Why I Made This

I didn't always love journaling.

I loved the idea of it. The beautiful notebook. But three pages in, abandoned on a shelf.

What I actually needed was someone asking me the real questions. Not "what are you grateful for." The ones that made me put the pen down and stare at the ceiling for a while.

I've always loved philosophy. The idea that some questions don't have clean answers, that they're worth sitting with, worth talking through. Hand the same question to ten different people and you get ten completely different windows into how someone thinks. I find that endlessly fascinating.

I spent two decades in finance and tech, and the fascination came with me. I built mentorship programs and trained the mentors, ran trainings on how to make it safe to tell the truth on a team, led women-in-tech programs at the New York Times. Underneath every title it was the same job: one person across from me, and the question no one else was going to ask.

After enough heartbreaks, career pivots, and years living in different parts of the world, journaling stopped being a ritual and started being how I figured things out. When everything felt uncertain, writing slowed me down enough to hear myself. When I was about to lose my own thread, it brought me back.

It started with questions I'd send to my closest friends. Big ones. The kind that made people go quiet before they answered. We'd reflect together over voice notes, with plenty of laughs and sometimes tears. And I realized: some things are easier to face when you don't feel like you're doing it alone.

So I started writing them down. Book quotes that stopped me cold. Song lyrics I kept returning to. Questions I kept circling but never answered. Eventually, those notes became this. I wanted it, so I made it.

No More Bullsh*t isn't here to fix you, and it isn't here to hand you the way out. Everyone sells the way out. This is what you use before you trust any exit, including your own urge to run.

It doesn't tell you to stay or go. It asks the questions you've been avoiding, with structure that gets you somewhere, and makes sure the door you pick is actually yours.

If you leave more honest than you came in, it's done its job.

— Karissa
Creator of No More Bullsh*t

If any of this sounded like you, start where I'd start a friend: a free reckoning. Or read the longer version of all of this on Substack.