I'm tired, and it's scary to admit it.

I am actually typing this up in the air right now - on the plane flying back to Houston after nearly two weeks in Seattle with family. As always, the post-vacation funk hits hard and fast. I'm not even off the plane yet, and I'm already dreading returning to the existence I was living before. Endless days melting into endless (read: late) nights. Crawling into bed at 4:00 am to fall asleep at 5:00 am to wake up in a frenzy at 9:00 am because my day feels like it has already started too late. It feels very much like a hamster wheel, and this hamster is definitely feeling the exhaustion and irritation of old age at last. I don't want to run anymore, and yet I feel both that I cannot stop her/others' expectations and fear for myself about what might happen if I'm left to my own devices. It is difficult for me to befriend idleness.

My therapist self knows I'm doing it all wrong. The whole point is to become comfortable again with a slower pace of living, to be okay with rest and silence, and not run myself ragged with work and 16-hour days. At some point in life, one needs to embrace not just minimalism in things but also minimalism in mental energies and commitments. I keep on telling myself I need to "audit" my current commitments and trim them down, but the past several attempts have left me with the same amount coming out as I had going in. Just another hamster wheel.

"Small steps," I tell myself. I've been a self-described "ambitious woman" since high school, possibly even before, but without the vocabulary to name it. I've been fighting for legitimacy and praise and belonging in the watchful eye of others for several decades. It's a lot to unlearn. Like any addict, I don't particularly want to unlearn it, but I know that the alternative probably leads to an unhappy end. When I am retired and nearing the end of life, what memories and moments do I want playing on the record player of my decaying mind? Right now, the last two happy memories cluster around college and life in Boston, with sprinkles of a light around 2015 and 2025 when I went back to dance with my fellow alumni. Maybe I work backwards from there? What existed back then that no longer exists now? "Dance" is the cop-out answer and an incorrect one at that - I'm dancing now, but the feeling is nowhere the same.

All I know is that I'm not happy. I'm exhausted. I feel the uncanny urge to blow it all up and start over. I suppose that is what I constantly seek with these graduate degrees: another chance to find a group of friends in another place. I feel like that is the extrovert's curse - always fast acquaintances, but the true deep friends are slow and rare.

After reading more and more about how fast technology is melting our poor brains (book recommendations: Digital Minimalism, Dopamine Nation, Enshittification, Stolen Focus, Alone Together, Reader Come Home - that last one read ironically on a digital device), I have to admit I know the healthy answer - I need to slow down. I need to exercise my brain in a way that is not just dopamine hits of convenient tasks to be checked off. For example, I am taking up hand journaling again, which is an incredibly low-stakes way to start, so I'll start there, I suppose. I'm purposefully using cheap (but still quite good quality) notebooks from Amazon versus buying a fancy journal and washi tape and stamps and the whole nine yards. I'm tired of hobbies being spectacles; I'm also tired of spending money. I never want to spend money, but my purchases always feel so urgent, so necessary. Before you know it, I've run up a $4,000 credit card bill for the month.

It's like an addiction. Only instead of being addicted to stuff or the high of opening the packages, my addiction is meant to put a temporary stopper on the ever-present anxiety, always a low hum telling me that I'm not good enough, but maybe this purchase will help me get closer. The same anxiety that also worries about imminent loss and change, which causes me to hoard multiples. Why else would I have eight of the same backpack in multiple colors, purchased the minute I realized how "perfect" the backpack was? Or why am I still trying to search for the perfect purse set up?!

I hate it all. I want to choose differently, but I'm also scared that my identity - as the dependable, ambitious, crazy, miracle-creating eldest daughter - is going to disappear if I let off the gas pedal. So here I am frozen in place, pedal floored, racing towards a terrifying future that I chose but simultaneously don't want, silently screaming through my brave face.

Something has to change.