I forgot how to live

how I built a "six-figure business" from my phone and lost myself in the process

I’ve had another cosmic slap today, and obviously I sit and write about it.

I recently told the fuller behind-the-scenes story of how OnlyFans changed my life over on the paid side of this Substack and while writing that story, I realized I’d lost myself completely by identifying “who I was” with my online presence and survival.

And truth hurts.

Before 2019 I had no online presence whatsoever and no wish to have one. In fact, I was reluctant. Why would I expose myself? What for?

I had no reason to, so my life was peacefully quiet on that front. I had a 9-5 job (that I actually mostly enjoyed) and, although I went through a separation in 2017 that was quite unexpected, I generally knew how to live without a screen in front of my eyes.

I just wasn’t online at all.

The separation and the need to survive changed that, and that year 2019, I showed up online.

This was exclusively professional though, since I had no ‘personal’ social media accounts, from minute one I created an alter ego (it’s not like I did everything wrong, thank God!).

But I made a lot of mistakes (well, lessons?) and, looking back now, I wish I’d had some conscious guidance, but I didn’t. The only ‘guidance’ I found was copying other women doing the same business and, mostly, learning from the fuck-ups.

It was really fun at the beginning because it was new and exciting. I was building something online and making money and literally, breaking a generational pattern in my family by being the first person who could make money while asleep.

Like…

All my ancestors worked their asses off to barely survive, and here I was, smiling on the internet, posting titty selfies behind a paywall and making money!

Honestly, tell me this in the year 2000 and I would have collapsed.

The First Hit

It was April 2021, and I had two Instagram accounts on fire. I was gaining 1000+ followers a day organically by smiling in tight dresses and heels.

In case you’re not an expert in online marketing: if you “sell something” on the internet, you want reach because it brings → clicks → sales.

In other words, the more people click your shit, the more money you make. So my earnings were on fire at the beginning of 2021.

As a side note: Only now, when I am literally seeing the dark side of the online marketing, I realize that job is the most honest job you’ll ever encounter online.

Here’s how it works:

I showed up online dressed in clothes I only bought for that purpose.

I posted this type of pictures daily

Kind of: “Hey, look at me, ain’t I pretty? Do you wanna see more of me and enter the fantasy?”

All this wasn’t said of course, just implied.

So I had a link in my Bio that led to that spicy page people hate and believe is the cause of everything bad going on in the world 🙄

That’s it.

Where do you see manipulation or shady techniques there?

Nowhere, because there aren’t.

I show my product (myself), smile and wink and you (whoever you are) see my post and CHOOSE freely to click my link and, choose, freely again to pay for access or not.

Genuine as fuck.

Anyways, it’s funny, isn’t it?

And then it happened.

I woke up and my main account, with 350K followers, was gone, and for some reason I’ve forgotten, I couldn’t even appeal the decision. I was devastated.

But there’s more.

A week later, my other account, with 250K followers, was gone too.

The fact that I was in therapy for my nihilism and pointlessness (yes, regardless of smiling and winking online) did not help, and I think that was the beginning of “forgetting how to live.”

I cried a lot. I grieved. And after a while, I came back. I created new accounts and started from scratch, but this time there was a new fear that wasn’t there before, and a new awareness: “This can be gone in one second.”

Isn’t that the same thing we can say about us? One second you’re here, the next your heart stops and you’re not.

Impermanence. That hit me. But instead of integrating that concept from then on, I unconsciously chose fear and let it take over.

Note that word: unconsciously.

What Happened Next?

I rebuilt, and I was good at it but I (Eva) was slowly being consumed by the identity I had created around that “woman with an online business”.

That woman who was not online at all, and now existed ONLY online.

Wait, that sounds too dramatic, I know, and it’s not 100% true - it’s symbolically true.

Of course I was functioning in my real life. I was sleeping, shopping, going about what a person does on this planet, but with one huge difference: now I had two obsessions.

One was keeping my business alive, with the added fear of “tomorrow it may be gone” and the lingering “what’s the point in life anyway” - because the so-called depression hadn’t magically gone away.

The other was a new obsession: I gotta do something else.

Onlyfans had changed my life at that point, but something in me wasn’t willing to settle for that. I knew it was a phase, not the destination. It was a bridge, and I was on it, but I couldn’t see what was on the other side.

Imagine walking a long bridge and not seeing where it takes you.

That was me.

I’d left the office job around 2022 by the way (long story).

And in the meantime, I tried 1,256,898 different things (publishing low-content books on KDP 🙄, blogging, Shopify, Youtube, Pinterest) and I did 2,526,547 workshops and courses.

I mean, I had time, money and agency. What could go wrong?!

Well, everything went wrong.

I literally wasted time, money and agency on the wrong things and the wrong people for two long years (story for another day).

Then 2025 came about, and after that couple of years of disenchantment with what I was doing to make a living (I wasn’t making a lot now, just enough to survive), having tried so much stuff (all online!) nothing had worked out.

So I had a burst of energy and decided to take mentoring from a woman in the online adult space, and take my page back to its old income levels.

The “fuck it, maybe I’m meant to just make money with my body!” spirit took over.

By this point I’d spent years focused on my life online, and at real-life level, I was barely getting by. I moved houses and still had boxes a year later, for example. It felt like real life wasn’t important at all - my obsession was figuring out my business.

Total madness.

The Burnout

I won’t mention her name, but that was the best mentoring call I’ve ever taken in my entire life. The best investment ever. I paid $300 for an hour, and the following month (March 2025) I quadrupled my income. I mean… chapeau!

Now the ugliness.

Remember I said I lost myself? I really peaked here. The cost of implementing that mentoring advice was too high. I became a content machine. I was making good money again, but I was feeling stressed, miserable and unfulfilled.

I know this may sound a bit cryptic for most people, I apologize. If you’re in the adult space, you’ll fully understand what I mean. If you’re not, you might not even know what I’m talking about.

In simple words: I got captured by what I call the “more, more, more.”

More content, more clicks, more subs, more productivity, more visibility, more quality, more variety, more accounts, more reels, more trials, more link providers, more tests, more ideas, more statistics, more metrics, more reach… it was as exhausting as it sounds just reading it.

And I badly burned out by the end of 2025.

The funny thing is, part of the work I was doing was really fulfilling (writing on this Substack, my book (s), making my Youtube videos, my Astrology…) that was the clue to what I had to do next, only… that wasn’t (and isn’t) generating any money.

But I knew this: That fulfilling part was the bliss and joy we all need to (try and) follow, and I was in that bliss when sharing my writing, my ideas, my philosophy, all the personal development stuff I’d been learning as a result of hitting rock bottom these past years.

So I was fragmented, between an online persona and business, which I was grateful for but had totally outgrown, and the new emerging version of me - after years of inner work - aligned with who I really am.

Back to Life

And I’m still in the in-between but with more clarity ahead. I can see the other side of the bridge now. It’s called “Conscious Desire” and it represents everything I stand for and live by.

I’m training as a coach with an amazing platform that’s changing the world, and I’m now taking all this lived experience around online presence, long-dead relationships, and the beautiful, uncomfortable process of getting to know who the fuck you are and what you truly desire.

Because desire is the principle of life.

No desire, no life.

As Spinoza said a gazillion years ago (1677, in his Ethics), desire IS the essence of who we are, and not an enemy of your soul or something to meditate away. It is the very thing keeping us alive and giving us meaning.

I believe we are in a crisis of meaning. I lost myself online, but most people are equally lost somewhere, somehow chasing “wants” like headless chickens without ever stopping to ask: What do I actually want? Am I brave enough to look at the Truth?

That’s Conscious Desire. You don’t suppress what you want, or perform what you should want - you actually stay awake to feel it, and follow it.

I hope to find you there, on the other side of the bridge ;)

Love,

Eva :)