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I tell myself I scroll to stay current. I call it research. I call it trend-watching. I tell myself it’s part of my job.

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But somewhere along the way, I stopped stepping away long enough to have an actual idea of my own.

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In marketing, staying “in the know” feels like survival. We convince ourselves that if we’re not consuming, we’re falling behind. There’s always a new feature, a new format, a new influencer everyone’s watching. But what no one talks about is how that endless current dulls the spark that got us into this work in the first place. We’re chasing inspiration while slowly draining the space where it lives.

I used to have more of those random ah-ha moments, the ones that sneak up on you when your brain is quiet and unoccupied. I don’t get as many anymore. Honestly, I do my best thinking in the shower. It’s the one place I’m not trying to multitask. I think that says a lot.

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So lately, I’ve started questioning this idea that constant connection is the cost of staying creative. Because the truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever had a breakthrough idea halfway through a scroll. I’ve had them while driving, lifting, talking to my plants (yah, I know but I swear they understand me), anywhere my brain has permission to wander. Boredom, it turns out, might be the thing I’ve been starving myself of. It’s also something I’m completely uncomfortable with. I fill lack of motion like it’s a problem to solve, when maybe it’s actually the space I need most.

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That pause, that space between what everyone else is posting and what you actually think, is where authenticity lives. It’s where you stop mimicking the tone of the feed and start hearing your own again. And maybe that’s what most of us are really afraid of when we say we “can’t afford to fall behind.” Not that we’ll miss a trend, but that we’ll have to sit quietly with our own perspective long enough to realize how rare it actually is.

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I do my best work when I’m emotionally grounded and happy with myself. When I have the space to bring all sides of me to something, the business owner, the proud mom, the weird plant and mushroom lover who chases ideas that don’t always make sense at first. I’ve learned to trust the process. That balance doesn’t just come from solitude. It also comes from connection, the kind of conversation that challenges you to think bigger, or someone’s perspective that rearranges how you see the world. The ideas that stick usually come from those exchanges, when emotion meets intellect and something sparks. That’s when I can create something that moves people. And at the end of the day, that’s what marketing really is. It’s not about chasing relevance. It’s about creating a feeling strong enough to make someone act, to click, to buy, to sign up, to care.

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Maybe boredom isn’t a creative gap. Maybe it’s a form of alignment. The moment when you stop chasing what everyone else is doing long enough to remember what you think, feel, and want to say. The moment you reconnect with your own voice, the one no algorithm can replicate.

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Maybe I’m not falling behind. Maybe I’m just thinking. Or maybe, I’m just finally giving myself permission to be still, and realizing that might be where the real work begins.

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My advice? Don’t always follow what everyone else is doing. Leave room for stillness, for thought, for the kind of quiet that reminds you who you are before the noise tells you who to be.

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