The Observer Effect: How Paying Attention is Changing Everything

It's Friday morning in LA, just after 9 AM, and I'm curled up on my apartment balcony with my coffee and sketchbook. There's this perfect September breeze happening that makes the city feel almost dreamlike. I should be finalizing my weekend plans or prepping for my afternoon critique, but I can't stop thinking about something that happened yesterday.

I was in the design lab working with that new ocean plastic fabric (still obsessed, btw), when Tara, this super quiet girl from my sustainability seminar, came over and said, "Your energy is different lately."

My first thought was classic Mandy panic: "Different bad? Different good? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" But instead of spiraling, I found that little pause space I've been practicing and just asked her what she meant.

"You seem more... present," she said. "Like you're actually here when you're here."

Guys, I've been thinking about this non-stop. Have I been walking around on autopilot for years without realizing it? Because the truth is, this past week of intentionally paying attention to my growth has changed something fundamental in how I'm moving through the world.

It's like there's this observer part of me now that watches my reactions, notices my patterns, and creates this tiny window of choice between stimulus and response. And in that window? That's where the real Mandy lives.

What's wild is that simply by watching myself evolve, I'm actually evolving faster. It's like some weird quantum physics thing where the observer affects the observed (thanks, Professor Martinez's random tangents about science and design).

This morning, when my alarm went off, instead of immediately grabbing my phone and diving into social media, I actually felt myself make a choice to just breathe for a minute first. A small thing, but it felt significant.

I'm starting to think that maybe the most important relationship I'm developing isn't with friends or dating prospects or even my creative work – it's with myself as the compassionate observer of my own life.

Don't worry, I'm not getting too philosophical (okay, maybe a little). I still stress-bought an unnecessary hat online at midnight and texted that guy from my color theory class who definitely isn't right for me. Growth isn't linear, right?

But something is shifting, and I can feel it. By simply paying attention to how I'm changing, I'm changing even more.

Now I should probably pay attention to the time – critique in two hours and I haven't even finalized my presentation. Evolution continues, coffee cup by coffee cup.