I’m forcing myself to sit down tonight, as a way of singing happy birthday and blowing out a candle of sorts, I guess. Because believe it or not, we’ve been here, sharing moments on these pages for a whole 5 years now…
If anything, this space has been and forever will be the place where I documented growing up without even realizing it. It’s currently dipping into the late hours on January 8th. I’m sitting outside on my balcony in shorts in my Nashville apartment with a cup of peppermint tea steeping next to me. There’s a breeze that’s naturally drying my recently showered hair and the world is pretty quiet.
Contrarily, 5 years ago I was uncomfortably sitting in my electric recliner in my childhood home where I was still living with my parents at the time. My first ever semester of college had finished, but given I had scoliosis surgery not even 2 months before… I was still finishing up some of my classes that I so painfully had to take temporary incompletes in- for my first time ever. High school Ranait was panicking and pulling her hair out, but oddly the freshman in college found a way to give grace to the shell of a human I had become.
Growth…
I guess that’s where this whole story begins.
This space was born out of an interest in a topic and a motivation to leave the world a little better of a place than I found it. Most of you at this point know the story, and if you don’t-
Welcome!
What you now see as The Environista at the top of this page, used to read a little differently. It’s Raining Fashion danced across the screen in a perfectly elegant cursive, accompanied by a roughly sketched girl in a bubble skirt dress holding an umbrella that I drew late one night while dreaming up the idea of this space.
It was everything, well… fashion! Trends, style advice, the most recent makeup must-trys, and so on.
As I finished out the rest of my freshman year, I felt like something was missing. I didn’t just care to talk about strictly trends or shopping. Although this probably sounds silly coming from a fashion student, I was becoming uninterested in those things… It felt, in ways, unimportant compared to everything I had just learned.
If I was entering this industry, I wanted to do more. Problem solving has always been a part of who I am and in those later months of spring, it was go time.
I had stopped posting on here for a bit and realized I had ideas, but they didn’t feel like they totally fit in the “It’s Raining Fashion” umbrella (no pun intended)…! I began questioning why I felt so restricted from something that I, myself, had created. It was mine to create, so why couldn’t it be mine to change…?
A rebrand came a month later and the umbrella girl was gone and replaced with what you are now looking at.
The world of sustainability was officially cracked open. Posts starting revolving around cleaner living, minimalism, thrifting, you name it! I started learning more about plastics and water and how they collided with the industry I was still so intensely studying. Not long after my arrival on campus in the fall of 2021, Weekly Outfit Recaps and Sustainable Fashion Fridays flooded these pages.
As time went on, I started sharing life experiences here and there, but still mostly stuck to purely educational bits- new sustainable brands and natural skincare.
The summer of 2023, things took a turn… literally.
I packed up my things in Ohio and headed to Philadelphia where my world simply expanded to say the absolute least. Posts stopped being so stiff and I began finding a freeness in the way my fingers ran across these keys. Fashion posts expanded to thoughts and observations about the stars. Poetry even found me a bit here and there…
That summer I learned how to turn my words into a paintbrush for the mind. I began putting emotion behind these words and discovering my voice. And the best part…?
I was finding joy in it too.
For a while, I had forced myself to sit down and write about some new cool brand I had just discovered, or how to properly dispose of your clothes (and no that’s not in the trash can..!). It was all well and good at the start, but things began to feel like assignments I was giving myself- and again, I was back in a place of having to remind myself- hellooo… this can be whatever I wanted it to be.
More growth.
Following a magical summer in Philly, I spent an even more inspired fall in Manhattan. These pages simply became a place for two things- questioning my purpose, as I had just moved to an enormous city and had never felt so small… and also for mere documentation of the life I knew I would look back on and miss one day.
My fingers became even freer.
After packing up shop there after a few irreplaceable months, I ventured onto the greatest chapter of my journey yet, and that is where The Environista gets its biggest shift of all.
I took the opportunity to spend a good 5.5 months living on the other side of the world in a place that the thought of now makes me wince- a heartache I truly will never get over. In fact, two years ago today I was enroute to the journey that has shaped both me and this blog space of sorts the greatest.
As much as some posts still revolved around the industry I was finally finishing my degree in, these pages became something different- something more.
No longer was I just sharing facts or new knowledge I read in a textbook…
This time you and I share(d) here, became more about life itself. Sometimes fashion or sustainability was involved, but honestly most times… it wasn’t. It became about the enjoyment of the small things and documenting a world I never knew existed. As I look back and read the anecdotes that were poured out from that time of my life, I see that then, more than ever, I was finding my voice. My fire.
My purpose.
And now we are here…
In a space where expectations have finally been let go and guidelines are nonexistent. The Environista is simply about living, sharing, and learning.
In a way it’s always been that, I guess… but it’s more comfortable now. I’m more comfortable now. I started this five years ago with my mind focussed on resume and portfolio building, and I’m now here, five years later, in a place where I turn to blank pages to find inner peace and outer connection. It’s no longer an assignment to be here, but instead now part of my purpose.
I don’t know what’s entirely next for The Environista… but I’m still here and so it’s here where I shall stay-
Ever evolving, always learning, memory sharing, and so on.
So, here’s to 5 years- and for the decades to come!
