Bring Back Originality

You were original before originality was a trend

Writing and I have always been locked in. Then I added graphic design to the arsenal, making a career out of it until my identity wrapped around it. For nearly ten years, God quietly showed me I am more than a designer. Design is a tool in my toolbelt. In those ten years, I started, stopped, launched, pivoted, admired from a distance, and tweaked what I built to match the cadence of what I saw working for others.

Every time, I was met with disappointment.

It’s not because the work was bad. It’s because it wasn’t mine. There was no intimate connection with it. It felt like a chore instead of an extension of myself. I burned out fast because you can’t maintain what isn’t ingrained.

And here came the grief.

It’s sobering to recognize the wasted moments or the years spent watering someone else’s garden while mine sat waiting. Grief gently led me to the realization that I’ve always had it. I’ve been that girl, and time demanded maturity to surface. When I didn’t get what I wanted on my timeline, God used the waiting to build a patient endurance that helps shape this letter—from me, to me, left open for you.

Bring originality back!

Look around. What we’re seeing online is starting to look the same.

Same fonts.

Same colors.

Same AI-generated content recycled through different faces.

A lot of women building with good intentions, creating duplicates of each other and burning out when it doesn’t work. That’s because the secret sauce was never transferable. What works for her works because it’s her.

The details.

The story.

The specific way she sees the world is what people are connecting to. Remove that, and you have a hollow template.

Culture has a way of making borrowed things feel personal. Yet, there is a difference between being inspired and becoming consumed.

Underneath the borrowing is a belief system that who you are isn’t enough. In the moment, it doesn’t feel like that. It masks itself as aspiration.

Or possibility.

Someone has cracked the code, and the ideas start flowing, making us think we can do something like that too. We could, but does it flow from our secret sauce or a subconscious coveting?

You’re seeing the results, but you aren’t privy to the hours, pivots, or undocumented quiet seasons of building.

What if they, too, borrowed their breakthrough? To build from someone else’s blueprint delays the discovery of your own.

Remember, you can’t maintain what isn’t ingrained.

Just like you can’t build without sitting in the silence of your discomfort. And discomfort doesn’t always feel dramatic. It can be a season of doing nothing, i.e., allowing the mundane to become your best friend:

Tending to your family.

Showing up to a 9-to-5.

Stepping back from launches, content, or the business you build, as the world keeps moving. Everything in you wants to produce something just to “prove” you aren’t falling behind, not realizing the stillness is where clarity lives.

When I stopped, I returned to my first love—writing. She was always that girl. Design was the enhancement, and I spent years building the enhancement into the main event, wondering why it felt heavy.

Stillness demands questions to be answered.

Do you like yourself?

Are you okay with yourself?

Can you find peace with what makes you uniquely you without tearing yourself apart?

And don’t rush past this part. The answers are the beginning of your way back.

You have to know that God is intentional about you down to the details. Think about it. No two fingerprints are the same. He placed details in you that are worth uncovering—not borrowing or replicating.

Contentment and complacency can look identical from the outside and inside, too.

Contentment isn’t passive. It’s not shrinking or settling or pretending you don’t want more. It’s an inner peace that says I am enough while I am becoming. It’s a pliable, teachable heart that holds what it has with an open hand while remaining open to the next step.

Whereas complacency is the counterfeit.

And I know because I, too, have worn it. It looks like rest, but quenches wonder. It silences the nudges and keeps you comfortable in a version of yourself you weren’t meant to stay in. Often inviting in comparison. And if you’re not careful, complacency will partner with pride to convince you to be anything less than original. It produces a stillness that slowly hardens into stuck.

Instead, bet on yourself. What’s inside of you was placed there on purpose. Remain honest with yourself about what sets you on fire, what you’ve been borrowing, or what you’ve been avoiding. Allow silence to become your friend. Sit in it. Let it guide your next step as you turn away from what others are building to build your own. Then release your timeline. God’s timing is best. Nothing we can do can speed up the process. Impatience can add unnecessary chapters. Chapters God can redeem. But still unnecessary.

Remember, you were original before originality was a trend.

God made you on purpose down to every detail, with a specific voice and a specific assignment that no font, color palette, or AI-generated content can replicate.

Please bring her back—the original.

She’s been waiting,
Janae Carlee