The Next Chapter

Goodbye influencing ✌🏾

The brightest smiles hide the heaviest truths.

It’s shortly after 8:00 p.m. I’m in bed with a mild fever, thinking about the many lives I’ve lived online and how each one has shaped me. The fan hums overhead, my phone buzzes on the nightstand, and for the first time today, I’m still enough to listen to my own thoughts.

For years, my work lived at the intersection of food, lifestyle, and storytelling. Many of you first found me through a recipe, a product review, or a perfectly lit kitchen shot. And in those early days, it was pure joy. Borderline ecstasy if I’m being blunt. I loved experimenting with flavors, styling dishes, connecting with brands, and seeing how something I made in my kitchen could ripple out into homes across the country.

But over time, that joy shifted. Slowly, almost without noticing, I began to feel like a cog in a much larger machine. Algorithms told me what would perform best. Campaign briefs narrowed the edges of my creativity. I was selling products I barely used, tweaking captions to chase metrics, and shaping my days around content calendars that didn’t always feel like mine.

What once felt expansive started to feel confining.

And yet, I don’t regret it. Those years taught me so much: how to tell a story through images, how to build community online, how to adapt quickly in an ever-changing landscape. They gave me a career I never could have imagined, one that supported me, challenged me, and introduced me to incredible people along the way. For a time, influencing was deeply fulfilling.

But influence without intention eventually runs dry.

That’s why I’m here, writing this. This Substack is the beginning of something new. A home not for algorithms or campaigns, but for stories. For explorations of identity, transformation, and what it means to be human. It’s still me—still Kasim, still curious and creative—but with more depth, more intimacy, more honesty.

Some of you may already know that I’ve been working on The UNBecoming, a six-part micro-film series. In many ways, it’s my first step in this new direction. The series is about unraveling, shedding, and returning. It’s personal, cinematic, and unlike anything I’ve shared before. I’ll be writing more about it here soon, but also about the bigger journey I’m on: one where the work isn’t about being seen but about actually seeing, listening, and connecting.

I no longer want to just create content. I want to create work that heals, stirs, and connects. Work that is human-centered, where the measure isn’t likes or shares but resonance. Where I can take you behind the curtain of my films, essays, and projects, and invite you into the process of unbecoming and becoming alongside me.

If you’ve been with me since the food days, thank you. Truly. That chapter will always be part of who I am, and food will always find its way back into my work, it’s too close to my heart not to. But this is about more than recipes. It’s about the stories that live inside all of us. The parts we perform, the parts we hide, the shedding, the loss, the return.

And if this new direction doesn’t resonate, I understand. My hope is that you’ll stay, but if you choose to disembark, know that I’m grateful for the chapters we’ve shared together.

For those who continue with me, welcome to the threshold. On one side, the curated influencer life I once built. On the other, the raw and uncurated stories I’m stepping into now.

I hope you’ll cross with me,