Just Julia

Just Julia
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JUST JULIA is about the stories we carry, the identities we outgrow, and the confidence it takes to become someone new. Through personal stories and conversations, I explore career, motherhood, identity, reinvention and the complicated middle chapters of a woman’s life. I don’t have life figured out. I’m simply collecting better questions and sharing what I discover along the way. juliakallas.substack.com

  1. 11h ago

    I’m Still Angry. I’m Also Excited.

    I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time lately trying to figure out how subtitles should appear on a screen. Which font looks right? How long should the words stay there? Why does cutting two seconds from a video somehow take me twenty minutes? These are things I never imagined I’d be spending my mornings thinking about. And yet, here I am. I’ve been writing, recording videos, experimenting with ideas and learning things I’d never really tried before. Some of it feels completely unfamiliar, and I’m certainly not good at all of it yet. But something unexpected has happened along the way. I’ve started waking up excited. The strange thing is, very little about my circumstances has changed. The uncertainty that was there a few months ago is still there. I’m still making practical decisions, looking for opportunities and trying to work out what comes next. There are mornings when I’m frustrated about what happened. When I replay conversations, think about people who disappointed me, or worry about how things will turn out. And then there are mornings when I wake up thinking about something I want to create, and I can’t wait to get started. Sometimes both happen on the same morning. I’d forgotten what it was like to be so interested in something that I wanted to keep learning about it, even without knowing what it might become. I think many of us lose touch with that feeling somewhere along the way. You might recognise it. Perhaps there’s something you’ve been quietly interested in for a while. A course you’d love to take. An idea you’ve been carrying around. Something creative you’ve wanted to try, or a different direction you’ve found yourself thinking about. For a moment, you feel excited by the possibility. Then the sensible part of your brain gets involved. Is this practical? Am I actually any good at it? Where is this going? Can I afford to spend time on something that may never lead anywhere? And, of course, what will people think? I know those questions well. There’s a certain comfort in being the responsible one. The woman who thinks things through, considers the consequences and knows how to explain her decisions. We become very good at evaluating opportunities before allowing ourselves to enjoy them. And I wonder how much curiosity we quietly talk ourselves out of simply because we can’t justify it. Recently, I heard someone say that every morning we choose where our attention goes: towards our point of pain or towards our point of power. I liked the idea. It made me think about how easily we can become absorbed in what has gone wrong, especially when there’s nothing more we can do to change it. But my mornings don’t work quite like that. Most days, I wake up with a little of both. I can still be angry about what happened and excited about something I want to do. I can worry about the future while looking forward to tomorrow. I can wish things had turned out differently without wanting to spend every day wishing I could go back. For a long time, I assumed that feeling better would come after finding answers. Once the situation improved, once I knew what came next, once I could look back and make sense of it all. But lately, I’ve been noticing something I hadn’t expected. My interest in the future has returned before the uncertainty about it has disappeared. And perhaps this matters because so many of us are accustomed to waiting. Waiting until we’re more confident. Until we have enough time. Until the children are older, the finances feel safer, the relationship becomes clearer, or work is less demanding. Waiting until we can explain why something is worth doing. There’s nothing wrong with being sensible. Some decisions require patience and careful consideration, especially when other people depend on us. But I don’t want to reach a point where every new interest has to prove its value before I allow myself to explore it. Some things might become meaningful projects. Others might simply teach us something about ourselves. And a few might turn out to be things we enjoy for a while before moving on. Surely there’s room for those experiences too. I don’t know what will come of the things I’m working on at the moment. I’m still learning, changing my mind, making mistakes and figuring things out as I go. And I still have plenty of practical problems to solve. But I no longer want to treat the excitement I feel about creating as something I should put aside until everything else is sorted. If there’s something you’ve been wanting to explore, even quietly, I hope you’ll give yourself the chance to become a little more interested in it. You can begin with whatever space you have, alongside everything else you’re managing. The difficult parts are still there. They’re just no longer the only things I wake up thinking about. Just Julia This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com

  2. 3d ago

    Bending Time

    A strange thing has been happening to me lately. I keep losing afternoons. I sit down in the morning intending to write something. One idea leads to another, so I start researching. Then I find myself opening another document because a sentence has suddenly taken me somewhere else, changing something I created the day before, or following an idea just to see where it goes. Eventually I look at the clock. Three o’clock. And for a few seconds I genuinely cannot understand how that happened. This may sound completely ordinary to someone who has always loved what she does. To me, it is not. I have always worked hard. I have had demanding roles, travelled for work, managed relationships across different countries, sat through long meetings, solved problems and carried the responsibility that comes with being good at your job. I cared about my work, took pride in doing it well and was deeply committed to the people and projects I was responsible for. But work still had a clear beginning and an end. When the day was finished, I closed the computer. I moved into the part of my life that belonged to family, friends, films, books, dinners, conversations and everything else I enjoyed. I never thought there was anything wrong with that. I assumed that was simply what a healthy relationship with work looked like. Lately, that boundary has become strangely blurred. During this period of professional change, I started creating things that belonged to me: Just Julia, the podcast, ideas that might one day turn into something bigger. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, time started behaving differently. The other evening my husband put on a film. I sat beside him on the sofa because I wanted us to be together, but after a while I opened my computer again. Nobody was waiting for anything from me. There was no deadline, no manager, no email that needed an answer. I simply had another idea I wanted to explore. I’m not sure that was entirely a good thing. But it told me something. In the past, when the workday ended, I was ready for it to end. Now I sometimes have to remind myself that there are other things — and other people — deserving of my attention too. That difference has made me curious. For years, I heard successful people say some version of the same thing: when you love what you do, you lose track of time. I understood the sentence intellectually, but I’m not sure I had ever experienced it. Now I am beginning to understand the difference between being disciplined enough to work hard and being naturally pulled towards the work. I knew the first feeling very well. The second is new. And it has made me wonder how many women build entire careers around something they are extremely good at without ever asking whether being good at it and feeling alive while doing it are necessarily the same thing. We become competent, reliable and efficient. We accumulate experience, titles and responsibilities. Eventually other people know us for what we know how to do, and that competence becomes part of how we know ourselves too. There is nothing wrong with that. There is enormous value in becoming excellent at something. But perhaps capability is not the only information worth paying attention to. Maybe time is information too. What makes an afternoon disappear for you? And what do you find yourself returning to when nobody is asking you to? I don’t think the answer automatically needs to become a career. We have become very good at turning every pleasure into a potential business, every hobby into a side hustle and every spark of creativity into something that immediately needs to produce an income. I don’t want to do that to myself either. I don’t yet know what all of this means professionally. Perhaps writing will become an important part of my work. Perhaps one of the ideas I am experimenting with will grow into something bigger. Perhaps these months are simply teaching me things I will carry somewhere else. But I am paying attention. Because when you have spent years asking yourself what you are qualified to do, what the sensible next move is, what belongs on your CV and what someone might hire you for, perhaps there is another question worth adding: When do I stop noticing time? Maybe that question doesn’t give us a career plan. But perhaps it gives us a clue. For the first time in my professional life, I am discovering work that changes the way I experience the hours. I don’t know exactly what I am going to do with that information yet. But I know I want to build a life with more of it. Just Julia This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com

  3. 4d ago

    What If You’ve Outgrown the Life You Built?

    What do you do when the life you knew no longer fits, but the next one hasn’t introduced itself yet? When I look back at my life, I can see so many versions of myself: the girl in Brazil, the exchange student in New Zealand, the student, the intern in New York, the professional, the wife, the mother. At the time, none of those transitions felt like the beginning of something extraordinary. Most of them felt uncertain, uncomfortable, and sometimes completely unclear. Only looking backwards can I see how one conversation, one application, one suitcase or one plane ticket quietly changed everything. This episode is for the woman who feels caught in the middle, between who she has been and whoever she might become next. The woman who wants a map, an answer, some proof that she is moving in the right direction. Maybe you don’t need to know exactly where you’re going. Maybe you only need enough courage for the next step. Prefer to read? You can find the original essay on Substack here:https://juliakallas.substack.com/p/many-lifetimes-in-one-life This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com

  4. Oct 16

    I Thought I Wanted Karma. What I Needed Was Release.

    There are moments when someone hurts us and, even if we never say it out loud, a part of us starts waiting. We wait for them to regret it, for life to show them what they lost, for something to happen that will prove that what they did was wrong. Maybe a relationship ends badly. Maybe a friendship breaks. Maybe someone overlooks you, replaces you, disappoints you, or simply continues with their life while you are still trying to understand what happened. And because you are hurting, you start watching. Not obsessively, perhaps, but enough. You notice what happens to them. You wonder whether life will eventually return the lesson. Somewhere inside you is the thought: One day they will understand. I have done this more than once. For a while, I thought what I wanted was justice. Maybe karma. Maybe an apology. Maybe simply the satisfaction of knowing that somebody eventually understood what they had done. Then, recently, I received a piece of news connected to an old part of my life. I remember looking at my phone, reading it twice, and feeling something in me go quiet. What surprised me was that I wasn’t pleased. I wasn’t celebrating. I just felt lighter. A situation I had carried as deeply personal suddenly looked different from a distance, and for the first time I thought: Maybe this was never entirely about me. That realisation released something I had not fully understood I was still carrying. It did not change what had happened, and it did not suddenly make every decision acceptable. But it changed the meaning I had attached to it. I stopped asking quite so intensely, Why me? Why wasn’t I enough? Why did they move forward while I was left trying to make sense of it? What had felt like a verdict on my worth started to look more like one part of a much bigger story. I think that is what resentment can sometimes hide. We imagine we are waiting for the other person to suffer, but underneath that desire there is often something much more vulnerable. We want proof that we mattered. We want evidence that we were not foolish for being hurt. We want someone, somewhere, to look at what happened and say: Yes. That was unfair. You deserved better. The problem is that while we wait for that verdict, the people who hurt us continue to occupy space in our lives. They may no longer be calling us, working beside us, sleeping next to us, or even thinking about us, but we are still in conversation with them in our heads. We replay what happened. We imagine what we should have said. We wonder what is happening to them now. We wait for some future event to finally close a chapter they may not even know we are still reading. I believe life has its own way of rearranging things. Sometimes I call that God. Sometimes the universe. Sometimes timing. I know other people might call it karma, consequences, or simply life unfolding. I don’t think the label matters as much as what I am beginning to understand: I do not need to supervise it. That might be the lesson I needed most. I do not need to keep checking whether the person who hurt me is finally hurting too. I do not need their regret in order to validate my pain. I do not need an apology before I am allowed to move forward, and I certainly do not need someone else’s downfall to prove my worth. Their consequences belong to them. My attention belongs to me. Maybe there is someone you are still mentally watching too. A former partner. A friend. Someone you worked with. A person who chose somebody else, underestimated you, disappointed you, or walked away without giving you the ending you wanted. Maybe part of you is still waiting for something to happen that will finally make the whole story feel fair. I am not going to tell you simply to forgive and forget. I don’t think human emotions work like that. Anger has its place. Sometimes it is how we first recognise that something mattered to us. But perhaps there comes a moment when we can begin asking a different question: How much of my attention am I still giving to someone who no longer deserves a role in my present? For me, letting go has started to mean something much smaller and more practical than suddenly feeling peaceful about everything. It can mean not checking, not replaying, not inventing future conversations in which the other person finally understands, not needing their life to validate what happened in mine. It does not mean saying, What happened was okay. It means saying: What happened will not continue owning my attention. Maybe the universe does eventually work things out. Maybe people face the consequences of what they do. Maybe one day we receive information that makes an old story look completely different. Or maybe none of that happens. But perhaps freedom begins before we know. It begins when we stop waiting for life to prove us right, and start taking back the energy we left behind with the people who hurt us. And lately, that feels much more powerful to me than revenge ever could. Just Julia This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com

  5. Oct 14

    Who Helps the Woman Who Handles Everything?

    There is a kind of woman people trust with everything.She remembers. She organises. She solves. She takes care of people. She finds a way. And eventually, “I can handle it” becomes more than something she says.It becomes part of who she is. Until life gives her a season she cannot carry entirely on her own. In this episode of Just Julia, I explore something I am only now learning myself: why asking for help can feel strangely exposing when you have spent years building an identity around being capable. Because sometimes the hardest sentence is not “I failed.” It is: I need help. This is about motherhood, career transition, starting again, building something of your own, asking for introductions, support, opportunities and the uncomfortable moment when independence starts looking a little too much like isolation. I am learning that asking and receiving are two different acts. I can choose to ask. I cannot control whether somebody says yes. And perhaps somebody else’s silence does not mean I should never have asked. If you have always been the strong one, the reliable one, the woman who says “don’t worry, I’ll handle it,” this episode is for you. Maybe strength is not learning how to need nobody. Maybe it is learning how to need people without losing yourself. Prefer to read? You can find the original essay on Substack here:https://juliakallas.substack.com/p/im-learning-how-to-ask-for-help This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com

  6. Oct 13

    How New Cultures Rewire Your Brain

    We spend so much time trying to change ourselves from the inside. We journal. We analyse our patterns. We read the books, take the courses, ask ourselves what we need to fix, heal or become. But some of the biggest transformations in my life happened in a completely different way. They happened when something outside me challenged what I had always assumed was normal. A different language can do that. A different culture can do that. So can a new relationship, a new city, a new profession, a room full of people who see the world differently from you. Suddenly, the rules you thought were universal turn out to be simply the rules you learned first. And when your definition of “normal” expands, sometimes you expand with it. In this episode, I explore a different kind of personal development, not the kind that asks us to look deeper and deeper inside ourselves, but the kind that happens when we step far enough outside what we already know. It is about culture, identity, belonging, neuroplasticity, and the strange way unfamiliar worlds can reveal parts of ourselves that familiar ones never could. And perhaps the question isn’t always: Who do I want to become? Perhaps sometimes it is: What world have I not yet allowed myself to enter? Prefer to read? You can find the original essay on Substack here:https://juliakallas.substack.com/p/i-left-home-to-see-the-world-i-didnt This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com

  7. Oct 12

    What Would I Know About You If I’d Known You for a Long Time?

    This summer, at Mindvalley University in Tallinn, I met a woman only briefly, but she asked me a question I haven’t forgotten. It was one of those encounters that lasted only a few minutes and somehow stayed with me long after the event ended. It was one of those environments where you meet an extraordinary number of people in a very short amount of time. Someone sits beside you at a talk, you introduce yourself over lunch, you start talking while waiting for the next session, and within minutes you’re exchanging WhatsApp numbers with someone who lives on the other side of the world. Most conversations started in exactly the same way. What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do? Normally, there is nothing particularly difficult about those questions. That summer, there was. I had lost my job only a couple of weeks earlier, and I still didn’t quite know how to talk about it. Every time someone asked what I did, I felt myself hesitate. Should I say what I had been doing until two weeks ago? Should I simply say I worked in fashion and leave it there? Should I explain that my position had recently been made redundant? I’m not particularly good at pretending something is true when it isn’t, so most of the time I told people what had happened. “My position was recently made redundant.” And more than once, someone would immediately try to correct me. Don’t introduce yourself like that. Tell people what you do, what you’re good at, what you’re looking for next. They meant well. And rationally, I understood what they were saying. But inside I kept thinking: I have just lost my job. I don’t know what the positive version of this story is yet. Then I met her. Instead of asking me what I did, she asked: “What would I know about you if I’d known you for a long time?” I remember stopping. It was such a simple question, but it required a completely different kind of answer. I couldn’t give her a job title. I couldn’t name a company. I couldn’t hide behind a country, a role or a polished professional introduction. I had to think about what someone who really knew me would know. I don’t even remember exactly what I answered. Perhaps I told her that I have lived abroad for most of my adult life, that multicultural environments make me feel alive, that I love being surrounded by people who grew up seeing the world differently from me. But I remember how the question made me feel. For a few seconds, not having a job didn’t matter. She had asked me who I was without asking me to explain my status. She told me she asked this question often. Whenever she met someone and exchanged numbers with them, she also took a photograph together so that later she could remember not only a name in her phone, but the person attached to it. We took ours too. I still have it. We are both laughing. And there is something about that picture that makes the whole encounter feel even more meaningful to me now, because at a time when I was struggling to understand how to introduce myself, a stranger accidentally gave me a much better question. Maybe we rely too heavily on What do you do? It’s convenient. It gives us something immediate to talk about. But it also allows an enormous part of a person to disappear behind an answer. What happens when you don’t like your job? When you’ve just lost it? When you’re a mother who has stepped away from work? When you’re between careers? When the title after your name no longer feels like you? Or simply when the most interesting thing about you has absolutely nothing to do with how you earn your living? Maybe there are better questions. What would I know about you if I had known you for years? What do the people closest to you know that your LinkedIn profile never could? What makes you light up What part of your story would someone have to know before they really understood you? I think I’m going to keep her question. Not only for those moments when I don’t know how to explain who I am. But for the next time I meet someone new. Because perhaps one of the nicest things we can do for another person is give them the opportunity to introduce themselves without asking them for their résumé first. Just Julia This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com

  8. Oct 10

    Who Actually Helped You Become Yourself?

    For years, I assumed leadership would come from above. From the manager. The director. The person with the title. The person who was supposedly responsible for seeing my potential and helping me grow. But when I look back honestly, the people who shaped me most were rarely the people with formal authority over me. They were friends, mentors, teachers, family members, and people who simply saw something in me before I knew how to see it myself. This episode is about the difference between managing someone and truly leading them. It is also about what happens when the person above you does not recognise your value and you begin to mistake their silence for evidence that you are not ready. If you have ever waited for someone in authority to tell you that you were capable enough, senior enough, ready enough, or worthy enough, this conversation is for you. Maybe real leadership is not about hierarchy at all. Maybe it is about the people who leave us clearer, stronger, more courageous, and more ourselves. And perhaps the deeper question is not only, Who is leading me? It is: Am I becoming that kind of person for someone else? Prefer to read? You can find the original essay on Substack here:https://juliakallas.substack.com/p/the-people-who-led-me-were-never This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com

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About

JUST JULIA is about the stories we carry, the identities we outgrow, and the confidence it takes to become someone new. Through personal stories and conversations, I explore career, motherhood, identity, reinvention and the complicated middle chapters of a woman’s life. I don’t have life figured out. I’m simply collecting better questions and sharing what I discover along the way. juliakallas.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Just Julia
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    40
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Julia Kallas
  • Show Website
    Just Julia