The Year I Let Things End
What I had to let go of to make room for 2026
As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve been thinking a lot about space.
Not in an abstract or aspirational way, but in a very real, practical sense. This year didn’t just change my mindset; it changed the shape of my life. What I own, where I live, how I identify myself, & what I believe I’m building towards all look very different than they did a year ago.
A big part of that shift came from letting go of things that once felt foundational.
I gave up my apartment, the one I lived in for almost seven years. It was a beautifully restored, mid-sized two-bedroom in the heart of Kansas City, with pristine wooden floors, an all-brick façade, & the kind of character you only get from a building constructed in the early 1900’s. It had beautiful natural light, the kind that made the space feel warm & lived-in without trying too hard.
For a long time, it functioned as much more than a home.
The smaller bedroom became my content “studio,” a tight but familiar space where I tested recipes, filmed reels, & even hosted live cooking broadcasts with brands like ALDI. The room always smelled faintly like whatever I had cooked most recently.
I was the last original tenant from when the building was first rehabbed, & staying there had become its own kind of comfort. Familiar floors under my feet. Familiar creaks in the hallway. Familiar proof that something I built had lasted. That space held so many versions of me: early ambition, burnout, growth, stagnation, reinvention.
Leaving wasn’t just about moving out; it was about acknowledging that I had outgrown a chapter I kept trying to make fit.
Looking back, I held onto that apartment with a clenched fist. I really didn’t want to let it go, even though I knew long before I admitted it to myself that it no longer served me. There’s a strange safety in staying somewhere you’ve already survived, even when you know it’s quietly keeping you stuck.
Around the same time, I began stepping away from my life as an influencer. Not abruptly & not angrily, but intentionally. For years, that role shaped how I moved through the world. What I noticed. What I felt pressure to optimize. Meals weren’t just meals; they were potential content. Groceries came with an internal calculation of what might perform well. Even moments of rest sometimes felt like something I should be capturing.
With that role came a lot of physical things.
Equipment, tools, products that once felt necessary & validating. I had boxes of gifted crockpots, literally a dozen of them, each tied to a different campaign or partnership.
I had brand-new cookware sets I hadn’t even opened yet, still taped shut, waiting for a moment that never quite arrived. There were lights, stands, backdrops, gadgets I bought because they were supposed to make things easier, better, more professional.
At one point, owning all of it felt like success. Or at least proof that I was doing something right.
Letting those things go forced me to confront something uncomfortable. How much of my identity had quietly fused with what I could produce. I wasn’t just clearing out closets; I was dismantling a system I had built to keep myself relevant & externally affirmed. It’s strange to realize how quickly tools can turn into expectations, & how easily momentum can disguise itself as fulfillment.
I expected giving those things up to feel dramatic. I thought there would be panic or regret, maybe even a moment where I’d dig through a box & change my mind. Instead, it was mostly practical & occasionally a little absurd.
At a certain point, I had to laugh at myself.
No one needs that many crockpots. And if I’m being honest, the idea that they were somehow essential to my future started to feel more like a story I’d been telling myself than a truth I still believed.
Only later did I realize the irony of it all. 2025 is the Year of the Snake in the Chinese zodiac, a year associated with shedding, renewal, & reset. I’m not someone who organizes my life around zodiac cycles, but the symbolism felt hard to ignore. So much of this year asked me to molt. To loosen my grip. To leave behind skins that once protected me but no longer fit.
Whether I believed in it or not, the timing felt strangely accurate. Downright eerie, at times. I produced my first short film this year, & one chapter of it is literally titled Shedding.
If you’re curious, I wrote more about that chapter here:
What I didn’t expect was the quiet that followed.
For a while, I felt empty. Not sad, exactly, but hollow. When so much of your life has been defined by output & momentum, the absence of those things can feel unsettling. There was a stillness I wasn’t used to, & without constant production as a distraction, I was left alone with my thoughts in a way I hadn’t been for years.
LOL, I also created a visual piece about this exact space called Void.
Let’s just say, my creative intuition was sharp this year.
The Space Between Who You Were and Who You’re Becoming
Once you have peeled back the layers and strip away the old identities, what you are left with is honestly a whole lot of nothing.
At some point in that stillness, I realized how different my life looked. No studio room. No lighting setup permanently half-assembled in the corner. No internal debate about whether a moment was “worth filming.” I didn’t suddenly become some enlightened minimalist, but I did notice how much mental space I had reclaimed. And while I can’t say I never miss the version of me who always had a perfectly timed overhead shot, I don’t miss the pressure of feeling like every good moment needed a tripod.
Looking back now, I can see that that space wasn’t a problem to fix. It was something I needed to sit inside of.
In that space, I was able to make The UNBecoming. I applied to film festivals, something I had never done before. I traveled to the Culver City Film Festival & sat in a theater watching something deeply personal projected on a screen. Shortly after, I learned the film received Best Experimental Film from the Tokyo Film Awards.
After the festival, I traveled down to San Diego to spend time with one of my best friends. I stopped in Carlsbad & walked along the beach, shoes in hand, feet sinking slightly into the cool sand.
The waves were steady but not dramatic, folding in on themselves again & again.
I stood there longer than I meant to, letting the wind cut through the noise of the past few months & replaying everything that had happened during my time in California & during the final quarter of this year.
And standing there, it all clicked.
This year taught me that loss isn’t always negative. Sometimes it’s part of a larger process of exchange. We tend to associate loss with failure or scarcity, but often it’s just a clearing. A necessary pause that allows something else to take shape.
None of what followed happened because I pushed harder. It happened because I let go. This year reframed how I think about abundance.
You can’t move into something new while clinging to everything that once sustained you. You can’t create room for what’s ahead if your life is still structured around what you’ve already outgrown. Space isn’t created by adding more; it’s created by choosing what no longer belongs.
As I look toward 2026, I’m less interested in accumulation & more focused on alignment. I’m paying attention to what feels honest, what feels sustainable, & what feels worth carrying forward.
I’m no longer afraid of letting things end if it means allowing something truer to begin.
— Kasim