Originally posted here on the same date in 2020.

Hey friends and followers. It’s been a long time. Techipedia has been an evolution to encompass my love of blogging and social media, none of which waned. Over the past several years, however, I started hustling on the backend and working on storytelling and support for other brands. I wasn’t present here because the focus was on the initiatives I have put full throttle. I have no regrets.

But there’s a darker side to that, and something I haven’t been particularly open or comfortable sharing until fairly recently.

Much of the reason why my voice has been silenced over the past decade has been because of both a confidence issue rooted in a deeper issue: I was suffering from depression.

For almost a decade, I suffered. Because of that depression, I felt that I couldn’t speak because I was scared as hell about what other people would think of me. I said what I knew people would like but that was that. I was quiet. This blog was mostly an exercise in knowing that I’d get the ultimate approval with my opinions that are pretty common sense (or informative).

In 2018, I hit rock bottom. This low point in my life can only be described as waking up, going through the motions, and going to bed, not caring about anyone, anything, and barely being invested in living.

I don’t want to talk about that so much here. But I can say that I was taking medicine all day, every day, and seeing a psychiatrist twice a week.

And I did that for years.

Then something changed.

One day several months into my rock bottom, I found a tiny vial of perfume. It was something I had worn before (including during my depression, though not at the rock bottom) and it was something I enjoyed.

When you’re depressed, you don’t care about how people look at you. You don’t dress like you are worried about their opinions of you. You certainly don’t care how you smell either.

And that was a mindset shift. An adjustment. Because unlike the market speaks to, I wasn’t putting on perfume to be sexy. I didn’t care at all about that. I was putting on perfume out of a curiosity, not knowing what I was doing or why.

But it changed me. It literally transformed me.

My experience with perfume that day awakened me. Perhaps it was because we are a human species and need to take advantage of and truly appreciate all five of our sense, not just four of them. But we don’t. We take olfaction for granted. Especially now in COVID-19 times (which I had, by the way, having lost my sense of smell in March, testing positive, and donating plasma 5 times since), I’ve found how incredibly important it is to SMELL THE ROSES and appreciate this incredible gift we have.

Introducing TAMAR.

I was deeply enchanted by the experience I had. It wasn’t an overnight success for me; I still required a lot of time to climb out of my hole of despair and feel better. But I decided to start showing up. I took advantage of fitness, daily reading, journaling, and many more things that I believe make me a much better and happier person. I wouldn’t have wanted to be friends with my previous self; now, I am happy with who she’s turned into. I decided that my experience and my embodiment of self care requires a closer look, and I started that by launching a unisex personal fragrance brand for people who deserve to love themselves (that’s pretty much everyone, by the way). TAMAR has officially soft launched earlier this year and has begun as a crowdfunding campaign. Your support in any sort of purchase or monetary contribution would be amazing.

Please share with friends, the media, anyone you know who may be well connected to help get this the attention we deserve. I launched in a very precarious time, but I realized right now is the perfect time to launch because we don’t take time for self care as we should. We hate the way we feel at home. We don’t get beautiful. We don’t show up for ourselves. But we need to. We owe it to ourselves. And if a little spritz of perfume on our wrists—which I urge you to sniff throughout the day (it will last; this isn’t your mom’s homegrown essential oils)—can ground us and make us feel alive again, especially now where we aren’t really showing up for much else, then I need to do this. I must.

I wrote a book about social media marketing in 2008 which was published in 2009. I am an early adopter. And I know I’m onto something here. I hope you’ll support me and join me in this incredible journey.

And I promise you: it smells amazing.