice sheet cake -
You haven’t left my mind since the moment you entered my life.
Four months with you isn’t long enough,
but I understand your need for longing.
You can only be brought upon this earth during certain seasons,
and I am so glad that season has bestowed upon us now.
We’ve met again and every moment will be savored.
She (pumpkin spice sheet cake) came at a time that everyone goes into a craze about her flavor profile, one that I struggled to get on board with. She was and is just another marketing tool for fall - but she is one that caught my attention.
Mr. Joe got me hooked on this one.
When -ber season was coming to an end, so was my beloved pumpkin spice sheet cake.
I had just thought that the joy of a new flavor had dissipated until I laid my eyes on someone new: gluten free yellow sheet cake. Her fight for first place persists, but it isn’t difficult competition considering I see her year-round.
Not only does my gluten intolerance hold huge weight when it comes to this competition, but the gluten-free sheet cake actually possesses the texture, moisture, and flavor that the other gluten-full sheet cakes hold. Let’s be completely honest, in most scenarios, the absence of gluten is obvious. However, that is not the case here. She (gluten-free yellow sheet cake) provides me the joy of a sweet treat without hurting my stomach. For that, she wins.
More seasons, more fun
Fall flavors aren’t for everyone, and sometimes neither are chocolate, vanilla, or yellow. I didn’t forget that other seasons have their own moments, too - they just didn’t have a moment with me, but they fully deserve recognition.
Come spring time, lemon and carrot made their debut. Even summer rolled around and showcased strawberry. While I typically love all of these flavors, they didn’t make it to my ranking.
The seasonal sheet cakes bring me joy, knowing that I can try something new and talk to the girls about it. The only one who’s caught my attention thus far has been my girl pumpkin spice. I’m not ashamed to admit it. She is just that girl!
Conclusive thoughts
My love for a sweet treat will never die, and my love for the Trader Joe’s sheet cake continues to feed that feeling. Not only does she stir riveting conversation with others, hosting friendly debates on which sheet cake is best, but she is the perfect ending bite on any given day.
If you haven’t tried the Trader Joe’s mini sheet cake, what are you doing? Oh yeah, did I mention that she’s mini? Let’s talk about it: which one is your favorite?
xoxo,
kaels
too bad ain’t me <3
Investing in Me: How I'm Prioritizing Self-Love and Personal Growth in My 20s
Last Updated: July 2025
Falling in love with myself has been one of my favorite parts about being in my 20s.
I’m putting myself first and getting to know myself as an adult.
There’s a lot for me to still learn and so many ways for me to grow. I’m at a point where I will choose myself every time.
Investing in myself comes from wanting to live for myself.
What I’m learning about myself
Learning more about myself means investing time in my own work and my own passions.
As an adult, I’m trying to rediscover what it is that I love to do. I always like to revisit the question: what is my ideal day? Is there something that I want to learn to do? Are there things that I want to see? What is it that I want to do?
I’m at a point in my life where I want to be selfish - selfish in the sense that I only will do things that I truly want to do. I’m trying to throw people pleasing out the window, and truly live my life for myself. So when I visit the question of what my ideal day is, I like to truly center it around myself.
I’m learning what I like to do, what kind of person I want to be, and who I want to surround myself with.
I’m also learning what it means to put myself first, rather than trying to people please. If I’m being honest, a lot of learning is really just unlearning a lot of old, toxic traits that I may possess. I think learning more about myself has a lot to do with healing.
I am inherently an introvert, so I think it is easier for me to want to spend time with myself. I’ve actually always enjoyed spending time with myself, but the people pleasing aspect actually stems from the “cultural toxicity” that I’ve grown up around. This is actually a whole other conversation that we can save for later.
Prioritizing goals and manifestations
Back to me - not only am I learning more about myself throughout this process, but I’m falling in love with myself more and more each day.
Rather than having a “bucket list”, I have goals or manifestations. A “bucket list” is defined as “a number of experiences or achievements that a person hopes to have or accomplish during their lifetime” (Oxford Dictionary). Honestly, I do not like that. I want a list of things that I will accomplish, so creating goals and manifestations become more useful. I’ve always met my goals and have manifested everything that I’ve wanted.
Shifting my mindset from “I hope to…” to “I will…” or “I am…” has allowed me to meet these goals and manifest what I want. There’s a lot of layers to this, though. I know a lot of people may not believe in manifesting, but there’s so much more to manifestations than the eye can see. Goals and manifestations go hand in hand. While the act of manifesting leaves it in the hands of the Universe (or whatever higher power you believe in), actively creating goals has a plan of action.
I always meet my goals by:
Journaling. Putting pen to paper holds more meaning. There’s muscle memory of writing down your thoughts and goals. It truly sticks in the subconscious of your brain.
Gratitude. Start journaling with a sense of gratitude. Ground yourself before manifesting/writing down your goals.
Writing in the past. Journal as your future self. What is your future self feeling? Visualize how you feel and what it looks like.
S.M.A.R.T. Goals.
This acronym standing for: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. Create a plan of action for your manifestations through this framework. Think about the specific steps you will need to reach your goals. If it seems “unachievable”, go back a few steps from that goal. Use one of those earlier steps as your current goal. You will eventually get there, and it will take work.
This is a big reason as to why I think goals and manifestations go hand in hand. There’s a sense of detachment that needs to happen, while also allowing your subconscious to take over. The goal is always in the back of your mind, and the will steps get done in the day-to-day.
I started doing this in college and it worked. I wanted to graduate with honors. By the end of my second year, I wasn’t doing very well honestly, I was just passing. I was struggling, but I wanted to do better. I didn’t know how, though, besides knowing that I had to take it seriously. I wrote down my goals with specific things I wanted, but wrote them as if it was my future self - feeling what she feels when she graduates with honors.
I couldn’t let myself ruminate over this. I had faith in myself and the Universe.
I did it. I graduated with honors.
I changed my day-to-day and put in the work. My goal stayed in the back of my mind and that feeling I wrote down was always with me.
Falling in love with myself
I’ve been in love with myself for a long time. It truly is the greatest love of all, as Whitney Houston said.
A big part of this has to do with doing things that I truly love to do. One of my favorite locations is in front of a mirror. I love to admire myself. I can look at myself for hours. I give myself words of affirmation and truly believe them, because why wouldn’t I?
Despite my self-admiration time, I still need to spend time with myself, whether that be going shopping, getting my nails done, going out for food, taking a work out class, going to the movies, taking a trip, etc. I genuinely love spending time with myself, it’s so peaceful. I get to do what I want when I want to - I run my own time and spend my own money (not going to lie, spending my own money pains me but I’m spending money on things I want, so this will work for now).
Loving myself doesn’t have to do with just me, though. Friendships are just as important for self-love. I’m convinced that I love myself so much because of how much I love my life. Let’s be honest, life is so worth living when you hang out with the girls. Girlhood feeds my soul. It reminds me what life is all about. There is something so special about the bond between girlfriends. That is true love.
There’s so much love within the relationships in my life, that it is easy for me to love myself.
Concluding thoughts
Investing in myself - in my life - has become such an important aspect of my 20s. I want to continue to learn and grow and I want to truly love my life.
Becoming goal-oriented has allowed me to learn and grow and surrounding myself with genuine people has truly helped me learn to love myself.
Time and money are currencies that I’m investing in myself. I’m choosing to spend it on things that feed my soul.
I give myself everything I need, want, and more.
xoxo,
kaels
too bad ain’t me<3
Entrepreneurial Queens vs. Corporate Baddies: The Battle for Time
Last Updated: October 2024
Do you ever realize how much of our lives are surrounded by time?
We are literally constrained by the clock. We think about it constantly, especially in a capitalist country, where time and money are damn near synonymous. We are obsessed with making money, which directly correlates to time.
Everyone is constantly moving, trying to figure out their next move.
I don’t want to live like that LMAO where the clock runs my life.
Me and the clock
I’m having a taste of what it’s like to have the clock run your life, and holy sh*t, y’all really just settled for this? (A corporate lifestyle btw, if that wasn’t clear) Working constantly, stuck in the same f*cking cycle - day after f*cking day.
Don’t get me wrong, I really love my job, I just don’t get how people don’t get tired of this sh*t. Like wtf do you MEAN we only have a TWO DAY break in between five whole ass work days.
That’s some f*cking bullsh*t.
Inner conflict with time
Bouncing back off of how this generation is changing the workplace, we’re desiring for more freedom financially, personally, and socially. I still want to work and hustle, but as an entrepreneur, not as an entity in a corporation. In a corporation, you’re running on their time instead of your own time. As much as I love my job, idk how much longer I can run on this kind of never-ending corporate clock.
I’m really struggling to find time and balance between corporate work and my own passions. I want to give all of my time to my business, obviously, but it’s f*cking exhausting, b!tch - trying to balance being a corporate baddie, but also striving towards becoming an entrepreneur.
Being a corporate baddie isn’t all that bad. I am definitely learning so much, and think it’s a necessary step for me in my own personal growth, but it’s like, at what cost? Freedom?
The true struggle
The real struggle is being on a strict schedule.
Listen, if I get a minute off of schedule, everything is f*cking ruined. And this is what I mean by running by clock time. The clock/time is literally running my life rather than the other way around. Do I want that? I mean, who tf wants that? Where every minute of your life is worth, essentially, more than money. Where you’re literally racing the f*cking clock. Like, bro, that’s stressful as f*ck.
But, hey, #GrindDontStop.
Even though it f*cking should. Lol like slow tf down, let me catch a f*cking breath!!!
Part of me is like, why don’t we just live off natural time, like the natural human beings that we are? Then the other part of me is like “WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK”, I mean, Riri said it best, amirite.
So many struggles, feel me? LMAO
What y’all think?
xoxo,
kaels
too bad ain’t me<3
20s, Energies, and Boundaries: Where to Draw the Line
Last Updated: October 2024
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not going to allow my own energy to be disturbed by anyone.
Protecting Your Energy
I think more people need to understand and realize that there’s no issue in wanting to protect your own energy or maintain your peace. Personally, I don’t see any value or advantage in allowing your peace to be interfered with for the sake of someone else.
Why it Matters
It may sound selfish and even a little harsh, but what do you gain by allowing someone else to walk all over your aura? Yes, you are protecting them, but what about ourselves?
Once you realize what’s serving you versus what’s not and you block out anything that disrupts your peace, life is just so much more fun and it feels so much easier.
Finding Inner Peace
I have to be honest, I’m still working on maintaining my peace. With the small changes that I’ve made, I’ve noticed that I feel less worried. It’s my life, and I’m not going to let anyone drain my own energy.
This honestly requires a lot of inner work where you unlearn old habits and become aware of what you bring into your life. This self-awareness can allow you to find true peace because you truly understand what’s positively impacting your life - you understand what you need/want in your life versus what you don’t.
We shouldn’t allow anyone or anything to f*ck with us.
Like how are you going to be disturbing me on my phone? Bye, immediately blocked!
Sometimes, silence is the best answer.
Learning when to speak up and when to stay quiet is a huge lesson that we all need to learn. We’ll have to choose between protecting our peace or pushing our boundaries. There are some things that just aren’t worth our energy - I want us all to be mindful of this. It’s so easy to react without thought, but I want us to at least be aware of this. Be aware of what may be disrupting your peace.
There’s no reason to put your energy into something that’s ultimately going to drain your own. Here’s to being bad b!tches with self-awareness, self-care, and self-love! Protect that energy, b!tch.
xoxo,
kaels
too bad ain’t me <3
Self-Love: The Ultimate Act of Rebellion in Your 20s
Last Updated: October 2024
Listen, b!tch, I love myself. I can’t emphasize this enough. I’ve reached a point where loving and understanding myself has gone beyond anything I could ever imagine, it’s as if I’m dating myself. I mean, I basically am dating myself. I’ve learned the value of my own time and I’m continuing to learn more about myself and the world around me every day.
We are all multifaceted people. There’s so many layers to each of us, and, let’s be real, sometimes, we don’t even understand our own layers.
Using Self-Reflection to Reach Ultimate Self-love
Learning how to love yourself and learning how to value your own time is not only about a bath, a face mask, buying yourself whatever you want, etc. Don’t get me wrong, that’s definitely part of self-care and self-love, but what about self-reflection.
When you self-reflect, you learn and understand more about who you are. You become more self-aware of your thoughts, your actions, and your values. Doing inner work can have the ability to boost your self-confidence and self-love because you have that internal, rather than external, validation. You begin to understand your own self-worth and it’s just a beautiful thing to see and a beautiful thing to obtain because you can then grow to your higher self, your full potential.
Obviously, this is easier said than done, and can definitely be more beneficial with professional help, but simply understanding what internal/inner work could be potentially done, is already one step closer to your higher self.
Do It For You
There’s always a reason as to why we do the things we do - it’s just a matter of understanding them and using them for your own advantage through self-reflective work. We can continue in old, negative patterns, or we can learn and grow from them.
If you can give love to others, you definitely should put yourself on the receiving end, too. Learn how to give yourself that same love and learn what you need for yourself. It’s not selfish to want to spend time with yourself or to want more for yourself. It’s your f*cking life, bro. It shouldn’t be seen as negative to want to spend time with yourself, or to achieve high levels of self-love. Self-love comes with self-reflection. The self-reflection work is definitely a long process, but when you achieve that high level of self-love, it will be so worth the wait. You’ll realize just how worth it you are, that you are a priceless human<3
I just want all of us to be our higher selves and to have the utmost love for themselves.
Find ways to level up, the best competition is with yourself. How can I be better? How can I become the higher version of myself? How would my future self approach this?
Here’s to being the absolute best version of yourself. Send love to yourself <3
And remember, your past, present, and future selves all deserve love.
xoxo,
kaels
too bad ain’t me <3
Fake it Til You Slay it: The Power of Confidence and Self-Belief
updated: Jan. 2026
Everything is an act. I act confident. I act as if the world revolves around me. I act as if I know what I’m doing. Eventually the acting turns into reality and you forget that you once had to rely on a “false narrative”.
I don’t like the idea that an act of confidence is a false narrative, hence the quotations around the phrase, but it’s to prove a point that what was once “false” turned into truth.
Personal Experience/Background
In my last year of my undergraduate, I took a class, The Science of Happiness. I took it with a grain of salt, though; I entered the class and our professor was a bit cuckoo (non-derogatory). She was silly and I honestly wasn’t the most open-minded when I first stepped foot into the class.
Believe it or not, I was a very facts and figures type of girl. The class was labeled as “science” so I needed all of the research presented to me in scientific ways. Different studies were presented, but nothing was recent (within the last 10-20 years) and the demographic of the participants didn’t vary, so it didn’t feel right to make such generalizations and conclude that this was scientific.
I wanted to get an A in the class by fully participating and having an open mind, so I did just that. So, there you had it, me, an active participant, fully engrossed in the course, and learning about the science of happiness.
Words are powerful
There’s a lot we can unpack from that class, but for the sake of this piece, let’s focus on one of the lessons that had the biggest impact: self-talk, specifically positive self-talk.
The words that we speak and internalize hold a lot of power. Our brains don’t necessarily understand reality, but it understands what we see and what we say to ourselves, which is why positive self-talk is so important. Neuroscience supports me on this and you’ll just have to take my word for it. If you don’t, then you can also learn from my own experience.
Morning affirmations
With self-talk, we also had to understand automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs, and how we easily allow ourselves to have negative thoughts and tend to spiral into them. Whereas on the flip side, we tend to struggle to spiral into positive thoughts.
That was a huge lesson for me because I never noticed that I did that myself. With this, I devoted myself to have positive self-talk, which later manifested itself into morning affirmations.
As mentioned before, the brain doesn’t fully have a grasp on reality, but solely what’s presented and what is said. To fully commit to my act of confidence and that everything always works out in my favor, I started a morning ritual.
Every morning, without fail, I stare myself down in the mirror and tell myself that “I’m so lucky, and everything always works out in my favor”. I repeat it at least five times to really seal it into my subconscious.
I’ve even conditioned myself to repeat that line if something “negative” happens to me. I refuse to be caught in the negative, so I genuinely have rewired my brain into thinking that I’m lucky, confident, beautiful, intelligent, and that everything always works out in my favor. This could be false, but I tell myself otherwise, so it actually must be true.
In brain rot terms: yes, I am delusional. However, everything has always worked out in my favor every time. I’m quite literally living the life I dreamt of and it still feels like a dream. I told myself it would happen and it did.
Concluding thoughts
I’m confident because I say so. I’m lucky because I say so. Everyone is in love with me because I say so. Everything always works out in my favor because I say so. The world revolves around me because I say so.
I just know that everything will work out, so it does. This all probably sounds crazy, or you could call me a witch, but I honestly don’t care because everything truly always works out in my favor and I always have trust that it does. Why wouldn’t I?
Fake it til you make it because, soon enough, you won’t be faking it anymore.
xoxo,
kaels
too bad ain’t me<3
Unleashing My True Self: A 20-Something's Fight Against Inauthenticity
updated: Jan. 2026
With the rise of social media, individuality seems to be losing against trends.
Trends have always existed, but with the influencer market constantly shoving new “it girl” items down our throat, consumers struggle to keep up and conformity continues to rise. Within the last couple of years, we’ve seen the “it girls”: the clean, pilates, matcha, Alo-loving girls.
No shade, no hate - I am a lover of pilates and matcha as well, but what really rattles me is the trend of an “it girl”. Creators telling consumers that this is what the “it girls” have and what they’re doing, alluding that the “other girls” aren’t “it girls”.
Critical Consumption
It’s seemingly obvious that all roads lead to the critical consumption of media. When it comes to scrolling through social media and what we are marketed, words like “it girl” really jump out at me. It almost preys on the youth to buy whatever they’re selling and it’s creating a mob of middle schoolers in Sephora, begging their parents to buy them $45 skincare products that they definitely don’t need.
In no way am I saying I’m the exception to overconsumption; I am easily influenced by social media and I am trying to be better at the rate at which I buy products, but it’s definitely a learning process.
Stuck in the cycle of aesthetics
If I’m being honest, I didn’t realize how stuck I was in the cycle of trends. I consume media in such a linear fashion - everything is for my aesthetic and I want everything to look a certain way, with respect to how I dress, how I post, and even just how I live.
In some ways, this has served my purpose, though - being someone who is very detail-oriented. I’m all for things that look appealing to the eye, which, believe it or not, directly connects to my corporate job, but that’s neither here nor there, solely just trying to use all of my skills to the best of its abilities.
Where it serves its purpose in my role, I can’t say that it’s always served a purpose when it comes to who I am. It’s consumed me in feeling the need to only post “pretty posts”, specifically when it comes to Instagram.
We can dissect the evolution of Instagram because I think it’ll serve great purpose in understanding the need to make things look “aesthetic” at all times, but I also think we’ve all just collectively come to that conclusion. The conclusion that Instagram is not real: we only showcase what we want to showcase in such edited versions of ourselves.
Fighting against inauthenticity
I’m now at a place where I feel challenged to be myself. A lot of this has to do with the physical city that I am in, but quite possibly can also be because of my age. I don’t want to look like all of the “it girls”; I want to discover myself without having to rely on social media.
I’m at an age where I am falling fully in love with myself, rediscovering old hobbies, and not caring about other people’s opinions. There’s no “right way” to be yourself, it’s all about what feels good for you. So, I guess there can be a “wrong” way: doing things to please others or gain attention from others.
Nothing has to make sense to others as long as it makes sense to you. There’s freedom in releasing yourself from external pressure or validation.
Conclusion
I’ve undergone a lot of different eras of myself, but I can confidently say that I was always true to my values. Though I still get wrapped up in a “pretty Instagram”, I still post whatever I want because it’s my Instagram.
I’m still discovering my own fashion sense. Moving from a small town where I stood out like a highlighter, to then being in a place where I seemingly “blend in”, it challenges me and makes me want to push my own limits when it comes to fashion.
I’m continually being challenged to rediscover myself and what I love. This only works because of my innate need to self-reflect and journal at any sight of change.
I always want to stay true to myself no matter what. Though trends can offer a helping hand into finding your style, it shouldn’t be the only thing you rely on. If I like something, then I like it, it doesn’t matter what the masses are doing, and it shouldn’t matter.
I urge you to challenge yourself with your style, hobbies, or living space. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else but you.
xoxo,
kaels
too bad ain’t me<3