The Things We Stop Doing When Life Gets Loud
On job searching, creative exhaustion, and the quiet rituals that help us find our way back to ourselves.
This morning started with something simple: returning an item I ordered that I wasn’t happy with. The return was due today, so it became the perfect excuse to finally take myself on a solo café date instead of looking through job boards and sending out more job applications.
After dropping the package off at UPS, I headed to a café I used to visit often before having our second child. Back then, I’d sit there for a few quiet minutes to an hour with a cup of coffee beside me and either my Kindle or journal open in front of me. It was one of those small rituals I looked forward to every other week.
It wasn’t productive, at least not in the way we often define productivity now. But it gave me space to step away from the constant noise of everyday life and feel a little more grounded than overwhelmed.
Today, I brought one of the journals where I used to do my Writing Down the Bones exercises. When I turned to the last completed page, I realized the final writing prompt I had done was dated December.
December.
I haven’t stopped writing entirely since then, but this specific writing practice had quietly disappeared from my routine.
I think most adults understand how that happens. Somewhere between responsibilities, parenting, work, job searching, endless notifications, and the pressure to constantly improve ourselves, the things that nourish us creatively are often the first things sacrificed. Not because they don’t matter, but because other things begin to feel more urgent.
Lately, job searching has felt especially draining at times. There’s an emotional weight that comes with constantly presenting your best self while quietly carrying uncertainty behind the scenes. It becomes easy to treat rest as something that has to be earned and creativity as something optional.
But as I sat in that café today, I remembered something important:
Running on empty may keep us moving toward the goal, but it doesn’t help us thrive.
I spent the long weekend resting without any particular goal in mind. And this morning, I gave myself permission to make space for something that brought me back to myself.
When life becomes overwhelming, we start believing the only way forward is through a specific kind of breakthrough—landing the job offer, getting financial relief, passing the certification exam. So we pour everything we have into reaching that finish line because it feels urgent and necessary. But eventually, constantly running on empty catches up with us.
We can’t keep burning ourselves out while neglecting the very things that help us stay grounded.
And that’s why I’m grateful I took this morning for myself: a familiar cafe, my journal, and a few uninterrupted moments to simply breathe, reconnect, and quiet the noise of overwhelm.
Because sometimes the smallest pauses are the very things that restore us.
Sometimes rest isn’t a distraction from the goal—it’s what allows us to pursue it sustainably.
So if you’ve been running on empty lately, let this be your reminder:
Rest.
And then make space for something that brings you back to yourself.
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