Emma is still in a psychosis.
What has it been now—six weeks? But who’s counting?

I’m as used to this annual occurrence as I am to tax time, which often coincides—pulling out the same fear, the same rationalization, sometimes even the same dissociation. The familiar quiet dread. It’s almost a tradition at this point.

And what exactly is a tradition, anyway—or even a psychosis?

Why does it show up every year as if we were doing an NPR pledge drive? Something you know is coming, unavoidable, a little drawn out, and somehow stretching far longer than you think you can tolerate.

Just switch off the station.

Can I switch off my daughter?

No.

She calls all hours of the day—sometimes 10, 15, 20 times in a 24-hour period—and I find myself both bracing for it and answering anyway.

“Hey, how’ve you been since I talked to you a half hour ago?” I say, lightheartedly.

Time passes differently on the inside, though. The second hand becomes a steady metronome, announcing something impending with no mercy.

Is she doing FaceTime from the behavioral health unit?

Clearly breaking the rules.

But then again, there are no rules in this alternate universe.

I answer her FaceTime call at 6 a.m., still in bed, not fully awake, not fully anything.

And it’s not Emma.

She doesn’t have her phone or earbuds. Instead, a young man with shaggy blond hair and days-old facial hair is staring directly at me as I sit up in bed, fully clothed in pajamas that pass as acceptable daytime wear somewhere between yoga and quiet resignation.

Where the hell is the video off button?

My fingers move clumsily across the screen, not quite landing where I want them to.

And he just keeps staring.

Emma is in the background, following him around like a lost puppy, like she’s tethered to something only she can see.

My sigh is heavy.

I force my brain to reload.
Reset.
Actually do something.

What comes next?

Tell her—like she doesn’t already know—that giving everything away is not a great idea.

Just days ago, I asked, “Where are your shoes?”

She told me she had split her heels running up and down the hallways—karaoke, stripping naked, dancing, protesting every injustice of this world—and apparently, the solution is to give everything away, like we’re at Woodstock in the 70s.

I try logic over and over, as if saying it one more time—more clearly, more slowly—might finally make it land.

“Don’t give away your shoes. You need those. Your heels won’t get better if you keep running on hard floors…”

But she’s not listening anymore. She’s already talking to someone else as they pass by.

How is it that China’s always to blame? I wonder. And the U.S. government? She says this constantly. It’s like an anthem in this secret society—its origin story, its alma mater.

She hasn’t mentioned alien invasions yet, and if the others knew (shhh—you know the others), there would probably be consequences.

And sure—there’s probably some thread of truth in there somewhere—but I have to remind myself:

She’s not here right now.

I say that not as a judgment, but as her mom—someone who has stood this close to it time and time again, who has watched it unfold in real time, who knows what it looks like from the inside out.

And the kid?

No doubt crazy in his own very specific way—the special sauce spread a little extra thick.

He’s talking to Emma, but I can hear him, see him, track him as he moves around the room. I’m watching all of it while Pam watches over my shoulder and then calls the nurse’s station.

“Do you know the nurse?” I ask Pam.

No.

But her name sounds familiar, she says.

She reminds me that the staff is very good.
“These are the most compassionate, caring people—nurses…and really the entire behavioral health team.”

And I believe her.

I’m also quietly grateful that Pam worked in this very unit not long ago—long enough to understand it, long enough to see both sides—because it gives me something to hold onto right now. A foundation of trust, even when Emma has me almost convinced she and the others are being tortured, made to suffer beyond what anyone should tolerate, as she cries into the phone.

Pam eventually left and returned to her tried-and-true law-and-order world.

“I feel like it never stops,” she said. “Nonstop mental health crises at home and at work. It’s too much.”

I can’t blame her.

It’s a lot—for anyone. Especially the caregivers.

Yes.

The crazy can get to you.

From the outside, none of it makes sense, and trying to force it to make sense is exhausting—like watching the same Dateline episode over and over and still hoping for a different ending.

As I write this, a song comes through the speaker—smooth, easy.

“Some people say life is for the living…”

And I laugh a little at the redundancy—or maybe the irony. I use that word carefully, given what we’ve all done to Alanis Morissette over the years.

And we are living—but in a way that feels worn thin around the edges, like something handled too many times.

Some days are harder than others.

Actually, most days are hard.

I’ve been calling it “tempering,” as if life can be stabilized and I can be made stronger from the broken pieces—as Japanese pottery mended with gold, where the cracks are highlighted instead of hidden.

But really, it’s dopamine I keep reaching for.

Sugar. Carbs. Sometimes a little THC with that CBD gummy.
A glass of wine—with “heart health benefits,” of course. Ounces of justification.

And I ride that wave—whatever small lift it gives me—letting it carry me just a little further than yesterday.

God forbid I become a drinker. Or a drugger.

But apparently I have no problem getting fat, as if there’s some dignity in that. At least there’s no law against it—or I’d be as thin as the sliver of hope that sometimes eludes me.

I don’t need any more problems than I already have. No more problems than upsizing my bra every year.

I could write this differently—long and poetic, drawn out until my eyes blur and everything dissolves into something heavy and unmoving.

But that’s not actually fun.

And it doesn’t solve anything.

Instead, I try to find the humor.

Somewhere.
Anywhere.
Every day.

Not to make light of it—but to lighten it, just enough so I can keep carrying what’s been placed on my shoulders, forcing me—quite literally—to straighten my spine.

At 59, there’s something liberating in saying,
“I don’t really care anymore if you mind.”

Just saying. That’s where I am.

So where is the funny story in all of this?

Because this has to be a joke, right?

Why are unfortunate things only funny ten years later—when you’re sitting somewhere calmer, looking back on a version of yourself you barely recognize?

Instead, I choose to tell it now.

To laugh now.

I would like to buy a vowel.

Because nothing on the board makes much sense.

But I can’t afford it.

So I keep spinning.

Sometimes I hit “lose everything”—every ounce of joy, self-respect, energy, gone in a single turn.

And sometimes I hit something better.

A double, maybe.

I don’t know.

I pick up the phone again.

I keep saying it’s going to be okay.

Because it really is.

Good or bad—

It’s all okay.

When I was in middle school, I quit the basketball team.

I was first string. I expected to start every game. The coach decided the B team needed more playing time, and something in me couldn’t accept that. So I gave her an ultimatum: start me, or I walk.

She didn’t bend.

I walked.

For years, I told myself I was strong-willed. Success principled. That I wouldn’t settle for less than I deserved. And I kept telling myself that even when regret showed up around the edges, quiet and persistent.

But that’s not the whole truth.

The fuller truth is this: I didn’t know how to stay when I wasn’t the most important person in the room. I didn’t know how to tolerate uncertainty about my place. I needed the spotlight confirmed before I was willing to play.

I’ve been thinking about that story a lot lately, because I want to be a writer.

Not casually. Not privately. Publicly. Professionally. Paid.

And yet every week, something more concrete pulls at me. A bathroom renovation stretching into its second year. Fractional CFO work that pays actual bills. A nervous system that runs on visible progress and gets nothing from abstract exposure.

Spreadsheets give you answers. Sawdust gives you proof that real work was done. Writing gives you a blank page and no promise that filling it will matter.

When I sit down to write, the old voice comes back. What if no one reads this? What if it never pays? What if you’re just not that kind of person?

That last one is the trap.

Because “I’m just not that kind of person” is the same move I made at thirteen. It’s a way of quitting that sounds like self-knowledge. It lets you walk off the court with your dignity intact, before the game has really started, before you’ve had to find out what you’re actually made of.

Renovation work is straightforward. You show up, you do the next thing, the room changes. Effort and outcome are loosely but genuinely connected.

Writing isn’t like that.

Writing is a longer game, and the feedback loop is strange and slow. You can write something solid and have no one read it. You can write something mediocre and watch it spread. The connection between effort and outcome is real, but it doesn’t announce itself on any schedule you can predict or control.

Which means writing requires something renovation work doesn’t: faith without immediate evidence.

Not blind faith. Not delusion. Just the willingness to keep showing up before you know how the story ends.

Discipline, I’ve come to think, isn’t grinding through misery. It isn’t white-knuckling your way to results. It’s something quieter than that — choosing what matters, and then staying when the validation doesn’t come on time.

The middle school version of me needed the coach to confirm my value before I’d commit to the team. I was conditioning my effort on guaranteed recognition. And when the recognition wasn’t guaranteed, I left.

I don’t want to write like that.

I don’t need to be the most important voice. I don’t need to know my role yet. I don’t need a standing ovation before I’ve written anything worth applauding.

I just need to stay long enough to find out who I become.

One essay a week. No drama about whether it’s working. No philosophical detours that are really just sophisticated ways of rationalizing the exit.

Just showing up. Just staying on the team.

Maybe the lesson from middle school was never really about ego.

Maybe it was always about endurance — about learning that the people who get somewhere aren’t always the most talented, or the most certain, or the ones who demanded the spotlight first.

They’re the ones who stayed when staying was hard. Who kept playing when their role was unclear. Who didn’t confuse uncertainty with a sign to leave.

This week, I’m not quitting.

I’m staying on the team.

It was Mother’s Day 1975 as I wandered down the block towards a garage sale with a single nickel in my pocket. I had no idea what I would find, but I had all the confidence in the world that I would get something special, and I did. I walked home, mindful of the decorative china plate pressed firmly against my chest, and of my arms wrapped securely around it. I had found the piece de resistance.

Our home had a china hutch. A dedicated piece of furniture to hold these sacred relics. These dishes were too special for everyday use. Instead, we would only get them out on certain occasions—Jesus’s birthday counted. Oddly enough, our own birthdays did not. On those days, cake and ice cream were served on paper plates.

Sadly, that’s how I’ve treated my books over the years. Like the good china. Books were important, symbolic, and slightly sacred. Holding space for me patiently. I even custom-built their own dedicated space—our home library, where shelves from floor to ceiling held them in reverie.

Books represented the person I might become someday—educated, disciplined, and well-read. But instead of using them often, I preserved them. I owned more books than I had ever read.

And when I did read, I read just like I had learned in school, as if anticipating a test and then a grade. The outcome was always rigged, and so I plowed through the pages cautiously and with great trepidation. The idea was never to fully understand it, but to search for the clues or the mystery of what might be important to someone else. I would think about these books only briefly, and then when the next book came along, the cycle would repeat itself, leaving me empty and drained from the process.

The problem was never that I lacked books.

I lacked permission to approach differently.

With wonder and purpose.

Break the School Mindset

Most of us learned to read inside an institution that measures completion. The system rewards finishing the chapter and passing the test. It does not reward curiosity. It does not reward depth. It does not ask whether the book altered the way you see the world. And there was usually just one way, the teacher’s way, to see the real answers or meaning of a book. The theme or the lesson. How did this book move the teacher? How does the majority feel the impact?

The summer library program also carried the message that more is better. How many books could you finish by the end of the season?

So we carry that mindset forward. We count books. We set annual reading goals. We stack them like trophies.

But real reading begins when evaluation ends.

Elon Musk is a voracious reader. He read widely about physics and engineering long before he built rockets. He has stated that he “was raised by books.”

In his 2013 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett acknowledged that the single best investment he ever made was a single book by his mentor Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor.

Neither of them read to pass a test. They read to build a life.

That is the shift.

You are no longer reading to prove something. You are ready to read to construct something.

Begin With the End in Mind

Before you open a book, ask a more serious question than “Is this good?”

Ask, “Why am I reading this?”

What future version of me does this serve?

What problem am I trying to solve?

What kind of thinker am I trying to become?

If you do not clarify the “why,” the book becomes entertainment at best and noise at worst. You will highlight everything because you have not decided what matters.

The question is not “What is important?”

The question is “Important for what?”

That reframing changes everything.

For years, I struggled with Gary Keller’s idea about focusing on the one action that makes other actions easier or unnecessary. Intuitively, I sensed the power in that idea, but the phrasing never quite landed.

Then I encountered Harvard professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans and their life-design framework. They talk about prototyping your future, about taking the next small step that moves you in the direction you want to live. It is not about mastering everything. It is about directional progress.

Suddenly, the fog lifted.

Reading is not about consuming everything that is interesting. It is about identifying the one idea that moves you forward.

That is the “one thing” in each book, or maybe even each chapter.

Fiction, Nonfiction, and the Truth

We sometimes treat nonfiction as truth and fiction as entertainment. That is naïve.

Fiction often reveals emotional truth with greater clarity than argument. Depending on the fiction, I sometimes think of fiction as mind candy. A way to splurge on the sweet stuff without diving too deep into a specific purpose. But it often does a bit more than that... especially in good literature. It mirrors my mood. Am I looking for adventure? For love and meaning? Do I want to lose myself in mystery or suspense?

Nonfiction can clarify reality—or reinforce misconceptions if we read it uncritically.

Both genres can sharpen your thinking.

But only if you read actively.

Active reading means entering into a conversation with the author or the characters. It means writing questions in the margins. It means disagreeing. It means connecting one author’s argument to another’s. It means noticing when something unsettles you or even shakes the very ground you stand on.

You are not a storage device. You are a mind, body, and soul.

And a mind grows through friction. A heart grows through understanding. The soul is the witness of it all.

Stop Counting Books. Start Counting Meaning

Here is where I corrected myself.

I used to believe that finishing a book was an accomplishment in itself. I was wrong.

Finishing a book just to finish it is not meaningful.

Extracting meaning is.

If a book gives you one idea that genuinely alters your thinking, it has succeeded. If you read thirty books in a year and apply nothing, you have simply rehearsed literacy.

Think of yourself less as a collector and more as a pollinator. A hummingbird does not feed on one flower. A bee moves from field to field. Both cross-pollinate. The power is not in staying. It is through reading widely that ideas unique to your perception are generated.

That said, do not confuse difficulty with uselessness. Some books are meant to stretch you. Like exercise, reading has resistance levels. Start easy and gradually increase the difficulty. Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit, explains that starting with easy tasks to build momentum and then moving on to harder work is key to long-term success. This allows you to focus right now on what feels natural, energizing, and enjoyable rather than immediate struggle. Set yourself up for success.

Remember, the measure is not “Did I finish?”

The measure is “Who am I becoming?”

A Word About Focus and ADHD

Now we need to talk about the obstacle many people quietly carry.

If you have ADHD—or simply a highly associative, easily stimulated mind—reading can feel like swimming upstream. You are drawn toward novelty. Your mind leaps to connections. You may highlight entire pages because everything feels alive. You may abandon books halfway through if something shinier comes along.

This is not a moral failure.

It is a neurological pattern.

But it requires a design change or a shift in the framework.

First, give your mind a clear purpose before you begin. An ADHD mind struggles with vague tasks. “Read this book” is vague. “Find one idea in this chapter that I can apply to my work this week” is concrete.

Second, engage more than your eyes. Pair reading with movement. I often listen to an audiobook while walking.

Another game-changer for me has been reading a physical book while also listening to the audio version. When my thoughts drift, and my eyes leave the page, I keep hearing the audio, which keeps me engaged in the flow of thought until I self-correct and return my focus to the page in front of me. Adjusting the speed is also helpful. I can go slower when I need more time that day to process or increase the speed of the words to push me through faster on dialogue that is too weighty, and I can easily glide over without losing the meaning.

If you are reading on a Kindle, adjust the font size a bit larger than you normally would. This allows for swiping through the pages at a quicker rate. Like pulling the handle of a slot machine, the swipe seems to generate a dopamine push as you move through.

Deliberately involve your senses and establish a routine—lighting a candle and sounds for focus. This could be binaural beats with headphones or even quiet, relaxing ‘study’ music you can find on YouTube. Amy Tan talked about listening to soundtracks that matched her mood in her writing to help her enter her story. I think the idea is the same here.

Third, reduce the stakes. Start with shorter forms if attention feels brittle. Graphic novels count. Short stories count. Young adult fiction counts and is just as suitable for any age adult—just sayin. Build stamina gradually. Build difficulty gradually.

Fourth, externalize your thinking. Write one paragraph in your journal at the end of each reading session. Not a summary. A response. What did this provoke? What question remains? What might I try because of it? Writing stabilizes attention.

Share your thoughts on your reading. Teaching others helps us learn about ourselves.

Fifth, allow strategic quitting—but define it carefully. Don’t worry about quitting a book that you don’t like for whatever reason. It may not be the right time or the right book.

Finally, measure consistency, not completion. Ten focused minutes a day will change you more than 100 books in a summer rush to a gold star.

An ADHD mind is often curious, creative, and capable of deep hyperfocus when properly engaged. The goal is not to suppress its nature but to harness it.

Becoming a Reader

To become a reader is not to accumulate pages. It is to enter into a relationship with ideas. It is to allow friction. It is to practice discernment. It is to extract meaning and apply it.

Becoming a reader means you choose the book over the screen. You carry a book with you, always ready to engage in the minutes around the edges of everything else. You can’t wait to flip through the pages.

Books are not china. They are friends, even mentors. The best of them are pushing our buttons and making us think more critically. The best is encouraging us and sharing ideas and philosophies. The best keeps us up late at night, way past our bedtime, breathless and wanting for resolution.

Open a book that pulls you in for whatever reason. Trust yourself in knowing what to read next. Follow the wonder.

And measure your reading not by the number of spines you conquer, but by the quiet shifts in your thinking that no one else can see.

The moment you begin reading for meaning rather than completion, you stop aspiring to be a reader.

You become one.

For the Margin

• Finishing books is not the goal. Extracting meaning is.

• Ask “Important for what?” before you start highlighting.

• Read with a purpose, not for performance.

• One applied idea outweighs fifty completed books.

• Engage the author. Argue. Connect. Respond.

• Build reading stamina gradually, start with something easy.

• Design your reading environment if focus is a challenge.

• Measure who you are becoming, not how many books you finish.

“If we spend the time we waste in sighing for the perfect golden fruit in fulfilling the conditions of its growth, happiness will come, must come…”

I copied that line from Helen Keller into my notebook and felt two things at once:

comfort
and exposure.

Comfort, because she makes happiness sound lawful. Predictable. Almost agricultural.

Exposure, because if it is a law, then my role becomes obvious.

Am I tending the conditions, or am I admiring the idea of the harvest?

I am very talented at longing.

I can imagine the strong body, the clear work, the writing life, the steadier money. I can picture them in detail. I can build elaborate systems for how they might someday arrive.

Meanwhile, the small daily requirements remain negotiable.

I’ll walk tomorrow.
I’ll write when I’m less tired.
I’ll publish when it’s better.
I’ll decide soon.

I sigh for fruit.

Keller, who had no patience for self-pity or fantasy, quietly removes the drama.

She redirects.

Use the energy spent wishing to water the fruit.

The miracle is not intensity.
The miracle is maintenance.

I recognize this law because I’ve lived it before.

Not in a classroom.

At a kitchen table. On a closet floor. In long afternoons when the world seemed to be racing ahead, and we were deliberately staying small.

I chose conditions I hoped would grow a person who trusted herself.

Curiosity instead of compliance.
Time instead of hurry.
Conversation instead of measurement.

Some days it felt beautiful.
Some days it felt reckless.

I would watch other children collect gold stars and visible proof, and I would wonder if I was mistaking hope for wisdom.

There is nothing more clarifying than being responsible for a child’s future.

You want guarantees.
You want evidence.
You want someone official to tell you that you are not quietly ruining everything.

But the days kept arriving, ordinary and unceremonious, asking only for the next small act of tending.

Be together.
Listen carefully.
Follow the interest.
Protect the spark.

So I watered.

And over time, something assembled itself.

Not perfection.
A person.

Outcome as consequence.

I didn’t recognize it then, but I was learning how faith in conditions works.

The days felt small. The doubt felt enormous.

Yet growth kept arriving anyway.

I forget this constantly.

I want inspiration without exposure.
Results without repetition.
Confidence without evidence.

But the law keeps waiting, patient as soil.

If a woman walks most days for several years, what happens?
If a woman writes and publishes, imperfectly, again and again, what happens?
If a woman pays attention to her money, what happens?

I already know.

Things tend to work when I participate.

What makes it difficult is the middle stretch Keller names so gently: renunciation.

Giving up the drama of delay.
Giving up the idea of perfection.
Giving up the fantasy of transformation without participation.

Instead, you do the next physical thing.

You water.

Lately, I’ve been trying a different question in my morning pages:

If someone lived exactly like this for three years, who would she become?

Sometimes the answer comforts me.
Sometimes it corrects me.

Either way, it tells the truth.

The mercy in Keller’s idea is that once the conditions are right, I can relax.

I don’t have to yank at the seedlings.

I can walk.
I can write.
I can keep small promises.

Growth is already implied.

Maybe happiness isn’t something we chase.

Maybe it grows as a side effect of participation in our own lives.

Maybe holiness is simply returning tomorrow with a watering can.

If Keller is right, then the future is not mystical.

It is cultivated.

And today is the perfect day to begin.

When my original family was still a cohesive unit, we rented a house in Alliance, Ohio, when I was in the third grade. It sat at the intersection of two slightly busy streets—busy enough that crossing required a second round of looking left and right, just to be sure. If you cut across diagonally, the danger wasn’t a ticket for jaywalking so much as the possibility of disappearing altogether.

Directly across the street stood the house.

It wasn’t the worst house on the block, but it worked hard to suggest it might be. Black and gray. Sharp roof peaks. Broken shutters hanging like loose teeth. Brambles and piles of leaves that never seemed to move, even in the wind. The porch leaned away from the foundation as if trying to escape.

And no one ever came or went.

For years, the story I told myself about that house evolved. At first, it was haunted. Later, as I got older and learned just enough about the world to be afraid of it properly, it became something worse—Satan’s lair, trafficking hub, portal to evil. The idea that it might simply be an empty abandoned home never crossed my mind. With no reference point beyond Grimm’s fairy tales and the evening news sharing mostly the worst of the worst, how could it be anything else?

A neighborhood friend and I would sit on our front steps with Popsicles, watching it. The questions multiplied as the Popsicles melted in the endless heat of summer. Who lived there? Why didn’t they come outside? Were they watching us right now?

Meanwhile, our own homes—perfectly ordinary—looked like luxury by comparison. Proximity, we assumed, worked in our favor. Only later would I learn that a dilapidated house across the street doesn’t elevate your standing. It pulls everything down with it.

That was my first lesson in adjacency—in how the things we place ourselves near shape what we become.

I didn’t grow up with much—at least not by today’s standards—but I had enough of everything that mattered. Comic books. Mad Magazine. The library. Entire afternoons stretched out with nothing to do but read, imagine, and wait for dinner.

And then there was the back page.

Not just any page.

The page.

A dense grid of black-and-white ads promising miracles for a few dollars and a handwritten order form. X-ray glasses. Sea monkeys. Spy equipment. Magic tricks. Kung fu by mail. Each item offered just enough description to ignite the imagination and just enough illustration to make it feel plausible.

I never had the money to buy anything—“you have to save up,” my mom would say—but even if I had, how would I choose? The wanting was overwhelming. I wanted all of it. How do you pick one dream when they’re all equally compelling?

Every time I got a new comic, I skipped the story and went straight to the back. My eyes bounced around like I was solving a Where’s Waldo puzzle. So much possibility compressed into such a small space.

And then I saw it.

The magic carpet.

I stopped. Probably stopped breathing. There it was, in ink.

“Do you really think it can fly?” I asked my mom.

She explained—patiently—that rugs do not fly.

“But it says so right here,” I argued, pointing to the ad.

I mean… you can’t just print lies, right?

I decided my mother didn’t understand technology. Which was fair. She would later refer to the computer mouse exclusively as “the thing,” refusing to acknowledge its scientific name.

I was certain I was the smartest person in the room. I argued like a junior attorney, convinced that my parents’ lack of sophistication was the only thing standing between me and greatness.

Our kitchen seemed to confirm this. We decorated it with plastic fruit and grapes made of glass, arranged on a small-scale tray that had never served anything real. I assumed other families had real fruit, but I couldn’t see the advantage. Real fruit goes bad. Ours stayed exactly as it was.

Even then, I was drawn to things that looked right without asking anything of you.

Still, I lost every argument.

But all that boldness and confidence in me never trumped the fact that I was just a kid. And even if I wasn’t right on most things, I wasn’t wrong about believing in them.

I never got the magic carpet, which is unfortunate, because I would have used it for so many things. Home before dark with a promise not to venture off the block. But between sunrise and sunset, the places I would go were limitless.

Eventually, I did order something within my budget. A magic trick. I saved my money. Got permission. Filled out the form. Found an envelope and a stamp.

Then I noticed the delivery time.

4–6 weeks.

Four. To. Six. Weeks.

It might as well have been a geological era. I remember thinking how unfair and torturous the waiting would be. I crossed off days on the calendar like someone stranded, counting time by marks on a cave wall.

When it finally arrived, the trick held my attention for a few hours before being exiled to the toy box, joining everything else that had once promised rescue.

That was it.

And now?

Now I open Amazon.

In front of me is an endless supply of just about anything. The imagining has already been done. Color photographs and videos show me exactly how other people live with the thing—from the unboxing to the amateur review. Strangers feel oddly intimate. A man named Kyle explains how this product changed his life, and while I’m skeptical, I’m also convinced when twenty-five thousand other people agree.

Click. Submit.

Hours later—hours—it’s on my porch.

Everything I could possibly want, and many things I didn’t know I needed, arrive faster than anticipation can form. And just like that magic trick, it glows briefly before dimming, blending into the background of my life. Another object folded into the scenery.

Spring is coming. Which means it’s time to sort through things. Declutter. Make space. Create breathing room from all the objects that have quietly accumulated—each one purchased with the promise of ease, improvement, or transformation.

The irony isn’t subtle. The very things meant to enrich life often crowd out the space where life actually happens.

There was a study once—the marshmallow test. A child is given a marshmallow and told that if they wait fifteen minutes without eating it, they’ll get two. For years, the takeaway was that delayed gratification predicted future success.

But I think the more interesting part was never the marshmallow or the success it was meant to predict.

It was the waiting. That very space of delay.

The sitting with desire. The imagining. The boredom that wasn’t really boredom at all, but a fertile, restless space where the mind wandered and learned how to entertain itself.

That was the good part.

The magic trick itself barely held my attention. The dream of it lasted weeks.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped trusting that part—the dreaming, the waiting, the unstructured time where interest had room to grow. Curiosity started to look inefficient. Play felt indulgent. Learning needed a purpose, a payoff, a credential, or at least a side hustle.

Creativity followed the same path. It became something you could admire from a distance, something done well by professionals. Artists. Designers. The lucky few who managed to turn it into a job. The rest of us learned to watch instead of make.

Which is how you end up believing that creativity lives somewhere else. In studios. At places like Pixar.

And curiosity, on its own, stops feeling like enough.

Today, our dreams have grown larger but thinner. Lottery jackpots. Lakefront homes. Cars that cost more than my first house did fifteen years ago. We chase them with the same intensity I once reserved for a flying rug.

Carpet dreams.

But objects have never performed those tasks well. When they fail, as they always do, we assume the answer is more. Faster. Better.

And yet we’re left heavier than before. Emotionally. Financially. Spiritually.

The adjacency lesson comes back around. Surround yourself with objects promising arrival, and you begin to organize your life around waiting for delivery. Our carpet dreams don’t just disappoint. They linger.

It’s strange what actually makes you grateful.

Not the big stuff.
Not the stuff at all.

It’s the moments where you’re absorbed. Not producing. Not arriving. Just caught up in something that holds your attention long enough for time to loosen its grip.

A story about arrival often comes back to me. It’s about Björn Borg, the Swedish tennis legend known for both his dominance and his restraint. After one of his major championship wins—after years of discipline, repetition, and sacrifice—Borg was asked what it felt like to finally win.

He said the feeling lasted about ten minutes.

Not the match. Not the applause. The feeling.

Ten minutes of triumph, followed by the quiet return to himself. To practice. To repetition. To the daily work that had always been there, long before the trophy and long after it was put away.

Which makes me think about how often we treat things the same way we treat victories.

We buy them as proof.
As punctuation marks.
As evidence that we’ve arrived somewhere meaningful.

And like wins, they glow briefly. Then they recede into the background of our lives, leaving us exactly where we were before—only now with more to store, maintain, and sort through.

If arrival only lasts ten minutes, then maybe it was never the point.

The dream.
The practice.
The waiting.

That’s where life seems to happen.

My birthday has come and gone. At this milestone, I’m newly aware of how much I forget—even things that once felt important. Days stack on top of each other, leaving very little trace. Sometimes it feels like living inside a blur, where weeks pass and I can’t quite say what held them together.

There’s a writing habit I learned called one line a day. It’s exactly what it sounds like: each day, you write a single line about something that stood out. It doesn’t have to be a big event—sometimes it’s a small noticing, the kind that happens in the middle of an ordinary moment and would disappear if I didn’t catch it. Over time, those lines accumulate—until you’re left with a record of your life across seasons.

Each page holds a single calendar date, with one line written for that same day year after year—often five entries stacked beneath one another on the page. January 12th doesn’t live once; it lives in layers. You can see who you were last year, three years ago, five years ago, all at once. The ordinary and the extraordinary sit side by side, and patterns emerge that you could never see while you were inside them. Time stops feeling linear and starts to feel relational—each version of you quietly in conversation with the others.

What surprises me most is that the practice doesn’t just record my days; it changes how I move through them. I find myself noticing more, quietly looking for the one line that tells the truth about who I was that day.

I’ve been doing some version of this for about three years now.

Not every day.
Not in a streak worth bragging about.
More like a practice I wander away from… and then find myself returning to.

Sometimes I forget for weeks. Sometimes months. And then, almost without thinking, I pick it back up again.

That return matters more to me than consistency ever has.

Because returning means the practice is alive. It means I haven’t turned it into another standard to meet or abandon. Each time I come back, I’m choosing attention again—not perfectly, not heroically, just honestly. The keeping of it matters less to me than the willingness to begin again.

Things I was sure I’d never forget—I’ve forgotten completely. Moments that felt overwhelming at the time now sit there quietly, reduced to a single sentence. Ordinary days, which I assumed were forgettable, turn out to be the ones that carry the most weight.

When I read old lines, I don’t just remember what happened. I remember who I was.

I see versions of myself that feel distant and strangely tender. I see what I was worried about. What I was clinging to. What I didn’t yet know would pass. I see patterns forming long before I understand them.

I also see gaps.

Long stretches of time where nothing is written at all.

And instead of feeling shame about those empty spaces, I’ve come to see them as part of the record too. They tell their own story—about exhaustion, about overload, about seasons where paying attention felt like too much.

One line a day isn’t about productivity for me. It isn’t about self-improvement or building a system that runs without friction.

It’s a way of keeping a loose thread tied to myself.

A way of saying: I was here.

This mattered.

I noticed something.

Some days, the line is about where I went. Some days it’s about how my body feels. Some days it’s barely a sentence at all.

But over time, those lines accumulate into something quietly powerful: not a highlight reel, but a record of presence.

A reminder that my life isn’t just the big decisions or the polished outcomes. It’s the texture of ordinary days. The small realizations. The moments I didn’t know were shaping me.

When I look back, I don’t wish I had written better lines.

I wish I had trusted that the simple ones were enough.

That paying attention—even imperfectly, even inconsistently—was already doing the work.

So I keep coming back.

Not because I’m disciplined.
But because something in me knows this is how I stay on speaking terms with myself.

One line.
Not every day.
But often enough to remember who I am while I’m becoming someone new.

Books have been my most faithful companions.

They waited for me longer than any person ever has. Longer than lovers. Longer than friends. Longer than entire phases of my life. More patiently than a dog, they sat on shelves and nightstands, asking nothing, making no demands—only ready when I was.

I didn’t always treat them well.

As a child, fiction was my portal. I lived inside stories because my real life was small and lonely. Books offered escape, adventure, intimacy, whole worlds I could step into when I didn’t yet know how to step into my own. I loved the smell of them. The weight of them. The promise on their covers—each one a poster for a life that might exist somewhere else.

Then, sometime around my senior year of high school, the books went quiet.

I had a life to live now. Or so I thought. Relationships, identity, survival, responsibility—these things crowded out reading. I didn’t need books anymore. I was busy proving myself, hustling, adapting, enduring. Education replaced learning. Credentials replaced curiosity. Sitting still with a book felt indulgent, even childish.

So I pushed them aside.

Years passed. I still collected books—lined the walls with them, built a home library—but I rarely opened them. I told myself I wanted my life, not more stories of other people’s lives. When I needed escape, Netflix was faster. Easier. Twenty episodes in a row required nothing from me except my presence on the couch.

The books waited.

Eventually, life caught up with me. Not in a dramatic collapse, but in the slow, unmistakable way that comes with time. You realize you’re closer to the horizon than the beginning. You start asking quieter, sharper questions. What matters? What’s left? What am I actually becoming?

That’s when the books came back—but not the ones I’d known before.

This time, I didn’t reach for fiction. I reached for learning.

Not education. Not self-help in its shiny, performative form. Learning as curiosity. As exploration. As agency. Nonfiction didn’t entertain me—it engaged me. It asked me to think. To argue. To underline. To write back in the margins. It treated me like an adult capable of discernment, not a consumer of inspiration.

I wasn’t escaping anymore. I was training.

Writers became my mentors. Martha Beck reminded me it was safe to imagine a north star. Seth Godin gave me permission to let go of what wasn’t working. David Sedaris made me laugh when I’d forgotten how. Audiobooks walked beside me when my attention couldn’t yet sit still. They didn’t judge. They didn’t rush me. They met me where I was.

That’s when I understood something I’d missed my entire life:

Reading well isn’t passive. It’s participatory.

When I read now, I’m not trying to finish a book. I’m trying to engage with a mind. I stop when I need to. I move on when a book has given me what it can. I underline ideas that argue with me. I let go of books that no longer apply. The effort is the reward. The thinking is the point.

Books didn’t save me.

They taught me how to think again.

They showed me that learning doesn’t end with school—and that it doesn’t need permission. That curiosity is not a luxury of youth but a discipline available at any age. That growth isn’t about becoming someone new, but about reclaiming parts of yourself that were set aside to survive.

The books never left.

They were just waiting for me to be ready.

If there’s an invitation here, it’s a simple one:
Let a book find you.
Not the one you should read. The one that won’t leave you alone.
Open it. Argue with it. Learn from it.
And trust that the effort itself is already changing you.

I was working at Sears Trostel Lumber, confident in a way I didn’t yet know how to protect. My supervisor, Jim, a master woodworker and millworker, wore suspenders every day. After a while, I started wearing them too—not as a uniform, exactly, but as a way of aligning myself with the work and seeing myself through his expertise. He never questioned whether I belonged there. He just showed me how things worked—how rough lumber moved through machines, how grain mattered, how patience mattered more.

I didn’t have much formal experience yet, but I trusted my ability to learn. I had dropped out of college not long before—restless, searching, but needing something solid beneath my hands. I may have overstated my abilities to get the job, but I stayed late to earn them. After my shift ended, I practiced often, eager to use the woodshop’s vast assortment of professional tools and machinery. It felt like a playground to me. I wandered among the stacked lumber rising into the rafters, running my hands along the boards, noticing their textures, their colors, their oddities. I learned the subtle differences by smell alone—the sweetness of pine, the heavier, almost spicy scent of hardwoods. I ruined pieces of wood regularly and started again without much concern. The learning was the point. The space itself invited attention, curiosity, and time.

The mill was a world of its own—a factory for wood. Rough boards moved through it methodically, emerging as S4S—surfaced on four sides—clean and square after passing through planers and jointers. Some pieces went further, into the molder, a massive machine with multiple heads, each responsible for shaping a different part of the profile. The wood entered plain and unassuming and came out transformed—casing, crown, base—its new purpose decided by the last pass it made.

There was always scrap—often long drops or discarded pieces from the milling process. We were allowed to use that wood for our own projects, and I did. I especially loved maple, the way its light color and subtle figure held quiet movement, never shouting. I glued the scraps together into panels, butcher-block style, knowing they would never be perfect, knowing I would see every seam. That kind of construction was common for cutting boards, but using it for a cabinet felt like something new—improvised, resourceful, and entirely my own.

That was the wood I used for the tool chest.

One of the biggest challenges when I built the cabinet was learning how to cut box joints. At the time, they felt almost ceremonial, like praying hands—the repeating fingers locking two boards together through rhythm and repetition. Box joints have been around a long time. They emerged out of necessity: a straightforward solution for chests, drawers, and boxes that needed to endure real use. They’re often described as a cousin to dovetails—less ornate, more direct—and I think that’s why I was drawn to them. There’s something honest about a joint that doesn’t try to impress, only to hold and remain consistent.

Mine weren’t clean. Some fingers fit tightly, others less so. But when I dry-fit the pieces and felt them lock together, I understood something important. Strength, I learned, wasn’t about elegance. It was about endurance. And in that moment, that was enough.

When it was done, I didn’t see it as beautiful. I saw it as proof—proof that I could build something useful, solid, respectable.

It followed me through the various spaces of my life. From the earliest days in a small shed with a dirt floor to my current shop—the one that took nearly everything I had to imagine and build with my own hands. The dreaming, the planning, the effort required to bring it into being exhausted us both. When that shop was finally finished, it went quiet. So did I. We were both waiting for the right moment to move forward again.

Looking back now, I can see how much of my life was built this way—functional, durable, designed to survive. I learned to inhabit forms that worked well enough, even when they didn’t fit particularly well. I stayed useful. I stayed employed. I stayed steady.

Somewhere along the way, the cabinet stopped giving me what I needed. I didn’t need space for hand planes and chisels, or room for the tools of a fine master craftsman—a role I once thought I was meant to grow into, even though it never quite fit.

The proving went on longer than it should have. Eventually, the cabinet became something like a stump—spent, no longer wrong, but no longer right either. I had grown into something different. It had given what it could.

A few weeks ago, standing in my office, I realized I needed a bookshelf. I didn’t want to buy one. I wanted to make do with what I already had. I’ve learned, over time, to hesitate before purchasing something when I know I can build it myself—but there is always a quiet negotiation between how much time I have and how much I want the thing finished. Repurposing lives in that tension. It allows something old and tired to be reconsidered, not rushed, and brought back into use without starting over.

I walked into my shop and let my eyes move slowly, not searching so much as listening. When they landed on the cabinet, the answer arrived all at once.

If I could stop seeing it as what it had been, I could finally see what it was capable of now.

The work itself was quiet. Sanding. Filling old hinge holes. Prepping surfaces. The orbital sander hummed steadily in circles across wood that had collected years of shop grime. Fine dust hung in the afternoon light. I’ve never been interested in perfect finishes. I like edges softened by use, surfaces that show where they’ve been. I added a simple base, stained black, to lift the cabinet and ground it visually. The old screw holes from the piano hinges got filled with wood filler tinted darker—not to hide them, but to let them show up honestly. You can still see them if you look closely.

When I stepped back, it wasn’t a tool chest anymore. But it wasn’t pretending to be something else, either.

It had simply been allowed to change function.

For years, I lived inside forms I thought I was supposed to inhabit. When I moved to Colorado at sixteen, I assumed I should ski. I endured the stiff boots, the long rental process, the slow, precarious drives on icy mountain roads, and the crowded slopes. I followed the form because it seemed required, even though my body never felt at home in it.

I often think of a boy I knew in high school—a photographer who stood apart without apology. He moved through the halls with a camera always around his neck, dressed more like an adventurer than a student trying to keep up. I admired him and feared him in equal measure. I wanted that kind of authenticity, but not the isolation that seemed to accompany it. So I adapted. I learned to fit. I learned to survive.

The cabinet didn’t fail at being a tool chest. It simply outlived that purpose. It didn’t need to be discarded. It needed to be reconsidered.

I don’t feel finished. I don’t feel perfected. I feel more willing now—to listen for function instead of forcing form, to allow usefulness to change, to trust that what once helped me survive doesn’t have to determine what comes next.

I’m still building.

I’m just learning that permission can be as structural as necessity.

“Try to love the questions themselves…
and live the questions now.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

In the air, thousands of miles above my eight-year-old head, an airline jet—no bigger than an ant—traversed the sky. I watched it for a few minutes, wondering who might be on board. Where they were going. What drew them skyward today.

When it disappeared, I looked down from where I sat on the red brick wall that lined our driveway. The driveway was empty except for one thing: a huge discarded refrigerator box, which my dad thought I might want before he got rid of it.

This was long before electronic gadgets—before electronic anything, really—aside from a calculator. And the most interesting thing about that was discovering how many bad words you could spell with numbers when you turned them upside down. But this cardboard box was special. Its sheer size alone conjured possibility.

With a little effort, it could become a rocket ship. Or that airplane I’d just watched disappear. Where would I go? I searched my imagination for the only places I really knew—straight out of National Geographic. Maybe the Amazon. But then I remembered the brightly colored tree frogs—adorable and deadly—and decided against the jungle.

The box could be a storefront for Kool-Aid sales. Or a clubhouse. Though try as I might, I suspected only one other person could fit inside with me. I was enjoying the process immensely.

Then I had an idea.

I hopped down from the wall, tipped the box upright, crawled underneath, and let its weight settle back onto the ground. I sat there in the dark, unconcerned by the summer heat that felt warmer inside despite the box creating its own shade.

And I stayed there. For how long, I can’t remember. Long enough that the cardboard smell became familiar. Long enough that my legs fell asleep. Long enough to cycle through a dozen possibilities—fortress, then submarine exploring the Mariana Trench.

The box hummed with potential. Every version of what it could become felt equally real, equally possible. I didn’t need to choose. The choosing, I was beginning to understand, would ruin it. Because once it became one thing, it could no longer be everything else.

So I just sat there. In the dark. Dreaming.

I often think about that afternoon. What did I ever decide to do with that box?

The truth is—I don’t think I ever did anything at all.

No grand conclusion. No finished product. Just me, sitting inside a box for quite a while, imagining everything it could become. And somehow, that was enough. The dreaming itself. The planning. The open-endedness. The refusal to collapse infinite possibilities into a single choice.

Fifty years later, I’m still sitting in cardboard boxes—metaphorical ones—imagining what they could become.

Another new year is just around the corner, and I keep circling the same questions: What will I do this year? What’s my focus? My theme? What should I be working toward?

Questions without clear answers can be exhausting.

So I went looking for inspiration—watching and reading historical commencement addresses from some of the brightest and most celebrated minds. I started with Emerson and ended with Steve Jobs, disappointed by more than a few. My expectations, it turned out, were set impossibly high.

But Jobs’ address stayed with me.

He talked about dropping out of college partly because he didn’t want to drain his parents’ finances. Then, for the next eighteen months, he simply followed his curiosity—dropping into classes that interested him. One of them was typography.

No grand plan. No logic tied to career outcomes. Just intuition. Just showing up to learn about something beautiful for no reason other than it called to him.

He learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces. About varying the space between letter combinations. About what makes great typography great. He described it as beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way science couldn’t capture.

None of it had any practical application to his life. At least not then.

Years later, he would credit that single class as foundational to the design of the Macintosh. “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college,” he said, “the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”

He couldn’t connect the dots looking forward. Only backward.

When I was in high school, I was convinced someone had made a mistake when they placed me in the gifted and talented program. I wasn’t exceptional—I was curious. But I went along with it.

On the first day, the teacher announced, “Learn what interests you.”

That was it.

Hands shot up. Where were the lectures? The tests? The grading criteria?

“No tests. No quizzes. No lectures,” she said patiently.

We were left to follow our own imaginations. That class became one of the most formative experiences of my life.

I became obsessed with handwriting analysis. Not because anyone suggested it. Not because it would lead anywhere. But because something about it sparked alive in me—the idea that personality could reveal itself in the loops and slants of our letters, that we leave traces of ourselves in everything we touch.

I left the school building one afternoon and drove straight to Fort Collins to interview a renowned graphologist. I filled notebooks. I practiced. I studied loops, pressure, and baseline slant until I could glance at someone’s signature and see their whole world.

Did it become my career? No. But it taught me to trust the pull of curiosity even when it seems impractical. Especially then.

People once asked Elon Musk, incredulously, “How did you know how to build a rocket?”

His answer was simple: “I read books.”

This is learning without borders.

Finding our life’s purpose—or even just the purpose of the next year, the next season, or the next day—often comes down to trusting ourselves to know what to do next. That knowing doesn’t come from logic alone. It’s born from emotion. From listening to the body. From paying attention to what stirs the heart.

Whatever I’m doing, I’ve learned to do it with intention. To give it my best. Maybe to finish. Maybe not. To know when to pivot.

This applies to books. Projects. Careers.

The compass I follow is my own true north—my longings, my curiosities, the sparks that invite me toward something new and perhaps a little foolish.

When we are actively participating, we are learning. From mistakes. From small wins. From however we choose to define success. And if we are learning, we are growing—into a purpose that was already planted within us.

Growth feels especially important now. Not slowing down as I approach sixty. Not quietly expiring like a brown-spotted banana with a limited shelf life.

Learning is fertilizer for the soul. I learn best when I’m creating something—anything—as long as it matters to me.

Most learning is free. It’s as individual as a fingerprint. There is no single template. No instruction manual. It’s free-solo climbing—like Alex Honnold scaling El Capitan without ropes. Some lessons come at a cost, and we learn the hard way, sometimes many times over. But when we want something enough, the effort it takes makes the reward that much sweeter.

You don’t always need a certificate or a degree to be credible. A piece of paper. The same kind that says you’re married or that you were born. Useful, yes—but not the whole story.

Real power doesn’t come from control over others—from gatekeeping with credentials. It comes from knowledge. From a brain that keeps changing, expanding, and reaching beyond what we once thought possible.

So here are my ingredients for the best new year of your life: Curiosity. Imagination. And the willingness to show up exactly where you are and grow from there.

Raise your champagne glass with me. Lift your chin.

To growth. To learning. To creation. And to all that matters.

Find your cardboard box. Sit in it awhile. See what it could become.

That’s enough for now.

That might be everything.

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Today is the winter solstice.

The darkest day of the year.

For most of human history, this day mattered. People noticed when the light stopped retreating. They marked it with fires, rituals, songs, stories—not because everything suddenly became better, but because something subtle shifted. The days would grow longer again. Slowly. Almost imperceptibly. But reliably.

We’ve lost some of that attentiveness. We rush past this day with shopping lists and productivity goals and year-end checklists, forgetting that our bodies still understand darkness and light, contraction and expansion.

And yet—here we are. At the hinge.

I’ve been thinking a lot about anxiety lately. About how it isn’t always caused by what is, but by what we imagine might be. Humans are strange that way. We can build futures entirely out of language—sentences, images, stories—and then live inside them as if they’re real.

Sometimes those imagined futures become so painful that they feel unbearable. Not because they exist, but because we keep rehearsing them.

The mind is powerful like that.

But here’s the other side of the coin: the same capacity that allows us to suffer through imagined futures also allows us to create different ones.

This is where creativity enters—not as art or productivity, but as a nervous system state. When we are creating, imagining, sensing, describing—we are not catastrophizing. We are not bracing. We are inhabiting possibility.

And possibility doesn’t have to stretch ten years into the future.

In fact, for many of us, ten years is too far. Too abstract. Too loaded with “what ifs.”

But six months?

Six months is different.

Six months is the distance from the winter solstice to the summer solstice—from the longest night to the longest day. From contraction to expansion. From inward to outward.

You don’t need a detailed life plan to cross that distance.

You need a direction.

A one-degree shift.

Instead of asking, What will my life look like in ten years?
Try asking something gentler, more grounded:

• How do I want my days to feel by June?
  

• What do I want to be moving toward, not fixing?
  

• What kind of light am I slowly walking into?
  

And then—this is the important part—write it down.

Not as goals. Not as bullet points. But as a description.

Where are you, six months from now?
What time of day is it?
What can you hear?
What does the air feel like on your skin?
What are you doing that you’re not doing now?
What are you no longer carrying?

This isn’t magical thinking. It’s neurological.

When you put language around a future that feels safe, alive, and meaningful—even if it’s incomplete—you give your nervous system a different structure to live inside. One that doesn’t rely on fear to motivate change.

Words can torture us.

But they can also guide us home.

As we close out this year, I’m not interested in resolutions that demand reinvention or perfection. I’m interested in orientation. In choosing a direction while standing in the dark, trusting that the light will return because it always has.

The solstice reminds us that growth doesn’t begin with brightness. It begins with noticing. With pausing. With lighting a small fire and saying, This is where I am. This is where I’m headed.

Six months from now, the days will be long again.

What would it look like to start walking toward that light—one sentence at a time?

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Author’s note: I reference a moment around the Santa tradition not to criticize it universally, but to explore how unexamined rituals can affect truth-telling and trust—especially for children who take words seriously.

This year, I’m not interested in surviving the holidays.

What I’m wondering instead is whether it’s possible to actually thrive during them—not because of Christmas, but in spite of it. Not by perfecting traditions or managing expectations better, but by choosing something truer. Something that fits.

For a long time, I assumed the dread I felt around the holidays was a personal failure. If I just tried harder—leaned into gratitude, softened my edges, showed up with a better attitude—it would all fall into place. But year after year, the same heaviness returned. The same sense of performing a role I didn’t audition for. The same low-grade anxiety dressed up as festivity.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Out of Africa. About Isak Dinesen writing herself into a life far from everything familiar—not because she was escaping life, but because she was finally inside it. Early in the book, she describes waking in the highlands with a feeling of internal rightness: “Here I am, where I ought to be.” That line has stayed with me for years. Not because it’s romantic, but because it names something rare—a sense of alignment that doesn’t require explanation.

I don’t think I want her life. What I want is what she represents: distance from pretense. A life organized around truth rather than performance.

Christmas, as we practice it, asks for a lot of performance. Gift-giving is the clearest example. We buy things people don’t really want and receive things we don’t really need. Money circulates and returns, often landing right back where it started, except now wrapped in obligation. Someone opens a box. Someone watches their face. Someone hopes they’ve gotten it right. Everyone pretends.

I understand now why my dad hated receiving gifts. We were spending money he had given us on things he didn’t want, then asking him to perform gratitude. I didn’t see it then. I see it clearly now.

What bothers me isn’t generosity. It’s the expectation that generosity must look a certain way.

One of the moments that really shifted my thinking about all of this came through Jaycee, my granddaughter, and through Santa. Like many parents—or grandparents as caregivers—I went along with the tradition. It seemed harmless. Magical, even. Children believe for a while, then they don’t. Everyone moves on.

But that isn’t what happened.

When Jaycee realized Santa wasn’t real, she wasn’t disappointed. She was shaken. Not because the magic was gone, but because the adults she trusted had lied to her. “How can I trust what you say again?” she asked, very calmly, very logically.

I remember standing there, stunned. “Everyone does it” suddenly felt flimsy. Tradition didn’t feel like a justification. I tried to explain why we’d done it, but the truth was uncomfortable: we hadn’t really thought it through. We’d followed along because that’s what people do.

That conversation with Jaycee opened something wider. How often do we participate in rituals without asking who they actually serve—or what they cost? How often do we confuse tradition with goodness, familiarity with truth?

For some people, this kind of pretending is easy. For others—especially those who take words seriously—it can land as betrayal. Once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it. Christmas stopped feeling neutral. It became symbolic of a larger pattern: smiling through discomfort, honoring expectations that don’t fit, suppressing our own nervous systems in the name of togetherness.

And here’s the part that’s hard to say out loud: the very things people insist are essential to the holidays—crowds, gatherings, emotional intensity, forced closeness—are often the most dysregulating for me. What others call warmth, my body sometimes experiences as threat. Not because I don’t care, but because I do.

Dinesen writes about the contrast between civilized restlessness and the steadiness of the natural world—about how proximity to wildness restores an internal quiet that modern life erodes. I feel that tension acutely this time of year. Commercialized December doesn’t invite stillness; it demands momentum. Cheer. Noise. Output. But my body and my spirit are asking for the opposite.

This year, I said no. Not dramatically. Not angrily. Just clearly. I’m not coming over for Christmas. The disappointment followed, as it always does. I felt it in my chest. I felt the familiar pull to explain, soften, reconsider.

I stayed anyway, with the discomfort still unresolved.

What I am choosing instead feels quieter, and maybe that’s the point. I love the lights, especially at night. I love the dark, sacred feeling of winter evenings. I love the cold when I’m inside, a fire going, a book open. Comfortable clothes. Simple food. Long pauses. I love the idea of the winter solstice more than the holiday itself—the permission to rest, to turn inward, to let the year close gently rather than with a bang.

I’ve been trying to reclaim December as a time for reflection rather than performance. For looking back, not rushing ahead. For honoring the dark instead of pretending everything should be bright and joyful. Planning for the new year not as a productivity exercise, but as a quiet conversation with myself.

I’ve come to believe that sorrow becomes more bearable once we can put it into a story. Maybe that’s what I’m doing here—re-storying the season. Not erasing its meaning, but choosing one that feels honest. One that doesn’t require me to pretend.

This doesn’t mean I’ve figured it all out. I still feel the pull of guilt. I still don’t want to hurt anyone. But I’m learning that disappointing others is sometimes the cost of not abandoning myself.

I don’t need to run off to Africa to live a life that fits. I don’t even need to escape entirely. I just need to stop pretending. To choose honesty over obligation. To let winter be winter.

This year, thriving doesn’t look like celebration. It looks like alignment. And for the first time in a long while, that feels like enough.

I’m curious how others are navigating December this year.

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References
Dinesen, Isak. Out of Africa. Modern Library Edition, 1992, p. 4.

If you’ve ever felt pulled between the life you have and the life you long for, this one is for you. It’s about caretaking, identity, midlife reinvention, and how writing can become an act of rebellion.

I didn’t mean to start writing about the life I wanted.

It just happened—slipped out in a message to an old friend, the kind you can tell the truth to without bracing for judgment. I told her I felt like I’d been living inside a decade-long midlife crisis, some volatile mix of grief, urgency, and that strange nesting instinct that kicks in right before something big breaks open.

My dad’s death cracked something in me—not in the falling-apart way, but in the wake-up-and-pay-attention way. Suddenly, I felt an almost physical pressure to get my whole life sorted out, as if clarity were a room I needed to clean before anyone came over. But the harder I tried to simplify, the more complicated everything became. I felt like someone trying to hold two different lives in one pair of hands: the life my family recognizes, and the life I can feel rising beneath it like a quiet rebellion.

It’s exhausting, trying to reinvent yourself while still maintaining the version everyone expects.

And that’s when it occurred to me:
Maybe I could start writing the life I want, even if I can’t live it yet.
Maybe writing could be the place where I’m finally allowed to steer.

The Weight of the Everyday

I watch friends glide into retirement or reinvention with something that looks suspiciously like freedom. Meanwhile, my “retirement plan” involves a 32-year-old daughter navigating the fragile terrain of mental health—psychotic breaks, resets, rebuilding—and a 13-year-old granddaughter entering adolescence with her own fresh set of challenges. It’s been a 30-year loop of What’s for dinner? Where are you going? Who needs what?

Motherhood, grandmotherhood, caretaking—whatever you call it—has a way of consuming the edges of your life until you can’t tell where you end and responsibility begins.

I grew up swearing I’d never have kids. Not because I didn’t love them, but because I understood what they cost. And yet here I am, hinged to two generations at once. It’s not regret. It’s reality. It’s the gravity I live under.

And gravity, as any writer knows, is what gives a story weight.

The Unlived Life

There is a life I want—quiet, spacious, creative, self-directed. A life with long mornings, solitude, a bike trail stretching out in front of me, a room filled with books and notebooks, and the sound of my own thoughts.

I don’t resent the life I have. But I can feel the unlived one hovering just to the left of it, like a parallel universe that never quite had the chance to solidify.

Writers have always worked from this place.

Joan Didion wrote to discover her own patterns. Cheryl Strayed wrote the version of herself she needed in order to survive. Mary Oliver slipped into the life she wanted one walk at a time. Anne Lamott wrote her way toward a center she could never quite reach in real life.

Most of us live two lives: the one we can’t escape and the one we secretly long for. Writing is the bridge between them.

Writing as Rebellion

People think journaling is gentle. It’s not. It’s a form of protest.

On the page, I’m not a caretaker. I’m not making endless meals, solving crises, or tracking moods like weather patterns. I’m not responsible for forecasting the next storm.

On the page, I get to inhabit a version of myself I barely have time to meet in real life—the thoughtful one, the intentional one, the woman who stops long enough to feel what she actually feels.

Writing is the only place where I get to choose.

In real life, I’m often reacting.
On the page, I’m creating.

And creation is freedom.

The Backseat Driver

When I told my friend I felt like a backseat driver in my own life, I realized how deeply true that was. I’ve spent decades navigating from behind the front seat—offering direction, managing emergencies, keeping everyone moving—while the steering wheel remains just out of reach.

But writing lets me grab it, even if only in short, stolen bursts.

It’s the quiet revolution of a woman who has spent her whole life being needed: the decision to need something for herself.

And here’s the unexpected part: the more I write the life I want, the more I sense small pieces of it drifting toward me in real life. Not the full picture, but glimpses. A morning walk without interruption. A burst of clarity while washing dishes. A day that feels like it was actually mine.

The unlived life isn’t an escape. It’s a compass.

Every time I write, I’m asking myself: What would my life look like if I were the one choosing?

A Letter to the Other Women in the Backseat

If you’re reading this and recognizing something familiar in it, this part is for you:

You are allowed to want a life of your own.
You are allowed to long for solitude, for creativity, for purpose separate from the people who rely on you.
You are allowed to imagine the life you want, even if you can’t live it yet.

Writing it doesn’t make you selfish.
Writing it makes you honest.

Imagining the life you want isn’t disloyalty. It’s the first step toward becoming the person you were always meant to be—before obligation, circumstance, and survival rearranged the map.

We don’t have to escape our lives to reclaim them.
We have to start telling the truth about the parts we’ve postponed.

And sometimes the simplest truth of all is this:

We’ve been in the backseat long enough.
It’s time to write our way toward the wheel.

If this piece resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you.
What part of your life feels “unlived” right now?
Share your thoughts in the comments—I read every one.

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Photo by Amr Taha™ on Unsplash

It’s 4 AM, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the wind is howling— or maybe it’s coming from somewhere deep inside me.

My family is asleep. The house is quiet, but my mind is not. My Sunday deadline is pressing in on me, and I have nothing. Nothing polished. Nothing to show. Nothing resembling “my best work.”

Just me, a cold cup of Earl Grey, and the awareness that time is up.

Yesterday, also at 4 AM, I slid into my desk with this hopeful feeling—Black Friday, half-off MasterClass, a little surge of dopamine because learning is my guilty pleasure. Not shopping. Not splurging. Learning.

I wanted a hit of Margaret Atwood teaching craft. A few notes from Martha Stewart about building a business. A clean dopamine rush of “I’m improving.”

But the moment I sat down, I realized: I can’t learn anything unless I take notes. And I can’t take notes because I’m in the middle of rebuilding how I take notes. The index-card system. The notecards. The Evernote migration. All of it.

So I sat with my headphones on, ready for the online course to begin, and minutes turned into hours, and suddenly my entire desk was covered in half-finished index cards— not even the real notes I wanted to take, just notes about the system for taking notes.

This is neurodivergent entrepreneurship in one photograph: the brilliant idea inside the stunningly chaotic process.

The sun set. The day folded in on itself. Another unfinished project sprawled across my desk like a crime scene.

And here I am again. Saying, “Next week I’ll get on schedule. Next week, the structure will create freedom. Next week, the system will work.”

But today? At deadline minus 28 hours? I can’t see the advantage anywhere.

When the “Superpowers” Go Dark

I know exactly why I’m off the rails: No walking.

Temperatures on the Colorado plains are dropping below freezing, and I was supposed to renew my gym membership so I could walk the indoor track. But the thought of fluorescent lights, bouncing basketballs, and the forced socializing of well-intentioned older walkers makes my skin crawl. I wish the earbuds were enough. They’re not. My brain overhears everything.

People chirp “Good morning!” as we pass. Someone tells me their name. Then another. Now I’m repeating names in my head over and over so I don’t forget, and a new anxiety fills me, embalms my body and mind. I don’t hear my audiobook. I don’t see my footsteps. I am in complete awareness and complete overwhelm.

So I don’t go. And every year, December comes early—bringing overwhelm with her suitcase.

The “superpowers” go dark:

Time-blocking becomes obsessive meandering.

Writing for thinking becomes therapy-by-exorcism.

Emotional clarity takes PTO.

Creativity and focus sit in the back row with popcorn, kicking up their feet, saying: “This is going to take a while. Might as well enjoy the show.”

And then my mentors start chiming in:

David Sedaris, whining, “Jesus fucking Christ, get writing already!”

Martha Beck whispers gently, “It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

The space heater is too hot or too cold, because of course it is.

And the deadlines? They’re knocking like cops on a drug raid.

I whisper, “It’s a holiday weekend, for God’s sake,” but I know the deal I made. Flexibility isn’t free. All those off-days come to collect. Time’s up.

The Pilot Who Won’t Show Up

This is entrepreneurship with a neurodivergent brain:

You’re on the plane, buckled in, ready. You bought the damn ticket. You’re on the tarmac. You’re supposed to be flying. But the pilot? MIA.

And there you sit, roasting in your seat, thinking: I’m going to be late. Again.

I glance around my desk—my beautiful, maddening desk. Index cards everywhere. Multi-colored pens. Highlighters. Books in piles. A wooden sign reminding me: You Got This! (A lie, but a sweet one.)

There’s nothing to do but wait it out. Reheat the tea. Hope clarity eventually wanders in like a stray cat.

But here’s the secret: even in the chaos, something is working.

Even in the unraveling, something is forming.

My fingers start flying. Freewriting turns into a rope thrown into the dark.

Somewhere deep inside the mess, Logic pulls up a chair and says, “Maybe you should add a framework…”

“Shut up,” I whisper. “Not yet. I need this first.”

And I do.

I need to empty the attic. Clear out all the dust and cobwebs. Make room for something productive to breathe.

My fingers keep moving. The words keep coming. This is the hand drawing the hand. This is M.C. Escher in real time.

I’m not writing an essay yet. I’m writing my way toward the essay. I’m writing my way toward clarity. I’m writing my way toward the pilot seat.

“It doesn’t matter whether you call yourself a ‘writer.’ It doesn’t matter if you’re a singer or a traffic engineer. Write more. Write about your audience, your craft, your challenges. Write about the trade-offs, the industry, and your genre. Write about what’s funny and what’s not. Write to clarify. Write to challenge yourself.”
— Seth Godin, The Practice

The Turn: What If This Isn’t the Flaw, But the Blueprint?

Somewhere between the howling wind and the deadline breathing down my neck, the question rose out of the chaos like a flare:

How is any of this an advantage?

All this starting-and-stopping. All this emotional weather. All this rewiring, reorganizing, overthinking, underfunctioning, overwhelming mess.

How does this build anything? How does this make me a better entrepreneur? A better creator? A better human?

And then, like a whisper—or maybe like a punch—the truth hit:

This isn’t the flaw. This is the blueprint.

The chaos isn’t evidence that the neurodivergent mind is broken. It’s evidence that it’s working—just not in the linear, factory-model way the world keeps insisting is “right.”

I don’t think in tidy bullet points. I think in constellations.

I don’t move in straight lines. I move in spirals: circling, deepening, widening, connecting threads no one else sees until suddenly—boom—the pattern reveals itself.

I don’t step over the mess. I sift through it until the truth rises to the surface like gold flakes in a mining pan.

And finally, after decades of thinking something was wrong with me, I can say it plainly:

Neurodivergent entrepreneurs aren’t succeeding despite their differences. They’re succeeding because of them.

The world just hasn’t been taught to recognize the genius that doesn’t look like efficiency. The brilliance that doesn’t look like consistency. The creativity that doesn’t look like productivity.

The world prefers tidy. We prefer true.

The Five Advantages (The Real Ones—The Ones You Actually Live)

Here’s the truth I’ve been circling toward through all the mess, all the freewriting, all the self-interrogation:

Neurodivergent brains are built for entrepreneurship.

Not despite the chaos. Because of it.

Let me show you what I mean—not through platitudes, but through the actual lived experience of this weekend.

1. Pattern Recognition = The Index Card Revelation

Black Friday. I sat down to learn. Instead, I spent twelve hours building a note-taking system.

On the surface? Total derailment. Classic ADHD procrastination.

But here’s what was really happening: My brain recognized a pattern—my old system was broken and couldn’t handle the volume of what I was trying to learn. Instead of just pushing through with crappy notes like a neurotypical brain might, mine said: “Stop. Fix the infrastructure first. Then move forward.”

This looks like procrastination. It’s actually precision.

Neurodivergent brains don’t tolerate broken systems. We see the cracks. We see the inefficiencies. We see where the process is bleeding time and energy, and we cannot move forward until we fix it.

This is pattern recognition. This is why we redesign workflows that everyone else just accepts. This is why we see opportunities others miss.

We’re not distracted by the note-taking system. We’re diagnosing the meta-problem.

2. Deep Focus = The Freewriting Flight

Right now—this very moment—as I write this, I am in hyperfocus.

My fingers are flying. The world has disappeared. I’m not aware of my cold tea, the wind, or the deadline. I am inside the work.

This state isn’t available on command. I can’t schedule it. I can’t force it.

But when it shows up? It’s rocket fuel.

Three hours pass like fifteen minutes. Five thousand words appear like I’m channeling them from somewhere else. The hand draws the hand draws the hand.

Neurotypical entrepreneurs work in steady increments. Neurodivergent entrepreneurs work in bursts of complete immersion.

We don’t clock in and clock out. We disappear into the work and emerge on the other side holding something we didn’t know we were capable of creating.

This is not a bug. This is the feature.

3. Intuitive Problem-Solving = The Freewriting Method Itself

Here’s what I didn’t know when I started writing at 4 AM: I wasn’t writing an essay. I was clearing the attic.

All the dust. All the cobwebs. All the tangled thoughts that were clogging the machinery.

I didn’t outline. I didn’t plan. I just wrote.

And somewhere in the mess of words—somewhere between the howling wind and the deadline—the structure began to reveal itself.

The essay was always there. I just had to write my way toward it.

This is how neurodivergent brains solve problems: We don’t start with the answer and work backward. We start with the chaos and work forward until the pattern emerges.

We trust the process even when we can’t see the destination.

We write the mess. We live the mess. We sift through the mess until the gold separates from the dirt.

And when we finally see it? We see it all at once. Complete. Clear. True.

But here’s the thing most people don’t understand about freewriting:

It’s not just for writers.

I use this same technique when I’m doing my CFO work. When I’m organizing my week. When I need to know my priorities. When I’m stuck on a business decision. When the overwhelm is winning.

It all starts with writing.

Journal writing. Brain dumping. Freewriting.

All of it is the precursor for everything else that comes next—not just more writing, but clarity. Direction. Action.

The freewriting isn’t the end product. It’s the diagnostic tool. It’s the attic-clearing. It’s how I find out what I actually think underneath all the noise.

And once I know what I think? Everything else becomes possible.

4. Hypersensitivity as Diagnostic Precision = The Gym Scene

The reason I can’t go to the gym isn’t weakness. It’s not social anxiety in the traditional sense. It’s not even introversion.

It’s this: My nervous system processes more information than everyone else’s.

I hear everything. The basketballs. The squeaking shoes. The distant conversations echo off the walls.

I feel everything. The fluorescent lights. The texture of the air. The energy of every person who passes me on that track.

I notice everything. The older man who always wears the red jacket. The woman with the yoga mat. The names people tell me that I now have to remember or risk being rude.

Most people filter 90% of this out. I don’t.

This is exhausting. This is overwhelming. This is also why I write with such specificity. Why I notice the details that others miss. Why my metaphors land.

Hypersensitivity isn’t a malfunction. It’s a diagnostic tool running at maximum capacity.

I pick up patterns, shifts, and undercurrents that others don’t even register. I see what’s not being said. I feel what’s underneath the surface.

This makes everyday life harder. But it makes creative work richer. It makes business instincts sharper. It makes storytelling visceral.

The same sensitivity that makes the gym unbearable makes my work unforgettable.

5. Iteration as Evolution = The Decade of “Next Week”

Every Sunday for the past decade, I’ve said, “Next week I’ll get on schedule.”

On the surface, this looks like failure. Like, I can’t follow through. Like I’m stuck in an endless loop of good intentions and broken promises.

But here’s what’s really happening: I’m testing.

Every week, I gather data on what works and what doesn’t. Every restart is a refinement. Every “failure” is feedback.

Neurotypical entrepreneurs follow the plan. Neurodivergent entrepreneurs evolve the plan.

We don’t see the system as fixed. We see it as living, breathing, adaptable.

And yes, this means we restart a lot. Yes, this means we pivot constantly. Yes, this means the path is never straight.

But it also means that when we finally land on something that works? It works for us. Not for the template. Not for the guru’s framework. Not for the productivity hack du jour.

For us. For our actual brain. For our actual life.

This isn’t indecision. This is iteration. This is how innovation actually happens.

This is the Outlier Advantage in motion: we don’t repeat the week— we evolve the week.

The Real Truth About Flexibility

So yes, I’m working this weekend. And yes, the deadline is breathing down my neck. And yes, I spent Black Friday building a note-taking system instead of taking notes.

But here’s what else is true:

I love what I’m doing.

I’m not punching a clock. I’m not answering to a boss who doesn’t understand how my brain works. I’m not forcing myself into a 9-to-5 structure that would slowly suffocate me.

The flexibility isn’t just a nice perk. It’s the whole point.

It’s the air I breathe. It’s the reason this works at all.

Because neurodivergent brains don’t thrive in rigid structures, we thrive in responsive structures. Structures that bend. Structures that adapt. Structures that allow for the 4 AM freewriting session that saves the whole damn week.

The chaos you think disqualifies you? That’s your reconnaissance mission.

The overwhelm you think is weakness? That’s your sensitivity picking up more data than average minds can perceive.

The constant restarting you think is a failure? That’s iteration, evolution, refinement.

The spirals you think are distractions? That’s how you get to the truth.

The Pilot Was Always You

The pilot didn’t show up because I am the pilot. I’ve always been the pilot. I just kept waiting for someone else to tell me I was qualified to fly.

The freewriting isn’t the backup plan. It’s the plan.

The mess isn’t the problem. It’s the workshop.

And the deadline? I’m going to make it.

Not because I figured out how to think like everyone else. But because I finally stopped trying to.

The hand draws the hand. The words write the words. The neurodivergent brain builds the business that only it could build.

Different. True. Better.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to reheat my tea one more time and hit publish.

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When I was a kid, the world was smaller.

Information arrived in a single stream: the 11 p.m. news. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Weather, local events, and one international headline. Then it was over. The anchor signed off. The world fell silent again. And I—without knowing it—was protected by that quiet.

Today, the world never turns off. It invades every screen we own. Every headline screams. Every swipe demands attention. Every platform asks your brain to decide, react, absorb, evaluate, and choose.

It’s no wonder so many of us—especially the neurodivergent—walk around feeling overwhelmed, underslept, and overstimulated.

This is Daniel Kahneman’s world brought to life:

• System 1 — fast, reactive, impulsive.

• System 2 — slow, thoughtful, deliberate.

The problem? Modern life forces us to live in System 1 all the time. We are drowning in signals designed for speed, not depth. And System 2—our slow mind, our wise mind—barely gets air.

The Big Idea

If you don’t consciously choose what to ignore, the world will choose for you.

For neurodivergent brains, this choice isn’t just helpful—it’s survival. Our processing is deep. Our attention is immersive. Our nervous systems are porous. We don’t skim life; we absorb it.

So the question becomes: How do you protect your slow thinking in a fast-thinking world?

Kahneman doesn’t say this explicitly, but his ideas make the answer clear: You filter life not by limiting yourself, but by not engaging with noise in the first place.

This is a subtle but powerful distinction.

Most advice sounds like:

• “Set boundaries.”

• “Limit screen time.”

• “Stop checking your phone.”

• “Cut down on news.”

For neurodivergent people, these instructions often backfire because they register as demands—and demands create resistance, guilt, or reactive avoidance.

But non-engagement is different. It’s simply choosing not to enter the arena.

My Experiment in Non-Engagement

I stopped watching the news altogether.

Not because I’m uninformed. Not because I’m in denial. But because the engagement was the real problem, not the information.

Now, I scan headlines. If something requires my attention, I’ll read deeper. Otherwise: not my circus, not my monkeys.

I also don’t engage with celebrity gossip (never have). And lately, I’ve been asking: What else can I choose not to engage with?

There was a moment when I thought, ‘Should I remove every TV from the house?’ I admire people who can do that. But my reality is different: I live with other humans who watch television. I love a good documentary. And on nights when my thoughts get loud, TV becomes medication—a soft distraction that keeps the dark from spiraling.

My guilty pleasure? Ancient Aliens. I try to stay awake for it. I never make it past five minutes.

Something to Consider

Here’s an idea worth trying:

Pick one source of information overload and decide not to engage with it.

Not limit. Not to fight with. Not resist. Just…don’t enter.

Maybe it’s:

• Political commentary

• Endless productivity hacks

• Celebrity scandals

• Group texts

• Opinion threads

• Algorithmic outrage

• Constant “breaking news”

Choose one. Let it fall away. Create space for your slow mind to breathe again.

Your brain will thank you. Your nervous system will thank you. Your future self will thank you.

What’s one thing you’re considering letting go of—or what’s already helped you create more space? I’d love to learn from you. Hit reply and let me know.

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I was a district manager for a drug store chain, responsible for asset and loss prevention across multiple stores and states. No private office. Just constant motion: on the road, in meetings, answering to higher-ups about financials filled with numbers I couldn’t justify. My job was built around conflict. Confronting employees about theft, investigating missing pharmacy drugs, and interviewing people using techniques designed to extract confessions.

I was capable. Smart. Determined. This was what success looked like—leadership, power, upward mobility. I told myself I wanted those things.

But that day in Chicago, my system shut down in front of the whole C-suite ensemble, which thrived in these environments.

My body was speaking up for me when I wasn’t brave enough—or awake enough—to listen.

I quit shortly after.

For months, I sat in my home library unable to function. I did the only thing I could do: I read. Book after book after book. My escape. My regulation. My place of coherence after months of overstimulation.

What looked like failure was actually my nervous system saying, “This environment is incompatible with your brain.”

If you’ve ever felt this—if you’ve ever forced yourself into roles that required constant performance, constant conflict, constant stimulation, and then watched yourself break—you already know what I’m talking about.

You’re not broken, even though your ego might tell you otherwise.

You’re an outlier in a world built for averages.

And outliers operate differently. Neither good nor bad. It just is what it is. But like most things, it can be an advantage if you let it.

The Pattern I Couldn’t See

This wasn’t the first time. It was a pattern.

In high school, I resonated deeply with Ponyboy and the greasers in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders—but I didn’t want to be seen as one of them. I kept a soft spot in my heart for people struggling to fit in, but I told myself I was different. I can do this. I will do this. I will be successful in the ways the world defines success.

As a young adult, I’d been fine in business management—working quietly, solving problems, helping people. But then came the promotions. More social responsibility. More pressing deadlines. And then the overwhelm would bring me to my knees. I’d have to quit.

I’d do a 180. This isn’t me. I don’t care about money. I want to work alone. Do art. Create beautiful things in a studio.

I’d flip-flop back and forth across my life—from the business push my brain knew I should be doing, to the creative retreat my nervous system was begging for.

What I really wanted was to be like the artist in the movie, Cast Away. Not Tom Hanks stranded on the island—that was too much fear, too much isolation. I didn’t want to be an outcast. I wanted what this woman had: autonomy within the everyday world. The sculptor in her barn, working alone in overalls while sunlight streamed through the cracks in the boards, illuminating the dust circling in the air. The simplicity. The control over her own days.

But in my mind, there wasn’t any respect in that. No leadership accolades to prove my capabilities. Ok...and no big money—read between the lines: resorts and retreats in far-off lands packed full of adventure.

So I kept pushing. Kept overriding. Kept forcing myself into roles that required exactly what drained me most.

Until my nervous system finally said, “Enough.”

What I Didn’t Know Then

For years, I thought this pattern was my personal failing. A character flaw. A lack of discipline or grit.

Then I became a grandmother and primary caregiver to Jaycee Iris. My sweet girl with high-functioning autism, PDA (pathological demand avoidance or what many prefer, persistent demand for autonomy), anxiety, and Tourette’s. She is an amplified version of myself.

She has opened my eyes to learning and living from a new perspective. Not as a deficit, but as different. And brilliant. Her filters are constantly on high alert. Watching her is like watching my younger self with the volume turned up.

I wanted to know more about how to help her. And by default, help myself. And maybe you, too.

So I started researching neurodivergence, introversion, and how different nervous systems process and succeed in the world.

And that’s when everything changed.

The Research Is Clear

Even if corporate culture hasn’t caught up yet.

Companies like SAP, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Microsoft have redesigned their hiring processes to include neurodivergent professionals. The results? Higher productivity. Sharper quality. Expanded innovation. Better team engagement.

Why? Because neurodivergent individuals often excel in pattern recognition, attention to detail, and complex problem-solving, they are valuable assets in innovative environments.

Let me put this in plain language:

We notice things other people miss. While someone else is looking at the big picture, we’re seeing the crack in the foundation, the inconsistency in the data, the person whose body language doesn’t match their words. We catch details that matter.

We think in connections, not just categories. Most people see a problem in isolation. We see how it’s connected to three other issues, two past experiences, and a pattern we noticed six months ago. This isn’t overthinking—it’s systems thinking. And it’s how you solve complex problems.

When we care about something, we go all in. This is called hyperfocus, and it’s our superpower. When something captures our interest, we don’t just learn about it—we become the expert. We read everything. We connect all the dots. We see possibilities nobody else sees.

We create solutions because we have to. The world wasn’t built for our brains, so we’ve spent our whole lives figuring out workarounds, shortcuts, and better ways to do things. This makes us natural innovators—not because we’re trying to be clever, but because we’re trying to survive.

We’re comfortable with depth. Speed wins in meetings and on tests. But depth? That’s where real understanding lives. And depth requires the kind of sustained, focused thinking that comes naturally to us when we’re given the space to do it.

This isn’t theory. This is research-backed, company-tested, and lived-experience-proven.

The world rewards speed. But understanding requires slowness. Insight requires depth. Original thinking requires a brain that doesn’t automatically follow the crowd.

That’s the outlier advantage.

RESEARCH NOTE:
Awareness and active engagement with neurodivergent strengths are correlated with increased well-being, better emotional regulation, and improved life satisfaction in individuals with autism and ADHD.

The Three Pillars: How Outliers Self-Regulate

Through years of research and lived experience, I’ve come to understand three non-negotiable practices that enable neurodivergent brains to operate at full capacity.

Neurodivergent people don’t need more discipline. They need regulation.

Walking regulates the body.

Story regulates the heart.

Writing regulates the mind.

These are not productivity hacks. They’re physiological requirements.

Walking

Movement is not optional. Movement regulates.

For outliers, walking is often the difference between clarity and collapse. It processes emotion, resets the nervous system, and reduces overwhelm when demands pile up.

I don’t walk as exercise—though that’s a side benefit. I walk as meditation. For someone with ADHD, a sitting meditation can be a real challenge.

Quiet audiobooks or music are helpful. They provide enough stimulation to steady the mind while allowing enough space to process thoughts quietly—just enough additional stimulus to prevent boredom and distraction.

Walking meditation is beneficial for neurodivergent minds because the bilateral rhythm of walking (left-right-left) calms the nervous system, much like EMDR or rhythmic tapping. The steady movement gives the mind a gentle sensory anchor, interrupting overwhelm and rumination while restoring clarity, focus, and emotional balance.

Walking isn’t exercise. It’s how I think. It’s how I prepare for difficult conversations. It’s how I recover from them.

Engaging in Story

Story is not entertainment for neurodivergent brains. It’s infrastructure.

Books and movies provide something our nervous systems desperately need: a predictable structure that helps us make sense of an unpredictable world.

For many neurodivergent minds, story structure acts like an external executive function system. Narrative gives us beginning → middle → end. Stakes → cause and effect → resolution. Character motivations and predictable arcs. This provides the coherence and organization that our brains crave but often struggle to impose on real life.

Story also regulates. When you’re immersed in a book or film, you’re in a controlled environment with predictable sensory input, one focus at a time, and emotional distance with emotional payoff. This allows the nervous system to downshift. It’s why many of us rewatch the same movies or reread the same books—it’s not just comfort, it’s regulation.

But perhaps most importantly, story helps us process feelings that are hard to access directly. Many neurodivergent people struggle with identifying emotions (alexithymia) or experience emotional flooding. Narrative provides a safe, indirect container. You can feel through a character what you might not be able to verbalize yourself.

Books are more than information. They are companions, friends, and mentors. Conversation partners that don’t require small talk—something most introverts and neurodivergent people despise.

Books let you go deep from page one—no social performance. No noise. Only clarity, frameworks, and the minds of diverse thinkers.

FROM HELEN HOANG, AUTISTIC AUTHOR:
“Autism is not a processing error. It’s a different operating system.”

Story provides the structure that lets our operating system run smoothly.

The Audiobook Advantage

Something that might help those with focus issues: utilize audiobooks while reading the text.

Reading with an audiobook playing at the same time is one of the most effective tools for neurodivergent readers because it reduces cognitive load while increasing comprehension. Instead of relying solely on the eyes to decode text, track lines, maintain pacing, and sustain attention, the audio provides an external guide—a steady rhythm, tone, and structure that the brain can relax into.

This multi-sensory approach engages both visual and auditory pathways, syncing the brain’s language centers and making reading feel smoother, more grounded, and far less effortful.

The audio also supplies prosody—the emotion, pacing, and “music” of language—which many neurodivergent readers struggle to access from text alone. The result is better focus, higher retention, and a more immersive reading experience.

For neurodivergent minds, reading and listening aren’t crutches. It’s a form of regulation and clarity, turning reading into a rhythmic, supported process that the brain can genuinely enjoy.

Writing

Writing is the cognitive offload system. Although it can be a great therapeutic tool, I’m referring to its ability to clarify thoughts. It helps provide infrastructure.

When too many ideas, worries, or sensory impressions accumulate, writing gives the brain somewhere to put them. It externalizes the swirl.

FROM DANIEL KAHNEMAN, THINKING, FAST AND SLOW:
“Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.”

Writing does precisely this—it deploys attention and organizes what’s stored in memory.

Reading + Writing: The Double-Dip

Combining reading and writing is a double-dip of sweetness. I use a variation of Ryan Holiday’s note-taking system to capture and engage with ideas in books or articles. It’s a bridge between input and insight. It supports my thought organization and information processing, and now that I’m getting older, it serves as a second brain of sorts—a place to keep thoughts from drifting off into the atmosphere.

You should be writing every day. It may not be in a journal. It may look like John F. Kennedy when he scribbled thoughts on paper while thinking through the Cuban Missile Crisis. It may look messy and span digital inputs, random notebooks, sticky notes, or brain dumps on restaurant napkins. But engage in writing consistently. Don’t try to keep your thoughts organized in your brain. It’s too much.

Taking notes while reading is not optional for me. It’s the bridge between input and insight, supporting thought organization and information processing.

Building a Business for Your Brain

Understanding the three pillars is one thing. Actually structuring your work around them? That’s where most people get stuck.

Because here’s the truth: knowing you need walking, story, and writing doesn’t help if your calendar is crammed with tasks and obligations that leave no room to breathe. Understanding your advantages doesn’t matter if you’re spending 80% of your time on work that drains your capacity and doesn’t engage your strengths.

If you’re a solopreneur—or thinking about becoming one—you have a rare opportunity: you get to design the conditions under which you work.

But only if you’re willing to say yes to the right things and no to everything else.

What to Say YES To

These aren’t nice-to-haves. These are the non-negotiables that allow outlier brains to access their full capacity.

Autonomy Over Process

You need control over how you work, not just what you work on. This means:

• Choosing your own hours (even if clients expect “business hours” responses)

• Deciding which communication channels you use (email, yes, constant Slack presence, no)

• Structuring projects around deliverables, not time spent

• Working in the environment that regulates your nervous system (for most of us: quiet, alone, with control over sensory input)

When someone tries to dictate your process, they’re not just being difficult—they’re asking you to operate in a way that’s incompatible with how your brain works best.

Deep Work Over Performative Busyness

Outlier brains thrive on depth, not breadth. This means:

• Long blocks of uninterrupted time (3-4 hours minimum)

• Projects that require sustained thinking, not quick reactions

• Work that lets you go deep into research, strategy, or creation

• Space to think before you respond (not real-time collaboration on everything)

The world will pressure you to be “responsive” and “available.” But your best work happens when you’re unreachable.

Interest-Led Projects

This isn’t about being picky or precious. It’s about brain chemistry. When neurodivergent brains are interested, we don’t just work harder—we access capabilities that aren’t available otherwise. This means:

• Turning down projects that don’t genuinely engage you (even if they pay well)

• Building your business around problems you actually care about solving

• Letting yourself specialize instead of trying to be a generalist

• Following curiosity even when it looks like a detour

If you’re bored, you won’t just do mediocre work—you’ll struggle to function at all. Interest isn’t a luxury for us. It’s the ignition key.

What to Say NO To

These are the business “best practices” that work for neurotypical brains but drain the energy of outliers. You’re not being difficult by saying no. You’re being strategic.

Meetings That Could Be Anything Else

Every unnecessary meeting costs you more than the time it takes up on your calendar. It costs you:

• The prep time (anxiety, mental rehearsal)

• The recovery time (sensory overwhelm, social exhaustion)

• The context-switching cost (pulling yourself out of deep work)

I do client meetings once a quarter at most. Everything else gets resolved through Slack, email, or Zoom audio clips with screen shares. If someone can’t explain what they need in writing, they don’t know what they need yet.

Performance Theater

This is the work of looking busy instead of actually working. It includes:

• Status update meetings where nothing gets decided

• Constant availability expectations (being “on” in Slack all day)

• Co-working sessions where the goal is visibility, not productivity

• Networking events designed around small talk

You don’t need to prove you’re working. You actually need to work.

Rigid Schedules That Ignore Your Nervous System

Your brain has rhythms. Some days, you have the capacity to take on client work. Some days, you may only have the capacity to walk or read…or lose yourself in a Netflix drama. Some weeks, you can work 40 focused hours. Some weeks, you need 20+ hours of full-on recovery.

Fighting this pattern doesn’t make you more productive. It makes you less functional. Build flexibility into your business model—or you’ll keep breaking.

What This Means for You

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably one of us.

You’ve spent years trying to follow productivity systems designed for neurotypical brains—and wondering why they never stick. You’ve forced yourself into roles that required constant performance, constant availability, and constant proof that you’re working hard enough.

You’ve wondered why you feel out of place and misaligned.

But here’s what I know for sure: You’re just fine. You’re an outlier in a world built for averages.

And outliers don’t follow existing paths. We build new ones.

The corporate world will tell you that success requires speed, visibility, and constant collaboration. That you need to be “on” all the time. That autonomy is a luxury and flexibility is a weakness.

But that’s not true for us. For outliers, those conditions aren’t just uncomfortable—they’re unsustainable. They lead to shutdown periods and lengthy recovery times where you can’t function and don’t know why.

The good news? You don’t have to keep forcing yourself into systems that weren’t designed for your brain.

You can build differently.

You can structure your work around walking, reading, and writing instead of meetings, hustle, and performance theater.

You can say yes to autonomy, deep work, and interest-led projects—and no to everything that drains your capacity without utilizing your strengths.

You can work fewer hours and produce better results because those hours are aligned with how your nervous system actually operates.

This isn’t about accommodating a disability. It’s about optimizing a strength.

This is the business guidance I needed at 23 when I was trying to force myself into corporate culture. And at 38, when I finally admitted I couldn’t. And at 58, when I built something that actually works.

Maybe it’s what you need now.

Join Me

Welcome to The Outlier’s Advantage.

If this resonated with you, subscribe for free to get future essays on building businesses for neurodivergent brains. I write about:

• The real advantages of thinking differently (backed by research, not platitudes)

• Practical strategies for solopreneurs who need autonomy, not hustle culture

• How to use walking, reading, and writing as business infrastructure

• What it actually looks like to build workaround recovery, not just productivity

This work is for outliers, introverts, neurodivergent thinkers, and anyone who’s ever felt like the world’s operating system wasn’t written for them.

We’re just getting started.

Subscribe below to join the conversation.

Have questions about building a business for your brain? Drop them in the comments. I read and respond to everything.

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REFERENCES & FURTHER READING

Austin, R. D., & Pisano, G. P. (2017). Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/05/neurodiversity-as-a-competitive-advantage

Cain, S. (2012). Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Broadway Books.

I AM Autism. (2024). 30 Strengths of Neurodiversity. https://i-am-autism.org.uk/30-strengths-of-neurodiversity-part-1/

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Mentra. The Benefits of Neurodiversity in the Workplace. https://www.mentra.com/guide-to-the-untapped-strengths-of-neurodivergence

Scientific Reports. (2025). A survey of knowledge and perceptions of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder in the workplace. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-17470-8

I didn’t know then that this moment would become holy. That I’d scroll through my phone years later and stop on this image. That I’d ache to crawl back inside it.

Within a year, we’d have words for what was happening inside her: high-functioning autism, anxiety, pathological demand avoidance, Tourette’s syndrome. The diagnoses explained everything and nothing. They told us what, but not how—how to reach her when she retreated into her closet, how to bring back her joy when the world became too loud, too demanding, too much.

Now she’s a teen. Quiet. Cautious. Reserved. She doesn’t laugh like that anymore. Her nervous system constantly sounds the alarm—every demand, even her own expectations, feels like a threat. The weight of the world has crept in, heavier for her than for most.

But here’s what I know: when I look at this photo, I can still hear that laugh ringing through the years like a bell. And more than that—I can feel who I was in that moment. The grandmother who bought the pickle. Who said yes to face paint and jester hats.

What I Thought I Knew

I thought photographs mattered because they captured moments. “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Click. Save. Done.

I was wrong.

When I look at that photo now, I feel something more complicated than nostalgia. There’s joy, yes. But there’s also a gutting regret—not just for the moment that’s gone, but for how asleep I was to it while it was happening. I thought the camera was doing the work of remembering for me. I didn’t write anything down. Not what it felt like to be fully present with her. Not the surge of gratitude I must have felt watching her pure, unguarded joy. Not the meaning of that moment—what it told me about love, about presence, about what matters most.

Now all I have is a feeling like a ghost haunting the edges of the frame. I can’t remember how it felt to be in that moment, experiencing it from the inside. My mind has rewritten the story to fit the meaning I need it to have today. And that’s the tragedy—without the words, without the story captured then, I’ve lost the truth of the moment. I only have the myth I’ve made of it since.

I thought I’d remember. I thought memory was a thing you could count on, like gravity.

In 2023, when my father died, I found drawers full of photographs. Faded prints curling at the edges. Men in fishing hats. Families gathered in kitchens I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know who most of them were. I didn’t know their stories.

There it was: evidence of a life, but not the life itself.

And here’s the thing that haunts me—I have the same drawers. My own camera roll full of images from decades ago that are already starting to blur—beautiful, empty shells. I’m becoming my father, forgetting my own story, and I didn’t even notice it happening.

What I Understand Now

We tell ourselves that photographs preserve memory. But what they actually do is reveal how much we’ve forgotten.

The real preservation—the real remembering—happens when we slow down enough to ask: What did this moment mean? Why did it matter? Who was I then, and who am I becoming?

This is why stories with photographs matter. Not because they document what was, but because they force us to live our lives twice. Once in real-time, moving fast, barely noticing. And then again, slowly, with attention—writing down what we felt, what we learned, what we’re still carrying.

That second living is where the meaning lives.

And it’s where the truth lives—captured before our minds rewrite the past to serve whatever we need it to mean today. Without the words written down in the moment, memory becomes mythology. We lose what actually happened and keep only the echo of how it felt—if even that—reshaped by every year that passes.

When I write about Jaycee’s laughter, the pickle, the sunlight slanting through the festival grounds, I’m not just writing to remember her. I’m remembering myself. The woman behind the camera who wanted to capture a moment but hadn’t yet learned that capturing and experiencing are two different things. That you can take a thousand pictures and still miss your own life.

There’s a cruelty in how ordinary the sacred looks while it’s happening. You never know which Tuesday afternoon will become the day you’d give anything to return to. Which laugh will be the last one that sounds like that? Which version of someone you love will be the one you ache for most?

The Truth About Regret

I could stay stuck here, spinning in the grief of what I didn’t write down, didn’t notice, didn’t save. God knows I’ve spent enough time in that particular hell.

But here’s what I’m learning: regret can be a teacher if you let it. The ache of what I didn’t capture in 2019 is teaching me to pay attention now. To write things down. To ask my granddaughter questions while she’s still willing to answer them. To notice not just what’s in front of me, but what I’m feeling about what’s in front of me.

The stories I write now aren’t just about the past. They’re about who I want to be going forward. They’re about breaking the pattern of sleepwalking through my own precious life.

Because here’s the thing about patterns: they repeat until you see them clearly enough to choose something different.

What Stories Do

When I look at that photograph now and write about it, something shifts. The image stops being just a record of what was and becomes a mirror. I see Jaycee’s radiance, yes. But I also see my own capacity for presence. My own ability to create moments of magic, even imperfectly.

Maybe that’s the real work of storytelling—and the real work of love. To hold up the mirror. To say: This happened. This mattered. This is who we were when we were fully awake, fully alive. This is evidence of our brightness, even when—especially when—we can’t see it ourselves.

Jaycee is older now. Her laughter is different—quieter, more private, harder won. The world is teaching her to guard her joy, to trade her sparkle for armor. I understand that. I did the same thing. We all do.

But when I show her this photograph, when I read her the story of that day, I’m offering her something more valuable than nostalgia. I’m offering her evidence. Proof that joy isn’t lost—it’s just buried, waiting to be called back into the light. That the girl with the bat-painted face and the pickle in her hand is still in there, even when the world makes it hard to remember.

And maybe, if I’m lucky, these stories will do the same for her that writing them does for me. Maybe they’ll help her see that memory isn’t meant to be a museum—something dead and preserved behind glass. Memory is a map. It shows us where we’ve been, so we can understand where we’re going. It shows us what brought us joy so we can create more of it. It shows us who we were, so we can remember who we want to become.

The Way Forward

The photograph of Jaycee at the Renaissance Festival will never change. She’ll always be seven. The pickle vendor will always be leaning into the frame. Her laugh will always be mid-flight, caught in that split second before it fades into the air.

But writing about it now—even with the truth already slipping into mythology—creates something new. Understanding. Not just about what I lost, but about what mattered. Who I was in that moment. What brought us joy.

That’s what storytelling is for. Not to freeze the past perfectly, but to capture the truest sense of ourselves while we can—and then to use that truth as a map. To understand where joy lives so we can create more of it. To transform regrets into direction. To save ourselves from repeating the forgetting.

Because the alternative is drawers full of photographs of strangers who used to be the people you loved, and that is too much to bear.

Why Staying Small Is a Power Move (Not a Limitation)

When I was a child, I thought success meant heading off to work in a suit. A briefcase. A tie. Shined shoes. An expensive car pulling out of the driveway before breakfast. The image was so clear in my mind you’d think I had seen it every day — but I hadn’t. My dad owned only one suit, for formal occasions. He wore jeans, work boots, and a tool belt. He was an electrician — a one-man shop, a solo practice.

And I remember thinking: If only he had a few employees… maybe then we’d live up the hill like my friend’s family. Their dad was also an electrician, but he ran a team — trucks, gear, uniforms, the whole operation. They had the bigger house, the view, and the newer car. In my child’s mind, it seemed so simple: bigger must be better.

My mother ran her own operation, too. A hair stylist who worked for herself. No salon with a staff of ten. No drive to expand, but a need to survive by doing something that she enjoyed. Now 80, she still shows up, quietly content, helping people look their best.

And here I am — third generation — repeating a pattern it took me a long time to understand. I’m what some call a Renaissance soul with a variety of interests and passions. My interests span making and creating to strategic analysis and planning— a diverse background. But always a business of one.

For years, I thought this was a failure of focus—a lack of determination. Whatever the business books call the secret ingredient to “real” success, I believed I lacked that attribute. I thought I just needed to scale. But I resisted this. I wondered what was wrong with me. Why wasn’t I interested in growing a business? Why did I keep pursuing things that increased my learning and fed my interests instead of staying focused on developing the business? Why was I moving away from more clients and toward just enough?

But now I know better.

The Myth of Scale

Michael Gerber’s E-Myth Revisited insists that if you are both the worker and the owner, you haven’t built a real business — you’ve simply hired yourself. In his world, a successful business runs without you — systems, employees, structure replacing your hands, your mind, your presence.

There is nothing wrong with that if your brain is wired for management, coordination, and leading groups. There is truth there for many people.

But for the introvert, the deep thinker, the neurodivergent mind that thrives in focus, rhythm, and autonomy, Gerber’s model can feel less like liberation and more like exile. Because to scale in the way he suggests, you must become a manager. And some of us were not born to manage — we were born to make. To think. To synthesize. To distill. To create.

Managing people isn’t freedom.
It’s friction.

The further we get from the work itself, the further we get from the part of ourselves that is awake.

Gerber writes, “Your business is nothing more than a distinct reflection of who you are.” He means it as a warning. If you are disorganized, your business will be chaotic. If you are sloppy, your business will be a mess.

But what if we are internal thinkers, not collaborators?
What if deep thinking and solitude are what drive a cognitive revolution every day?
What if the business is me, the introverted, quiet thinker?

How do we work with that as the baseline?

By honoring the inherent drive to grow internally — to become more grounded, more capable, more whole than the version of ourselves from the day before.

Instead of using the “why” to rally the organization, we use it to stay true to ourselves. Our reason for doing the work must support two things at once: our internal compass and our contribution to others—a dual allegiance — self and service.

This is the shape of our nervous systems.
This is how we stay alive in our work.
This is how we stay ourselves.

This path is not about avoiding growth.
It’s about choosing the type of growth that expands your life rather than consumes it.

Spacious mornings.
Steady afternoons.
A reasonable heart rate.
The ability to think your own thoughts.

In this model, “success” is measured in clarity, not scale.
In depth, not speed.
In presence, not productivity.

The question becomes: Why fix your nature to meet the demands of business culture when you can build a business that matches your nature?

The sovereign solopreneur chooses alignment over expansion.
Not because they are afraid of success —
But because they refuse to trade their nervous system to get it.

The Hidden Costs of Growth

I once worked for a company with over two million in annual revenue and a payroll register that was quickly approaching 30 employees. Every payroll was a struggle. From the outside, they appeared “successful.” In reality, they were living off debt and hope — just like the many overextended individuals and families our financial systems quietly deplete.

The truth no one likes to print in business books is this:

Many businesses would be more profitable if they were smaller.

Less overhead.
Less complexity.
Fewer moving parts.

This is because there would be:
More focus.
More depth of service.
More of you in the work.

But our culture worships scale like it worships materialism — loudly and without examination. We set our sights on wildly ambitious goals, ready to trade our peace of mind for what we think will make us happy.

The aspirational target has shifted dramatically. We are sold a fantasy of reaching the financial level of wealth that 1% of Americans have achieved. They control about 30-31% of the nation’s wealth. We believe that this American dream is not only within reach but also desirable—the island paradise, Yachts sailing around the world, the lavish retreats. We work endless hours and days so that one day the business will run itself. This is a draining process of endurance, persistence, and discipline—especially when it runs counter to your nature. This is the hustle, both figuratively and literally.

But for those of us whose craft is our mind, the moment we step away from the work, the work stops being ours.

The Sovereign Choice

If your compass points toward sovereignty —
If your body relaxes at the thought of quiet mornings, a slow cup of Earl Grey, deep work, and uninterrupted focus —
If you crave autonomy more than applause —

Then staying small is not failure.
It is wisdom.

It is how you keep your life on purpose.

This is the solopreneurship of the outlier.
The thinker.
The walker.
The one who had to learn to live from the inside outward.

There is another way to succeed.
It is quieter.
Less visible.
But infinitely more alive.

You can build a business that is a well-designed life, not a machine you get trapped inside.

You can stay small.
You can stay sovereign.
You can stay close to the work you love.

And maybe the measure of success was never about going “up the hill” at all — but staying close to where our lives actually feel authentic, safe, and within our realm of control.

Journal Invitation

Where does my work feel most like me, and what would it look like to build my business around that?

Further Reading

• Company of One by Paul Jarvis

• Deep Work by Cal Newport

• Quiet by Susan Cain

• Know your purpose

• Don’t be afraid to fail

• Find joy in the journey

The magic is how he knew them.

Chouinard paid attention.

He climbed, fished, wandered, and then wrote it down.

He took photographs—not to impress anyone—but to remember what mattered.

This book isn’t just wisdom.

It’s a lifetime of captured noticing.

We tend to believe the adventure is the point—the summit, the expedition, the accomplishment.

But the real work is the quiet part:

You live. You notice. You record. You make meaning.

Most of us have drawers full of photos with no story attached.

Or journals full of events but no feeling.

We remember that something happened—but not why it mattered.

So here’s the invitation Chouinard’s book actually offers:

Don’t wait to understand your life in hindsight. Write it as you go. Tell the story while you’re still inside it.

Not for the audience.

Not for posterity.

Not for some future memoir.

But for you.

The story is already happening.

Pick up the pen.

Friday, August 8, 1980

The afternoon air was hot and heavy, thick enough to stop me in my tracks. But I have an idea: I’m going to start running. Someday I’ll be on the track team. I might even wear a Marlington school jacket.

I wasn’t sure what to wear for a run. Nothing seemed right. I set out with sneakers with tube socks, shorts, and a t-shirt. I ran on the shoulder of the street. There weren’t many cars, but when they passed me, I moved farther into the gravel. After a minute, I was gasping for air. My chest hurt. My legs hurt. I stopped, but it felt like cheating, so I tried to keep going. I didn’t want to give up. But it was no use.

I can’t do it. I feel fat and stupid and awkward. Weak. I thought I could do this. Join the track team. I want to cry. This is not for me.

A Letter to My Younger Self

Hey girl,

You didn’t fail. You didn’t know.

James Clear writes in Atomic Habits that we vastly overestimate what we can accomplish in a single day and underestimate what we can achieve through small, consistent actions over time. You wanted instant results like fast food. But every run begins with a walk.

What you really needed was to start small. To be okay with that for a while.

I forgive you. Not because you committed some heinous crime, but because, as Daniel Pink points out in The Power of Regret, dwelling on past failures leads to depression unless we use them to make different choices now. And we’ve been there enough times.

So here’s what I know now: there are no shortcuts for the things that matter most. But the work doesn’t have to be drudgery.

The Pattern Repeats

There was a time when I ran every day to train for a half-marathon. Thirteen miles. I ran several times a week, sometimes covering six miles in a day, thinking it would be enough.

It wasn’t.

On race day, Pam and I were practically the last to cross the finish line. We weren’t even running, but it was more of a speed walk. At the end of the race, we collapsed like those athletes you see during the Olympics who have entirely spent every ounce of energy in their bodies. Except we weren’t the same caliber of athletes—they with their sinewy bodies of a long-distance runner and us lying in a puddle of flabby flesh. After this race, I stopped running again.

I was running for the wrong reason. To finish a race? So what? Not substantial enough for me.

This would have been excellent self-care—to be a runner. But the truth is, it’s hard. It requires consistency and discipline. Both of which I still struggle with.

So what’s the answer?

Five Years Ago: The Breaking Point

My world was falling apart in 2020. COVID seemed so small compared to my internal pressures.

The most profound changes seem to occur at the tipping point of a massive breakdown, when you’re backed against the wall. In desperation, I’ve made some interesting choices.

Five years ago, I laced up my running shoes—the ones with the Nike emblem taunting me to “just do it.” As Seth Godin points out, “just do it” is not helpful advice. It can be misinterpreted as: “Do what you can get away with” or even “Come on already.” A more useful word choice would have been ‘merely do it.’ What he meant was to stay focused on your intentions or the change you wish to make.

In that moment of crisis, I not only questioned my intentions but also my purpose and everything else in the world. Without even creating a plan to walk, I found myself heading out to get away from the noise, confusion, and chaos. I felt like I might never come back. It was an unconscious reaction.

No playlist. No fitness tracker. Just the low hum of panic and a deep need to get out of my own head.

A single lap around the block turned into two laps, then a route through the neighborhood. There was a deep, nurturing respite in letting my feet connect with the earth in a steady pulse that eased the burden of my heavy heart.

The results were profound and immediate. And I kept doing it.

The Flight Response

In the 1994 film Forrest Gump, there’s a point when Forrest says, “That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run.” He starts running down his driveway, across town, across Alabama—and keeps going until he eventually runs across the entire U.S. multiple times.

There’s something about that inability to stop. The escape lingered in my mind for years after that movie. Later, Dory the fish would sing, “Just keep swimming.” My mind would urge me, “Just keep walking or swimming.” Both work.

Most people interpreted these as metaphors for perseverance. I took them literally. I started swimming or walking—every damn day.

Like Forrest, I didn’t plan it. One day, the pressure became overwhelming, and my own flight response kicked in. I just needed to move. I needed space. I needed quiet.

At the time, my life felt like a pressure cooker. My own mental health battles, an adult daughter fighting her own demons, and my granddaughter—our sweet, complex girl with autism, Tourette’s, anxiety, and PDA (pathological demand avoidance)—all under my roof. Add the everyday stress of finances, career, and health, and I was on the edge of spontaneous combustion.

The Neuroscience of Survival: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Faint

When stress hits hard, our nervous systems go into a primitive state. The amygdala—that almond-shaped cluster of neurons deep in the brain—acts as our internal smoke detector. It constantly scans for threats, operating far below conscious awareness.

When the amygdala perceives danger (real or imagined), it triggers the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Within milliseconds, stress hormones flood the body. Cortisol. Adrenaline. The sympathetic nervous system activates, and the body prepares for survival.

This happens in the limbic system—the ancient, emotional brain—seconds before the prefrontal cortex (our logical, reasoning brain) can even register what’s happening. We don’t choose these responses. They choose us.

Four responses emerge:

• Fight (snapping at whoever’s nearby)

• Flight (walking, running, escaping)

• Freeze (binging Netflix until our souls leave our bodies)

• Fawn (people-pleasing and appeasing to avoid conflict)

I used to think these were dramatic metaphors. They’re literal physiological responses, hardwired into our neurobiology.

My body wasn’t betraying me. It was trying to save me.

Here’s what’s fascinating: walking activates the parasympathetic nervous system—the “rest and digest” counterbalance to the fight-or-flight response. The rhythmic, bilateral movement (left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot) helps regulate the nervous system. This same bilateral stimulation is used in EMDR therapy to process trauma.

Walking literally calms the brain.

So I walked. No need to run or run away from anything. All I needed was a first step and the desire to take one more. I had no expectations from myself or anyone else.

The Sunrise Walk

I started calling it my sunrise walk. Libby DeLana calls it the Morning Walk in her book Do Walk.

“We walk not to escape life but to find it,” she writes.

I woke at 4 a.m. without an alarm and waited for the light. When the sun finally pushed away from the horizon, I’d head out—often overdressed and borrowing from my grandmother’s habit of carrying everything but the kitchen sink in her purse. I overprepare too. It soothes me.

At first, I’d go for fifteen minutes, then I’d be surprised when I didn’t want to turn around. I was enjoying the quiet. The solitude. The freedom. One mile turned into two, then three, about an hour out of my day. On harder days, I give myself the time and space to walk five or six miles.

Somewhere along the way, it fundamentally changed my life.

The apparent benefits came first. My anxiety eased. My thoughts got quieter. There were unexpected disappointments too—my jeans didn’t get looser (turns out, walking increases appetite. How rude).

But the real magic wasn’t physical at all.

It was spiritual.

My Walking Companions

It didn’t take long for me to connect the walking with the other thing I truly love—reading. Going for a walk with my mentors felt so comforting and inspiring. Audible became my joy.

I couldn’t sit still to read, but I could walk and listen to my favorite mentors: Martha Beck, Seth Godin, Maryanne Wolf, Anne Lamott, and Steven Pressfield. They became my early morning teachers.

It felt indulgent—like intellectual cardio. My footsteps matched the rhythm of ideas. It was my moving classroom, my morning church, my metronome of sanity.

When the Books Went Quiet

Then one morning, mid-stride, I realized I hadn’t heard a word of the book for twenty minutes.

The voice in my earbuds faded, replaced by something quieter and more authentic. It wasn’t Audible. It was a voice —or a knowing —inside me.

Or maybe it wasn’t inside me at all. Perhaps it was beside me.

I don’t know how else to describe it except to say: I wasn’t alone anymore.

Ideas came flooding in—whole paragraphs and sentences that glowed. But they didn’t feel like my ideas. They felt like answers to questions I hadn’t yet asked. Comfort for sorrows I hadn’t yet spoken. Wisdom I didn’t possess on my own.

My head felt swimmy and giddy, like carbonated bubbles rising from a glass of champagne. But my heart—my heart felt held.

This is what people mean when they talk about meditation or prayer. Not the formal, structured kind. The walking kind. The listening kind.

I started carrying a notebook to catch the words before they evaporated. Words that felt like gifts. Like someone was walking with me, speaking in a voice I recognized but couldn’t name.

The same message came every time:

Write.

Not “walk more.” Not “market better.” Just: Write.

I’d ask, Write what? And the answer would come: What you’re hearing, what you’re seeing. What’s being given to you right now?

This was the accidental part. I didn’t set out to walk with God. I set out to escape my own head. But somewhere between the third mile and the sunrise, between the panic and the pavement, I stumbled into something sacred.

A daily walk with God.

The Resistance

Of course, I argued with it.

Write? Be serious. I’m a CFO. Writing doesn’t pay the bills.

Steven Pressfield calls this force Resistance in The War of Art. It’s the voice that tells us we’re not real artists, real writers, real anything. It’s the force that keeps us from doing the work we’re meant to do.

But the message never stopped.

Each time I sought inspiration for business strategy or tax planning, I heard it again: You need to write.

These days, I call it The Calling. (Yes, like in the Netflix series Manifest—minus the plane crash.)

The flashes of color, memory, smell, imagination—they come alive like a film reel in my brain. I feel joy I can hardly contain.

The Capture: Writing to Remember How It Felt

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Nature: “In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.”

This is where walking and writing become inseparable.

Sometimes I write using a digital tool called Day One, with several journals (general journal, gratitude, freewriting, awakenings, entrepreneurship, tantrum, and legacy). Sometimes I like old-school writing in a notebook or leather journal, with colored pens and pasted-in pictures.

My neighbor journals daily to document her days. This helps keep a record of events, but there’s so much more to unpack around journaling.

As Anne Lamott writes in Bird by Bird, we are all writers. If we can capture a day or a moment like an artist does with canvas and brush, imagine what we can do with a pen and some simple storytelling basics.

The difference between recording and capturing is this: recording documents what happened. Capturing preserves how it felt.

When you capture an experience with sensory detail—sight, sound, smell, touch, taste—you create a portal back to that moment. Your future self doesn’t just read about it. Your future self relives it.

Example 1: Recording vs. Capturing

Recording (documenting):

I attended the realtor’s conference today. I learned some wonderful things that would be helpful for me in the future.

Capturing (experiencing):

I was relieved to get inside from the fierce wind blowing, swirling up dried leaves. The conference was held in the older section of Fort Collins, in an all-brick red building with sleek, modern furnishings. I loved the black accented trim against the stark white walls. My hands kept busy with my pen, clicking it open and closed—a nervous habit I’ve never managed to break. It was challenging to sit still, yet I really needed just to sit and relax for an hour. I’ve been going nonstop. I was caught off guard when the speaker mentioned creating a “sphere of influence” map—not just a contact list, but a visual representation of who knows whom, where the natural connectors are. I’m almost doing this already with my quarterly coffee meetings. If I just formalized it into an actual map with concentric circles, this could be a game-changer for referrals.

See the difference? One is a fact. The other is an experience you can step back into.

Example 2: A Walk Captured

Recording:

Walked 3 miles this morning. The weather was nice. Felt good.

Capturing:

The air smelled like cut grass and pine. The earthy-sweet smell that only happens in early spring before the heat sets in. My shoes crunched on the gravel path in our neighborhood trail. A red-tailed hawk circled overhead, riding the thermals, and I stopped to watch it. No hurry. Just the hawk and me and the empty path stretching toward the mountains. My mind wandered with the words of Martha Beck in my ears—the one where she said, “I think if there’s something that you love and that serves your heart, and it doesn’t make sense, that’s what you do.” And standing there, watching that hawk, I realized: this is how. This hour. This walk. This is me helping myself.

This is what I mean by capture. You’re not just writing about the walk. You’re preserving the texture—the sensory details, the emotional landscape, the insights that emerged.

Example 3: A Hard Day Captured

Recording:

Rough day. Argument with my daughter. Walked it off.

Capturing:

My chest felt tight when I left the house, like someone was squeezing my lungs. The words from our argument kept replaying—her voice sharp, mine defensive. I walked faster than usual, almost stomping. The sun was setting, painting everything orange and pink, but I barely noticed at first. Then I turned the corner onto the trail, and the light hit the cottonwoods just right. Golden. Shimmering. My breath started to slow. By mile two, I wasn’t replaying the argument anymore. I was thinking about her as a little girl, how she used to hold my hand as we crossed the street. How she still needs me, even when she’s pushing me away. By the time I got home, I knew what I needed to say: “I’m sorry. I hear you. Let’s try again.”

This is the practice. Walk to clear your mind. Write to capture what emerged.

The walking opens the channel. The writing preserves what flows through.

How to Start: A Practical Guide

If you want to begin your own walking meditation practice, here’s what I’ve learned works:

1. Start Absurdly Small

Don’t commit to an hour. Don’t even commit to a mile. Commit to one lap around the block. Or ten minutes. Or “to the end of the street and back.”

James Clear’s “two-minute rule” applies here: make it so easy you can’t say no. Once you’re out there, you’ll probably keep going. But if you don’t, that’s fine too. You still went.

2. Time Comes From You

Decide to make walking a priority. For me, it is sunrise. For you, it might be:

• Before your first coffee

• During your lunch break

• Instead of Netflix before bed

• While your kids are at practice

Attach the walk to an existing routine.

3. Let Go of Productivity

This isn’t an exercise. It’s not “steps.” It’s not training for anything.

This is moving meditation. The point is not to get somewhere. The point is to move.

If you want to listen to audiobooks, great. If you want silence, great. If you want music or podcasts or the sound of your own breathing—all of it works.

There’s no wrong way to walk.

4. Bring a Way to Capture Thoughts

I carry a small pocket notebook and a pen. You might prefer:

• Voice memos on your phone

• Notes app

• A notebook or favorite journal (if that motivates you)

The method doesn’t matter. What matters is having a way to catch the ideas when they come, because they will.

The bilateral movement of walking (left, right, left, right) quiets the analytical mind and opens the intuitive mind. Insights surface. Problems solve themselves. Creative ideas arrive fully formed.

Science says the intuitive thoughts come from all of our past experiences. And maybe that is partially true, but I can’t discount the likelihood that it’s more spiritual than this. There is a knowing that is hard to explain.

Capture the thoughts regardless of where they might have come from. Don’t let them evaporate.

5. Walk First, Write After (or During)

Here’s the rhythm I’ve settled into:

During the walk: If an insight comes, I stop and jot it down in shorthand. Just enough to remember it. Sometimes just a single word or phrase.

After the walk, I sit down with my journal (or my laptop) and expand those shorthand notes into whole, sensory-rich paragraphs. This is where the capturing happens.

I ask myself:

• What did I see?

• What did I hear?

• What did I smell?

• What was I feeling in my body?

• What insight emerged?

And I write it like a story. Not a list. A story.

6. Make It Non-Negotiable

This is the hardest part.

There will always be a reason not to go. It’s too cold. Too hot. You’re too tired. Too busy. You’ll go tomorrow.

The secret is to remove the decision from the equation.

I don’t ask myself, “Should I walk today?” I ask, “What time am I walking today?”

It’s already decided. The only variable is timing.

Ryan Holiday writes about this in The Obstacle Is the Way: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Every excuse is just Resistance in disguise.

Walk anyway.

So I Walk. And Now, I Write.

Not for an audience, not even for a career pivot. I write to catch the translucent thoughts before they fade—to remember, to see, to breathe.

The walking opens the door. The writing holds it open.

Together, they form a practice that has fundamentally altered my life. Not in dramatic, visible ways. But in the quiet, accumulating ways that matter most.

My nervous system is calmer. My mind is clearer. My spirit—that elusive, hard-to-define part of me—feels connected to something larger than my own anxiety.

I fell, quite accidentally, into walking meditation. Into a daily walk with God—really.

And I still walk almost every day.

P.S.

After two glorious wipeouts on icy Colorado sidewalks, I traded pavement for water in the harshest winter months. Swimming became my water meditation. Once I stopped panicking about drowning ( I learned to swim in my fifties by watching YouTube videos), the same rhythm found me there: breath, stroke, surrender.

Whether it’s a trail or a pool, the invitation is the same.

Keep moving. Keep listening.

Just keep walking.

And then, cutting through the quiet between songs, came the sound of a small boy’s voice.

“See me! Notice me!”

He shouted it as loud as his lungs could manage: an urgent plea flung into the darkness toward the stage. Laufey continued into her next song, likely never hearing him.

But the cry lingered in my mind.

We’ve all felt it: that deep, instinctual longing to be seen, to be known, to have our existence affirmed. As children, we often gauge our self-worth by the reactions of others, such as smiles or nods. As adults, we learn to disguise it better. Our ‘rewards’ of worth are projected in our overabundance of stuff, bad habits, and empty accolades from people that don’t really matter, leaving us just wanting more. Yet the need remains.

What follows is an exploration of this relentless need and how we might address it on our own terms.

The Validation Trap

Psychologists have long known that humans are wired for connection. In early childhood, validation—the mirroring of our emotions and experiences by caregivers—is not merely comforting; it is essential for healthy development. When a parent meets a child’s cry with empathy: “I see you. You’re scared. I’m here.”, the child internalizes safety and self-worth.

But as we grow, many of us become caught in a different loop: seeking approval from others to confirm our value.

Dr. Jennifer Crocker, a social psychologist at Ohio State University, calls this the contingencies of self-worth. We begin to anchor our value in external markers: grades, appearance, income, popularity, and praise. Her research shows that when self-esteem depends on these external sources, people experience higher stress, defensiveness, anxiety, and emotional volatility.

When your worth is determined by how others see you, you are standing on shifting ground. A compliment lifts you; silence unravels you. This is the external validation trap.

Edward Tory Higgins’s self-discrepancy theory explains the mechanics of this tension. Within each of us exists three selves:

- the actual self (who we are),

- the ideal self (who we want to be), and

- the ought self (who we believe we should be).

The greater the gap between these selves, the greater our discomfort. Validation from others briefly fills that gap: a “like,” an award, a word of praise—offering temporary relief. But it is borrowed worth. When the attention fades, the gap remains.

I am reminded of the London Underground’s iconic warning: mind the gap.

And so the cycle spins on: perform → receive validation → feel seen → lose it → perform again.

It is a treadmill of self-worth: exhausting, endless, and ultimately, unsustainable.

When External Validation Becomes Identity

Consider how modern culture contributes to this. The influencer economy, the like button, and the algorithmic chase for recognition have gamified our very tools of expression for attention.

Even something as sacred as family can become performance. We curate our online relationships for others’ consumption, hoping the world sees us as happy, accomplished, and aligned.

But this dependence on external validation has a quiet cost: it distances us from our own inner knowing.

Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, argued in his seminal work On Becoming a Person (1961) that mental health depends on congruence—the alignment between who we are and how we present ourselves. When we abandon our own internal compass to please others, we lose congruence and with it, authenticity.

Over time, we forget how to validate ourselves.

The Shift in Mindset

What if validation didn’t have to come from others?

What if the act of noticing yourself—your thoughts, emotions, sensations—was enough?

In Buddhist philosophy, the practice of mindfulness teaches precisely this. Through quiet observation, we become witnesses to our inner life without judgment. The Sanskrit greeting Namaste translates as “I see the divine in you.” But what if you turned that greeting inward?

What if you said, “I see the divine in me.”

This is where journaling becomes radical. It’s not self-indulgent. It’s self-validating.

When you write for no audience, no editor, no algorithm—you are bearing witness to your own existence.

The Power of the Page

To journal is to create a space where you can say, “I see you. I hear you.” It’s an internal mirror. It’s a witness who never interrupts, never scrolls away.

Psychologist James Pennebaker’s landmark research on expressive writing shows that writing about emotional experiences improves both mental and physical health. His studies found that individuals who wrote about trauma or deep emotion for just 15 minutes a day over several days experienced improved immune function, reduced stress, and greater clarity.

I’m also always looking for the humor when I write. Laughing at ourselves helps lighten the gravity and allows for a newer perspective. It makes big, insurmountable things seem less crushing. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes the conversation with yourself needs to be in a more serious tone. Just like talking with a friend, you’ll know when a gentle laugh can allow for a deeper breath of relaxing into ‘and so it is.’

Writing externalizes emotion; it translates the abstract swirl of thought into concrete language. Once words exist on the page, the mind can see them, hold them, and eventually release them.

Anne Frank and the Private Witness

Few examples demonstrate this better than Anne Frank.

Confined in hiding, she turned to her diary—not as a document for the world, but as a conversation with herself. Through Kitty, her imagined friend and recipient, she found both companionship and clarity.

Her words were not written to impress. They were written to survive.

That, perhaps, is the truest validation: the act of writing that says “I am still here.”

While Frank’s diary was intensely private, its eventual publication transformed countless lives—reminding us that our personal reflections sometimes have unexpected reach, touching others in ways we could never anticipate, yet this potential future audience need not be our focus when we write.

You don’t need a war, a tragedy, or a famous diary to justify your journaling. The brilliance is in the ordinary—the morning coffee, the sound of rain, the quiet noticing of your own internal whispers.

The Art of Noticing the Smaller Things

Journal writing sharpens what David Sedaris calls the art of noticing.

Sedaris, the celebrated essayist, has kept diaries for decades. In his book Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977–2002), he records everything from odd conversations to fleeting thoughts. He once said, “When you write down what you see every day, you start to notice more.”

To notice is to honor.

Writing down the small details—the way fog rests on the horizon, the smell of fresh cut grass —trains the mind toward presence.

This, too, is validation.

You’re saying: My life is worth noticing. My days matter.

The Unedited Truth

Journaling is not meant for performance. It’s not about the aesthetic leather notebook or the perfect morning routine. The Nike expression, “Just do it,” comes to mind—the act of not overthinking but moving forward in a daily practice. The practice is never the performance.

It’s about truth-telling—sometimes ugly, sometimes luminous, often both.

As writer Julia Cameron teaches in The Artist’s Way, morning pages are “stream-of-consciousness writing, three pages of longhand, done first thing in the morning.” The goal is not art but excavation.

While many find power in the tactile experience of pen on paper—the physical act of forming letters that slow thought to match the movement of the hand—others find that digital journaling offers accessibility and searchability. The medium matters less than the commitment to showing up on the page, whether physical or virtual.

You write to see what you think. You write to let what’s been buried rise to the surface.

This kind of writing—raw, unedited, for-your-eyes-only—is powerful precisely because it frees you from needing anyone else’s reaction.

The page validates your existence.

The Spiritual Dimension: Writing as Prayer

When you journal deeply, you’re not just talking to yourself. You’re opening a dialogue with God or the universe.

Writers from mystics to modern thinkers—Thomas Merton, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Oliver—have described the page as a form of prayer.

Wayne Dyer often said that “meditation is the practice of becoming aware of your connection to the Source.” In journaling, we do something similar with words: we connect.

I often find that the most profound insights come not when I’m trying to write something wise but when I’m simply honest. The act itself—pen, paper, stillness—creates space for grace.

Another of my daily practices, walking meditation, works in much the same way and illuminates your awareness to allow you to connect more deeply on the page. As your body moves rhythmically, thoughts settle. For example, during a recent morning walk along a neighborhood trail, the repetitive crunch of gravel underfoot became a metronome for my thoughts, allowing a persistent worry to dissolve into a broader perspective I later captured in my journal. The mind quiets enough for more profound truth to rise. When you later write those truths down, you anchor them in form.

Invitation to Practice (Start Small)

So how do we begin?

You don’t need a system, an app, or a fancy notebook. You only need willingness and five quiet minutes.

Here’s one way to start:

1. Daily 5-minute start. Begin each morning (or evening) with “I am…” or “Today I felt…”

2. Don’t edit. Let your pen move faster than your inner critic. Spelling, grammar, structure—none of it matters. This type of writing is sometimes called ‘stream of consciousness’ or ‘freewriting.’

3. Anchor it to reality and creativity. Describe your surroundings: the temperature, the sound of traffic, the light in the room. This grounds you.

4. Ask one question if you like prompts. “What am I needing today?” or “Where am I seeking validation?”

5. Monthly read-back. Once a month, review some of your prior entries. Notice patterns, gratitude, shifts.

Over time, you’ll notice something: you won’t need as much validation from the outside world. You’ll start trusting your own awareness.

The Return to the Night Air

I keep thinking about that little boy at the Laufey concert—his voice small and desperate. “See me! Notice me!”

In a way, he is all of us. The part that desperately wants to matter. But perhaps the most profound witness is the one within.

When I pick up my pen tonight, alone in the stillness at the end of a day or at the crest of a new daybreak, I affirm to myself as I write in my journal,

“I see you. You exist. I am your witness. You are enough.”

And in that moment, the page becomes louder than applause. The silence becomes my audience. The divine becomes my witness.

We can be that voice for ourselves.

And little by little, that becomes enough.

Namaste.

Reader Reflection

How do you relate to validation? Have you felt the pull between wanting to be seen and learning to see yourself?

Do you journal? If so, what has it given you?

Share below. I’d love to read your stories!