Jaded Treasures

 Jessica’s world was a tapestry woven with two threads: ambition and autopilot.

By day, she was a budding entrepreneur, her laptop glowing with business plans and product mock-ups for her home-based artisan jewelry brand. “Jaded Treasures” was her dream, a name she chose to signify beauty forged under pressure. She spoke of SEO, target markets, and brand identity with a fierce, intelligent light in her eyes.

But by night, she was someone else entirely.

It began subtly. A quick check of her phone after dinner to “unwind.” That check would dissolve into an hour, then two, then three. Scrolling through a river of polished lives on social media, her thumb moving with a hypnotic rhythm. Endless group chats with her school friends, dissecting old memories and new dramas, the ping of notifications a siren song pulling her away from her own narrative.

She stopped choosing her evenings. Autopilot took over. The phone was no longer a tool; it was a destination. The late nights, once a choice for productivity, were now a surrender to a digital vortex. The gate to her power was left wide open.

The consequences were not dramatic, but they were corrosive. The 8 a.m. hustle she’d scheduled for herself was repeatedly sabotaged by the fog of a 2 a.m. scroll. A crucial order for silver wire was forgotten because a chat about a friend’s ex-boyfriend had seemed more urgent in the moment. Her creative spark, which should have been fueling new designs, was spent on crafting witty comments and passive-aggressive reactions.

She was no longer the driver of “Jaded Treasures.” She was a passenger, and the vehicle was being steered by the ghost of her distracted habits. She started to tell herself the lie: "I'm just not a morning person. I'm disorganized. This is just who I am."

The turning point came on the day of a small, local craft fair that provided her first real shot at exposure. She had planned to spend the morning meticulously organizing her display and polishing her best pieces. Instead, she woke up exhausted, her eyes gritty from the blue light of another lost night. On autopilot, she reached for her phone, tumbling back into a chat argument that had erupted hours before.

Suddenly, it was noon. The fair started in two hours. Panic seized her. She rushed, throwing her jewelry into a case, forgetting price tags, her hands shaking with a caffeine-and-anxiety cocktail. As she fumbled with a tangled necklace, her gaze fell on the reflection in her dark laptop screen. She saw a tired woman, hunched over, enslaved to a tiny, glowing rectangle.

The BE app article echoed in her mind, unbidden: “You open the gate to lose your power.”

The truth hit her with the force of a physical blow. She wasn't failing because she wasn't capable. She was failing because she had surrendered. She had mistaken her habits for her identity. The person scrolling wasn't her; it was a version of her she had stopped choosing.

That evening, after a mediocre fair where her disorganization showed, Jessica made a choice. Not a grand, life-altering vow, but a simple, conscious one. As her hand reached for her phone at 10 p.m., she paused. She felt the impulse, the magnetic pull, but for the first time, she witnessed it.

Am I choosing this, or is this choosing me?

Her hand hovered. Then, with a deliberate motion, she placed the phone on her dresser, across the room. She plugged it in to charge, and she did not take it to her bed. The silence was deafening, but in that silence, she heard something she had almost forgotten: the quiet, steady voice of her own ambition.

It was just one night. But it was a start. Jessica was beginning the slow, deliberate work of closing the gate. She was remembering that she was not her habits. She was the person who chooses them. And her true success was waiting, not to be scrolled past, but to be consciously, powerfully chosen.