Just Julia

About Just Julia

JUST JULIA is about the stories we carry, the identities we outgrow, and the confidence it takes to become someone new. Through personal stories and conversations, I explore career, motherhood, identity, reinvention and the complicated middle chapters of a woman’s life. I don’t have life figured out. I’m simply collecting better questions and sharing what I discover along the way. juliakallas.substack.com (https://juliakallas.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Just Julia

Category

education · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Jul 2026

Latest episode

21 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

35 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Oct 2026

   Bending Time

   A strange thing has been happening to me lately. I keep losing afternoons. I sit down in the morning intending to write something. One idea leads to another, so I start researching. Then I find myself opening another document because a sentence has suddenly taken me somewhere else, changing something I created the day before, or following an idea just to see where it goes. Eventually I look at the clock. Three o’clock. And for a few seconds I genuinely cannot understand how that happened. This may sound completely ordinary to someone who has always loved what she does. To me, it is not. I have always worked hard. I have had demanding roles, travelled for work, managed relationships across different countries, sat through long meetings, solved problems and carried the responsibility that comes with being good at your job. I cared about my work, took pride in doing it well and was deeply committed to the people and projects I was responsible for. But work still had a clear beginning and an end. When the day was finished, I closed the computer. I moved into the part of my life that belonged to family, friends, films, books, dinners, conversations and everything else I enjoyed. I never thought there was anything wrong with that. I assumed that was simply what a healthy relationship with work looked like. Lately, that boundary has become strangely blurred. During this period of professional change, I started creating things that belonged to me: Just Julia, the podcast, ideas that might one day turn into something bigger. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, time started behaving differently. The other evening my husband put on a film. I sat beside him on the sofa because I wanted us to be together, but after a while I opened my computer again. Nobody was waiting for anything from me. There was no deadline, no manager, no email that needed an answer. I simply had another idea I wanted to explore. I’m not sure that was entirely a good thing. But it told me something. In the past, when the workday ended, I was ready for it to end. Now I sometimes have to remind myself that there are other things — and other people — deserving of my attention too. That difference has made me curious. For years, I heard successful people say some version of the same thing: when you love what you do, you lose track of time. I understood the sentence intellectually, but I’m not sure I had ever experienced it. Now I am beginning to understand the difference between being disciplined enough to work hard and being naturally pulled towards the work. I knew the first feeling very well. The second is new. And it has made me wonder how many women build entire careers around something they are extremely good at without ever asking whether being good at it and feeling alive while doing it are necessarily the same thing. We become competent, reliable and efficient. We accumulate experience, titles and responsibilities. Eventually other people know us for what we know how to do, and that competence becomes part of how we know ourselves too. There is nothing wrong with that. There is enormous value in becoming excellent at something. But perhaps capability is not the only information worth paying attention to. Maybe time is information too. What makes an afternoon disappear for you? And what do you find yourself returning to when nobody is asking you to? I don’t think the answer automatically needs to become a career. We have become very good at turning every pleasure into a potential business, every hobby into a side hustle and every spark of creativity into something that immediately needs to produce an income. I don’t want to do that to myself either. I don’t yet know what all of this means professionally. Perhaps writing will become an important part of my work. Perhaps one of the ideas I am experimenting with will grow into something bigger. Perhaps these months are simply teaching me things I will carry somewhere else. But I am paying attention. Because when you have spent years asking yourself what you are qualified to do, what the sensible next move is, what belongs on your CV and what someone might hire you for, perhaps there is another question worth adding: When do I stop noticing time? Maybe that question doesn’t give us a career plan. But perhaps it gives us a clue. For the first time in my professional life, I am discovering work that changes the way I experience the hours. I don’t know exactly what I am going to do with that information yet. But I know I want to build a life with more of it. Just Julia This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com (https://juliakallas.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   20 Oct 2026

   What If You’ve Outgrown the Life You Built?

   What do you do when the life you knew no longer fits, but the next one hasn’t introduced itself yet? When I look back at my life, I can see so many versions of myself: the girl in Brazil, the exchange student in New Zealand, the student, the intern in New York, the professional, the wife, the mother. At the time, none of those transitions felt like the beginning of something extraordinary. Most of them felt uncertain, uncomfortable, and sometimes completely unclear. Only looking backwards can I see how one conversation, one application, one suitcase or one plane ticket quietly changed everything. This episode is for the woman who feels caught in the middle, between who she has been and whoever she might become next. The woman who wants a map, an answer, some proof that she is moving in the right direction. Maybe you don’t need to know exactly where you’re going. Maybe you only need enough courage for the next step. Prefer to read? You can find the original essay on Substack here:https://juliakallas.substack.com/p/many-lifetimes-in-one-life (https://juliakallas.substack.com/p/many-lifetimes-in-one-life?utm_source=chatgpt.com) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com (https://juliakallas.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   16 Oct 2026

   I Thought I Wanted Karma. What I Needed Was Release.

   There are moments when someone hurts us and, even if we never say it out loud, a part of us starts waiting. We wait for them to regret it, for life to show them what they lost, for something to happen that will prove that what they did was wrong. Maybe a relationship ends badly. Maybe a friendship breaks. Maybe someone overlooks you, replaces you, disappoints you, or simply continues with their life while you are still trying to understand what happened. And because you are hurting, you start watching. Not obsessively, perhaps, but enough. You notice what happens to them. You wonder whether life will eventually return the lesson. Somewhere inside you is the thought: One day they will understand. I have done this more than once. For a while, I thought what I wanted was justice. Maybe karma. Maybe an apology. Maybe simply the satisfaction of knowing that somebody eventually understood what they had done. Then, recently, I received a piece of news connected to an old part of my life. I remember looking at my phone, reading it twice, and feeling something in me go quiet. What surprised me was that I wasn’t pleased. I wasn’t celebrating. I just felt lighter. A situation I had carried as deeply personal suddenly looked different from a distance, and for the first time I thought: Maybe this was never entirely about me. That realisation released something I had not fully understood I was still carrying. It did not change what had happened, and it did not suddenly make every decision acceptable. But it changed the meaning I had attached to it. I stopped asking quite so intensely, Why me? Why wasn’t I enough? Why did they move forward while I was left trying to make sense of it? What had felt like a verdict on my worth started to look more like one part of a much bigger story. I think that is what resentment can sometimes hide. We imagine we are waiting for the other person to suffer, but underneath that desire there is often something much more vulnerable. We want proof that we mattered. We want evidence that we were not foolish for being hurt. We want someone, somewhere, to look at what happened and say: Yes. That was unfair. You deserved better. The problem is that while we wait for that verdict, the people who hurt us continue to occupy space in our lives. They may no longer be calling us, working beside us, sleeping next to us, or even thinking about us, but we are still in conversation with them in our heads. We replay what happened. We imagine what we should have said. We wonder what is happening to them now. We wait for some future event to finally close a chapter they may not even know we are still reading. I believe life has its own way of rearranging things. Sometimes I call that God. Sometimes the universe. Sometimes timing. I know other people might call it karma, consequences, or simply life unfolding. I don’t think the label matters as much as what I am beginning to understand: I do not need to supervise it. That might be the lesson I needed most. I do not need to keep checking whether the person who hurt me is finally hurting too. I do not need their regret in order to validate my pain. I do not need an apology before I am allowed to move forward, and I certainly do not need someone else’s downfall to prove my worth. Their consequences belong to them. My attention belongs to me. Maybe there is someone you are still mentally watching too. A former partner. A friend. Someone you worked with. A person who chose somebody else, underestimated you, disappointed you, or walked away without giving you the ending you wanted. Maybe part of you is still waiting for something to happen that will finally make the whole story feel fair. I am not going to tell you simply to forgive and forget. I don’t think human emotions work like that. Anger has its place. Sometimes it is how we first recognise that something mattered to us. But perhaps there comes a moment when we can begin asking a different question: How much of my attention am I still giving to someone who no longer deserves a role in my present? For me, letting go has started to mean something much smaller and more practical than suddenly feeling peaceful about everything. It can mean not checking, not replaying, not inventing future conversations in which the other person finally understands, not needing their life to validate what happened in mine. It does not mean saying, What happened was okay. It means saying: What happened will not continue owning my attention. Maybe the universe does eventually work things out. Maybe people face the consequences of what they do. Maybe one day we receive information that makes an old story look completely different. Or maybe none of that happens. But perhaps freedom begins before we know. It begins when we stop waiting for life to prove us right, and start taking back the energy we left behind with the people who hurt us. And lately, that feels much more powerful to me than revenge ever could. Just Julia This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit juliakallas.substack.com (https://juliakallas.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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