A Day in the Life Series | By Raquel Sands
I’m recording this outside. Walking, actually. You might hear the trees rustling in the wind. Maybe a plane overhead. I’m keeping the microphone close so you don’t lose me — so bear with me if the world sneaks in around the edges. That feels fitting, honestly, because that’s kind of what this whole update is about: the world sneaking in, changing things, and me figuring out how to move through it on my own terms.
Welcome back. And if you’re new here — hi, I’m Raquel Sands. Welcome to A Day in the Life, a series I didn’t plan so much as stumble into. It started about a year ago, or maybe longer, depending on how you count these things, and it evolved the way most true things do: organically, without a content calendar or a launch strategy, just a desire to be honest and share what it actually looks and feels like to pivot in work, in business, in meaning-making, in income. To live out sovereignty — whatever that word holds — across every season.
So, here’s where I am now.
From Library Shelves to Cacao Blends: The Full Arc
I’ve been a professional job-offer-hopper since, officially, 2008 — my first part-time job at a library. Before that, I was helping my dad run his business in middle school, which would put us somewhere around 2005. Unofficial secretary.
Since 2008, I’ve been a graphic designer, a writer and editor, a website designer, a dog walker, a yoga teacher, a front desk person at a physical therapy clinic, and a yoga studio manager.
I’ve worked for nonprofits, for-profits, and for the government. Most recently, for the past few years, I’ve been primarily a contractor.
A contractor, here in the US, can be treated as a W-2 employee but within a defined contract window — usually a year, with the possibility of extension or full employment.
A consultant operates differently, often on a 1099 (in Virginia, it’s typically an 888 form), more like a freelancer, project-based, without the same benefits structure. I’ve been both.
I chose these arrangements deliberately because I valued flexibility and lifestyle over stability — or rather, I redefined what stability meant to me. I never really wanted to stay in one organization, one industry. I like being a jack of all trades. A Renaissance woman. A handy woman.
Constant change is, I think, just my Sagittarius Rising. And now — for the past two to three months — I am a small batch cacao blend maker.
Why Cacao? Why Now?
I don’t make the cacao from scratch. I source it already ethically produced, and then I blend it with spices and herbs to amplify what raw cacao already does — already is — medicinally and nutritionally.
And this is a full-circle moment for me in a way I’m still tracing.
Cacao has been part of my personal practice — my lifestyle — for years. I’d drink it with black pepper and honey, sometimes turmeric for the nutritional benefits: magnesium, iron, flavonoids.
And since I’ve never been a coffee drinker (I’ve tried multiple times, with sugar, milk, with decaf, and regular, and my body rejects the caffeine). So I drink lots of tea (green varieties, herbal anything, chai), water (carbonated/sparkly or just plain), and bone broth (because whey protein also disagrees with my tummy and who doesn’t want a natural protein supplement?) AND cacao.
Cacao became my morning ritual, my centering drink, my grounding. I started adding it to pancakes — banana cacao pancakes, which are as good as they sound — and it just became more and more an extension of me.
But there’s a deeper thread here, too.
I’m first-generation born in the United States. My entire family was born in El Salvador. Central America. And cacao is from Central America. It was used by the Mayans, the Aztecs, and the Olmec, indigenous people who understood this plant as medicine, as wealth, as spiritual practice.
For thousands of years, they used it for grounding, for healing, for meditation. The word itself, in Greek, translates roughly as food of the Gods, which is interesting because we’re talking about a Central American plant getting its name translated into Greek, and that alone is a whole essay about how language and history and power move.
For me, drinking cacao became tied to something I’d call ancestral veneration — which, for me, simply means a practice of honoring ancestors: mine, yours, ours. It’s less a rigid definition and more a felt sense. A practice of closeness. Of remembering where things — and we — come from.
So when I started thinking about what kind of business I actually wanted to build, cacao was already there. Waiting.
The Problem with “Just Making Money” (And Why It Never Worked for Me)
Here’s a through line I’ve been noticing across my entire working life — and I mean from 2005 to right now:
I cannot make money the priority. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work in my body. When money becomes the first thing, the only thing, the main thing — I struggle.
There’s a weight to it that isn’t even the weight of the work itself, because I actually enjoy working. I enjoy pushing myself. I enjoy becoming the next version of whoever I’m supposed to be. But money has never answered the questions that matter most to me.
It’s always been the support structure — the thing that pays the bills, the thing that helps me manage debt — not the reason I get up.
The recipe that has always worked for me, the formula, is this: meaning first, connection first, usefulness first — then money follows.
Not as an afterthought, but as a natural consequence. When I honor my skills, my passions, and my desire to support and uplift others, money can be part of that. When I flip the formula, I lose myself.
After I got my bachelor’s in English in 2014, I felt that flip happening. The world said: make money the priority, figure everything else out after. And I tried. And I couldn’t. It felt like I was constantly holding something that didn’t fit my hands.
That’s part of why I started The Clarity Shift — my larger podcast, now three years running. Not to advise the traditional sense. Not another “how to optimize your resume” show. But a space to deconstruct, decompress, dissect: how do we understand ourselves within these systems? How do we gain self-awareness — not through more personality tests, though I love my Enneagram and my Myers-Briggs and my astrology, I really do — but through critical cultural commentary? Social critique? Real questions about whether these systems are actually built for us, and how we can repurpose them?
That’s what the corporate ladder conversation became on that podcast.
Until it became something else. Until the ladder started to disappear.
AI, Instability, and the Book Nobody Asked to Open
We’re in 2026, and so much of the conversation around work has shifted.
The stability that was promised — go to school, get the degree, follow the system, and the system will hold you — that promise is gone. Or it’s changing so fast nobody can read the new terms.
AI and tech are being used by employers to remove jobs. Whole teams. Whole departments. Whole industries. And there’s this unsettling reality emerging: we are participating in our own destabilization without having first defined what stability even means for us.
I’ve had LinkedIn Lives about this. Workshops. I’ve been trying to read the room — take the temperature of other Millennials, some Gen Z, people who are going to be working for the next several decades — about what this shift actually feels like. And what I hear, consistently, is fear. Because it’s not just a new chapter. It’s a new book. Nobody voted to open.
I made my own decision a few years ago: get out of corporate sooner rather than later. Being a contractor, I had watched too many people — people who’d stayed loyal to organizations for decades — get displaced in 24 hours. Families upended. Structures collapsed overnight. I didn’t want that to be me. I want, as much as I can, autonomy. Preparation. Control over the arc of my own story.
That meant building something of my own.
Why Career Coaching Wasn’t the Answer (For Me)
I dabbled in career coaching. I say “dabbled” honestly — because I never fully identified with the title. I’m pretty anti-corporate, if you’ve read my essays or listened to the podcast. But I did want to help people repurpose the corporate ladder: use the system strategically rather than being used by it.
The problem was twofold.
First: the ladder isn’t really there to repurpose anymore. The game has changed. Second: career coaching, at least the way I was approaching it, felt intangible. Theoretical. All in the head. There was no physical result you could hold, no immediate transformation you could point to. Unlike personal training, where someone can see their body change, income sovereignty, and mindset shifts are long, invisible processes. They’re real — deeply real — but they’re hard to package, hard to sell, hard to show in a culture that wants before-and-after pictures.
I needed something grounding. Something people could hold in their hands. Something that worked on the body as well as the mind.
So: cacao.
The Three Blends (And What They’re For)
I currently have three blends, and if you’re in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area, I’m at farmer’s markets this season — 2026 —, and you can find me in Arlington, Virginia.
La Luna — The Moon Blend. This one is for women. Specifically for people who are currently menstruating or in perimenopause. Cacao is already rich in magnesium and iron, which directly support the body during menstruation (we lose iron, and cacao helps replenish it). I added vanilla, cinnamon, and a few other ingredients specifically to support calm, serotonin, and bloating relief. For the days when your body needs gentleness.
Kakawa — The Root Blend Kakawa is the indigenous word for cacao. This blend has three ingredients: cacao powder, guajillo chili (a mild, aromatic heat — not overwhelming), and vanilla. It’s a tribute to the roots. The way cacao was prepared before it became hot chocolate and chocolate bars. To the people who understood this plant first.
The Coffee Alternative Blend is for the curious coffee drinkers. Cacao has roughly 12 milligrams of caffeine versus coffee’s 100-plus milligrams. If you want something bitter, warming, and ritualistic in the morning — but without the jitteriness, the crash, or the dependency — this blend is for you. Higher in magnesium, higher in iron, rich in flavonoids. Mentally stabilizing differently.
If you’re not local, I have a waitlist. Once I’m ready to ship, you’ll be the first to know.
I also make cacao-scented candles — same plant, different form. Let me know if you want those shipped to you, or come grab them at the market.
Nourishment Is the Foundation. Everything Else Comes After.
Here’s what I want you to take away from this — from this episode, this post, this whole series. The one thing:
Nourishment is the basis of everything.
Mental, physical, spiritual, emotional.
In whatever combination makes sense for your body and your life. The more we can nourish ourselves — consistently, essentially, sustainably — the easier everything else becomes. The work. The income. The pivots. The failures and the course corrections. Being willing to try something new and also being okay when it doesn’t work.
Cacao is my small contribution to that. It’s not a cure. It’s not magic. But it’s something I can offer with my hands that grounds me, that connects me to my ancestry, that supports the body in real, measurable ways.
And it’s one piece of a larger offering — because I’ll still write and talk about work and income sovereignty. That’s always going to be part of what I do. I just now see it as one piece, not the whole picture.
The whole picture includes nourishment. Includes the body. Includes ancestors, plants, and practices that have been around far longer than any corporate structure.
Final Thoughts (Sent With a Big Hug😍😍 )
This was a long episode. Long post. I know. But I felt like you deserved the full arc — the evolution of this series, this podcast, this work, and this new chapter. Or maybe a new book is the better word. This new genre I’m writing myself into.
I’m grateful you’re here. Whether you’ve been reading since the beginning or stumbled onto this today while walking your own version of this path.
Keep nourishing yourself. Give yourself grace. Take time. And if you want to support me, come find me at a farmer’s market, get on the waitlist, or just keep reading. That’s enough too.
Sending you all a big hug. 🤎
Raquel Sands is the host of The Clarity Shift podcast and the creator of a small batch cacao blend business rooted in ancestral wellness and income sovereignty. She writes and speaks on work, meaning-making, career pivots, and nourishment in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area and online.
