There is something incredibly satisfying about checking something off a list. You finish the task, draw a line through it, and move on to whatever comes next. There is a little sense of accomplishment built right into that checkmark. The problem is that the opposite can happen when something stays on the list for too long. After days or weeks of seeing the same unchecked box, it can start to feel less like a task in progress and more like evidence that you aren't getting enou

There is this strange feeling that comes with the realization that you have not been acting like who you want to be. Regret. Sadness. Hate. Anger. All at ourselves. And for what? Maybe you haven't been eating “right”, or creating, or you've stopped moving your body and just settled into something smaller…. easier. You're drinking too much, sleeping more, scrolling, procrastinating, looking for distractions. Whatever it is, eventually, you see that you've stopped being yoursel

I have a hard time doing nothing. Not because I don't enjoy relaxing, I do. The problem is what happens inside my head when I try. I can sit down after a long day with every intention of relaxing, and it doesn't take long before the voice starts reminding me of everything else I could be doing. I could be working, creating, exercising, cleaning. I could be doing something that makes my life better or moves me closer to one of the hundred goals floating around in my head. Befo

Hope is one of those things that we don't seem to recognize until it's absent. We take it for granted. When things are going well, it's just assumed that we'll find ways to make our wishes come true tomorrow. It's there as we make plans for the summer, or for college, or another job, or where we'll be in five years. It's second nature, a given, as we move from one phase of life to the next. We don't pause to say, "I hope this happens," because we know that it will. Only when

For a long time, I felt that there would be a sort of obviousness to growth - a sense of achievement when I have done something bigger or bolder or braver than I ever thought I could. When I accomplish something hard, or finally do something I'm justly confident in, it's easy to see and be glad of the progression. We can all name the victories and successes and experiences that made us who we are, and the places in our lives that we've grown from. But I think some of the most

There are times in life where it can be far more difficult to ask for help or support rather than to carry your burdens on your own, Perhaps you finally have summoned the strength to explain to somebody that you need their help. You might have told them what's going on in your life that you cannot seem to handle on your own. Maybe you've vented to them about the anxiety that has taken hold of you or the grief that you cannot shake off or the loneliness that haunts you even

There is something oddly dissonant about how we remember other people, that once we think we understand someone, we start to obsess over everything else we know about them in relation to that first thought. Generosity tends to eclipse disappointment, while reliability follows betrayal up close. One wrong turn can define a lifetime, while an entire history of benign behavior can get folded up and tucked inside another, sharper lie. We tell ourselves that we're remembering thin

There is something curious about our language. We speak of the moon as if it were something that changes, that becomes. We congratulate ourselves on a full moon, watch with approval as it becomes a crescent, become pensive when it vanishes behind some distant horizon, and even grumble when it fails to appear at all. In our speech, we treat this cold, distant rock as if it were something that is always becoming more or less itself, more or less real. What nonsense! Nothing has

Most of us spend a surprising amount of our lives rehearsing explanations. We explain why we stayed, why we left, why we changed our minds, why something hurts more than it should, or why we've stopped being the person someone remembers. We do this even when we aren't likely to say any of it out loud. We organize the information, collect the facts and the context, and we imagine a moment when someone has drawn close enough to hear it all. They will see clearly, we tell oursel