Catyobi

🌿 Note from Catalina:
This blog comes from a neurodivergent mind and an immigrant heart. It’s a mix of memories, plants, recipes, travels, and reflections—no straight lines, just stories from a brain that works differently.
I write to be the voice I once needed—for anyone who’s ever felt out of place, misunderstood, or too much. You’re not alone.

A few years ago, I began to lose myself.

Not suddenly, but slowly.

Depression. Isolation. Exhaustion.

A big farm. Too much silence. Too many responsibilities. Not enough support.

I was technically married, but already alone. No money. Unfinished projects everywhere. Animals depending on me. A constant feeling that I was failing at everything.

For a long time, I hoped it was something simple — hormones, stress, exhaustion, something that could be fixed quickly. But it wasn’t. Healing took more than rest. It took therapy. It took time. It took honesty. It took learning to sit with uncomfortable truths instead of trying to push them away.

There were changes I didn’t recognize in myself: weight gain, loss of energy, loss of confidence, feeling older than I felt inside. And sometimes, the hardest part wasn’t the depression itself, but the quiet shame that came with it.

I managed to work for a while, and that helped me recover some strength. But then one day, someone told me I was too much. That I needed to focus. That I needed to be realistic. That I was getting older and should start thinking about stability, about narrowing my life.

And something in me broke open.

Because I realized that if I tried to fit into that shape, I would disappear completely.

So instead of shrinking, I did the opposite.

I started writing again.

I started telling the truth about how my brain works. About how ideas come in waves. About how I don’t move in straight lines. About how I can love many worlds at once. About how I learn deeply, then outgrow things, then move again.

And the more I wrote, the more alive I felt.

Writing brought back my curiosity. My appetite for learning. My sense of possibility. That’s when I went back to school. That’s when I discovered artificial intelligence, app development, and an entirely new way of thinking and creating.

At the same time, I had to admit something difficult: selling physical products was breaking me. For years, I watched other sellers celebrate every order while I felt dread every time one came in. That truth was painful — but it was also freeing.

I began to see a pattern in myself:

I explore deeply.

I learn intensely.

I create.

And then, when something is mastered, I need to evolve again.

Instead of seeing that as failure, I started seeing it as identity.

Catyobi Lab was born from that realization.

It is not a brand.

It is not a portfolio.

It is not a business plan.

It is a map of how my mind works.

All my worlds coexisting: the farm, the animals, the writing, the oils, the technology, the learning, the memory, the grief, the imagination, the unfinished ideas.

I don’t yet know how all of this will become income. That part still scares me. I’m still figuring it out. But I no longer feel ashamed of who I am or how I think.

I know now that I am not broken.

I am not too much.

I am many things.

And if you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit into one box, one path, one identity — maybe this space is for you too.

If you’d like to explore the space where all these worlds live, you can visit Catyobi Lab here:

Catyobi Lab