Once the realization dawned that I was on the wrong ladder, leaned up against the wrong wall, there was no going back.

A idea began to form. A idea that had begun as a simple, flippant thought years ago, but which had now germinated and taken root. Like Inception.

Years ago, when I’d left Microsoft, the idea had been planted. And once it had been recognized as an Actual Thing, once its existence was confirmed, it was imposs­ible to let go.

Like a splinter, it refused to be ignored.

The idea that took root and would no longer leave was this:

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The following is an excerpt from my journal earlier this week.

It’s here again, for several weeks now: that dull ache, the inner heaviness, as though merely existing is some kind of unpleasant chore.

It feels like a sort of restlessness – like I desperately want and need to move, to change, to get out of the house, even – yet have no energy or desire to do so.

In phases like these, it’s really hard for me not to fall victim to the nasty voice inside my head that tells me it’s my fault I feel this way. That I’m too lazy or too weird or too weak or too unimpressive. That I am nothing and will always be a disappointment to those around me. That everyone around me is just sad for me, pitying what a weirdo I am.

I know these thoughts are ridiculous, and still I cannot seem to shake them off. Like stubborn, awful little gremlins that just keep coming back.

And even as I say that I can hear the voices of better angels (and of therapists past) challenging me to question that narrative.

What evidence do I have for these beliefs?
What am I getting out of this belief?
Does this belief serve me?

What am I getting out of this, anyway? What would it mean if all those things were true?

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There were many parts of the medical leave I was prepared for.

The shame. The sense of guilt. The feelings of worthlessness and cloud of failure.

What I was not prepared for was the silence.

The all-encompassing, all-consuming, total silence. When you’ve spent your entire professional life running at breakneck speed – fueled by adrenaline and fear – and then you suddenly stop? It’s the worst form of whiplash.

Stripped of your identity and alone with nothing but your thoughts for the first time in years, the silence is, by far, the worst part.

Suddenly no one is telling you how to spend your time. And you suddenly have tons of it. Suddenly, your days are no longer driven by whatever “urgent” topic is flitting through the heads of executives.

Suddenly, you belong only to yourself again.

Once that realization set in, there was an overwhelming sense of panic.

I tore apart my home, tackling long-procrastinated repairs and DIY projects (plus inventing new ones) in a desperate attempt to fill the day.

Because if I didn’t, the silence would come. And when the silence came, there was no one but me, myself, and I in the room.

I began to realize that I had very little idea who I was, anyway. Who the fuck was I when I couldn’t point to my work?

Surely, identity must come from the DOING, by the way we spent our days. Hell, we used to give ourselves names based upon our vocation.

Smith. A blacksmith.

Fisher. A fisherman.

Carpenter. A… guy who carpents? (Anyway, whatever, you get it).

Without work to anchor me, who was I?

As my brain began dumping the adrenaline and cortisol it no longer needed for fuel, the answer started to take shape.

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As the tram pulled to a stop at Domagkstrasse and the doors opened, I fought back tears. I swallowed hard and put on my sunglasses to hide my eyes.

Get it together, Matt. Jesus. It’s just a job. Stop being so dramatic.

I slung my laptop bag over my shoulder, stepped off the tram, and began taking confident strides toward the office building a ten-minute walk away. Plenty of time to shake this off.

Except I didn’t.

With a few involuntary spasms, the sobs choked their way out. I could feel my mouth doing its characteristic downward-curl, chin-quiver, cry-smile.

Mom used to do that, and my sisters and I used to laugh at (with) her when she’d happy-cry because it was such a ridiculous face to make in tears.

Mom.

Not even a year since we’d lost her. The pain was unbearable.

But this wasn’t just grief. This was more than that.

This was a cocktail of grief, newly-diagnosed neurospice, and a workplace — no, a way of working, a way of existing in vocation — that just wasn’t working. All of it just eating me alive.

Literally.

I’d lost nearly twenty pounds in less than 3 months.

At first, the weight falling off without effort had been a thrill. Five pounds. Then ten. It was nice to feel slim again. Lighter and tighter in my body.

But then it kept going. After it passed the 15-pound mark I started to get scared, like I was riding in a runaway train that wouldn’t stop. Friends had gone from exclaiming, “Wow, you look amazing!” to, “Holy shit, are you sick?”

The neurologist seated across from me a few weeks ago had raised his eyebrows at the weight loss.

So, then there were tests.

An EKG. An EEG. A full CT Scan. Bloodwork. He wanted to rule out something wrong with my brain, which, given our family medical history, was important.

Mom had lived fast and died young — working 18-hour days and flying across the country to visit, schmooze, and wine & dine her clients. Her work in sales and consulting was the sun around which everything in her life — and ours — orbited. And she was damn good at it.

As far as I was concerned, she walked on water.

By the time Alzheimers symptoms made themselves known for the first time, with a violent and traumatizing Transient Global Amnesia, she was only 53. By 65, she was gone.

The last 10 years of her life were a slow-burning hell while Alzheimers steadily ate away at her mind.

Then, after it had eaten her mind, having finally satiated its endless appetite on our memories, our family laughs and vacations and graduations and milestones and I-love-you-mores and dancing around the kitchen singing Ain’t No Mountain High Enough . . . then, the Alzheimers had nothing left to take but her.

So. We needed to rule it out.

But the reason I was in a neurologist’s office wasn’t the weight loss, per se. Or at least: It wasn’t just that.

It was also that I couldn’t sleep.
And I couldn’t function at work.
And I couldn’t get out of bed on weekends.
And I swung from rage to despair to euphoria to numbness in the space of hours.

It was all of that, and . . .

It was also the fantasizing about not being alive anymore.

Not suicide, mind you. I didn’t want to kill myself (I was quick to point this out, because of course the wanting was what would make this actually serious in my mind, and of course this wasn’t serious. “Serious” was for people who couldn’t cope. And if there was one thing I knew damn well how to do, it was fucking cope).

So no, I didn’t want to kill myself.

I simply didn’t want to be alive anymore.

When all the follow-up tests and appointments were done, the doctor had sat across from me, a serious look on his face.

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We all know the tried-and-true Millennial recipe for success: get good grades. Go to college. Get a sensible degree. Get a job. Work hard. And poof! Security, happiness, and stability are yours.

And by now, we also know that recipe was bullshit.

A Broken Contract

The social contract we inherited from our Boomer parents has long since been broken. Most of us Millennials were a good decade into our careers when we realized it had been shredded. Senior enough to start to see the cracks in the system, but also senior enough to have something to lose.

So we kept going. We kept climbing ladders we were told would at least bring security, if not happiness. We reasoned that if the social contract was broken, the next best thing was to create our own sense of security – in particular through financial security – and we chased that instead.

Fast forward another ten years and many of us Millennials – especially us Elder Millennials born ‘85 or earlier – are now in our 40s, and even have kids. Yet you can see that something’s off. We’re not happy.

You see it everywhere. It’s in our desperate, teary-eyed social media posts. It’s in the looks of resignation and defeat we exchange in the halls of the office between meetings.

The words of our Boomer parents ring in our ears.

Buck up. Work isn’t supposed to be a good time. Hate your job? Join the club. Welcome to adulthood. You think it’s bad now? Wait till you have kids.

And over time, a painful realization dawned.

We’ve spent decades chasing someone else’s idea of what a good life is.

And that led to a very unsettling question:

The Great Millennial Midlife Awakening

I’m 40 now, so as much as it pains me to say it, I am solidly in midlife at this point. My fellow Elder Millennials’ age makes it tempting for Boomers in particular to write off what’s happening to us as a simple midlife crisis.

“We all have them,” the Boomers reason. “It’s a phase. You hit your 40s and you freak out, try to blow up the stability you’ve created to rekindle a sense of adventure.”

But right there in that quick cultural dismissal is the key difference between a standard “midlife crisis” and what’s happening to Millennials.

This isn’t recklessly going out and buying a sports car or having an affair just to feel young and alive again.

This is looking around and realizing how little of what you’ve built is really making you happy, let alone secure.

Even the most “successful” Millennials among us, with high-paying corporate jobs, have seen just how fragile that sense of accomplishment and security is. Tech companies in particular are slashing white-collar jobs left and right.

It’s never been more painfully apparent that the systems we were told would offer us loyalty and safety – like a shiny, blue-chip employer – just don’t give a shit.

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Waking Up

For many of us Millennials (myself included) there has also been a micro-shift playing out behind the scenes of the larger macro-shifts.

Millennials are the generation that normalized talking about things like mental health and therapy. We’ve made use of resources that our parents either didn’t have available or didn’t care to take advantage of.

We’ve done a lot of work to turn over every inner stone of inherited values and narrative to examine whether it’s worth keeping, changing, or discarding for something else.

For me personally over the last 10 years, this has looked like:

• Deconstructing from high-control fundamentalist religion

• Coming out at 34 after spending 21 years closeted and in denial

• Re-evaluating my values, ethics, and politics

• A surprise ADHD diagnosis the day before turning 40 (yikes)

• Examining the role my work has played in the formation of my identity

• Getting honest with myself about the kind of work I actually enjoy

• Starting to dream about a life that looks more authentically mine

And it’s that last one, I think, where many of my fellow Millennials find ourselves now.

If there are no rules – and if there’s anything we have learned since 2015, it is that there certainly are not – then why are we spending our time and energy playing by them?

Why are we spending our one wild, precious life building something that someone else wants, rather than what we want?

Coming Home

And that realization – that I was building a life I wasn’t actually built for – was a big “oh shit” moment for me.

See, the 20 years of my career up to this point were motivated by fear.

I worked 14-hour days and tried to climb the ladder. Pushed away friends and potential partners because work demanded my attention. Starved myself because who has time to eat when there’s a deadline? Deprived myself of sleep because landing that launch or that meeting tomorrow morning was too important.

I did all of this.

Not because I wanted to. I did it because I was so desperate for the validation and sense of identity it would give me if I could just be somebody. I was desperate for a sense of safety and social acceptance.

And The Company, of course, was more than happy to provide that identity in exchange for undying dedication.

Until after a while I started noticing a pattern – that no matter what I achieved, no matter how high I climbed, no matter how many atta boys I’d earned . . .

. . . it was never enough.

And I was never enough.

I started noticing how the same tactics used on me in high-control religion – tactics designed to warp a person’s reality and co-opt their identity – were being used in the workplace. Everywhere.

(I am actually working on an article about how culty corporate America is. I would know – I’ve been in two cults in my lifetime).

When I finally connected those dots . . . something in me broke open.

It was that realization that helped me get to a place of readiness to begin a journey. A journey of coming home to myself.

It sounds cliché and melodramatic, I know. But I can see it happening everywhere. It’s not just me being woo-woo.

Something is shifting in the Millennial generation. If you pay attention, you can feel it in the air. It’s in the Zeitgeist.

Once that hunger takes hold, nothing else satisfies it.

Once you well and truly know that all you actually want is

• to feel at peace in your own body and mind

• to live slowly and not in a state of manufactured urgency

• to spend time with the people you love

• to have freedom to explore your interests and creativity

well, then, my friend, that’s when you’re well and truly fucked in corporate America.

Because nothing else will ever motivate you once that hunger takes hold.

Once you get an actual glimpse of the person you really want to be, it is damn near impossible to motivate yourself to chase anything else.

And that’s what killed my ambition.

I realized I never, ever wanted to be anywhere near a C-Suite. I didn’t care about chasing the next promotion anymore. I barely cared about hitting my deliverables.

What Now?

Maybe you’re like me and you now find yourself in that (very uncomfortable) in-between stage. The stage where you’ve woken up to wanting something very different for yourself, but you don’t quite see the full picture yet.

It’s scary to be in that place, where your old ambitions die suddenly with nothing to replace them. Your energy suddenly disappears. You go into a near-hermit existence. You start asking yourself things like: “Am I just lazy?”

I have a theory:

My ambition isn’t dead.
It’s in a cocoon.

It’s literally dissolving, like a caterpillar, and preparing to re-assemble itself into something else. Something very different.

What that is I can’t say with certainty yet.

My job right now is to protect the cocoon.

What you’re reading right now is part of that cocoon.

When I first started Wrong Ladder / Wrong Wall, I had a lot of ideas for what it was going to be. But I quickly realized none of them really felt right.

Which made me panic, until I realized what WLWW actually is, at least right now.

Wrong Ladder / Wrong Wall is my live diary for you. It’s a place where I get honest and unguarded about where I have been in corporate life, what I have learned, and most importantly, what I actually want.

WLWW is one of your fellow Millennials just trying to follow the urge, the nudge, the call that we are all feeling right now. That something needs to change. That we need something different.

I want to build a life that I am actually built for. A life that works for me, not one that I squeeze into the margins of my day after I am done paying for Jeff Bezos’ third superyacht.

God knows the man’s got enough yachts and dick rockets.

It’s time I – we – started helping ourselves get what we really want.

Come along with me as I walk that path.

For years now, in that sort of dead space that exists “between the years”—that quiet, dark time between Christmas and New Years when we all sort of retreat into our hovels—I have long gone into a state of contemplative hibernation.

I sit down, I look at the year in review. I journal down all my thoughts. I consider what went well and what didn’t. I think about how I want to change in the year ahead, and how I want to stay the same. I usually feel this surge of optimism and empowerment, a readiness to take on all my big audacious hairy goals.

And then here’s where it goes to shit: I take alllllll those big dreams and I start breaking them into SMART goals. You probably know them (and hate them) as much as I do. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound.

And every damn year, the very second I write those words on a piece of paper or in a Google Doc, I can feel the dream start to die. Because now instead of a dream that lights me up, it feels like a death march.

Checklists, habit trackers, monthly and weekly reviews. Suddenly I’m caught up in creating structure that I think is going to support me (and hold me accountable, gross) toward hitting that goal.

My career coach said to me this year: “I’ve noticed that you need some kind of structure to get yourself going, but then the minute we create the structure, you fight against it.”

And she was right.

What I realized this year during the “dead space” reflection period was that I think I’ve been going about setting goals for myself all wrong. I don’t think super detailed structure or documented SMART goals is what I really need—at least not in this stage of my journey.

What I need right now is forward momentum.

I need to feel like I’m getting closer each day to the things that are important to me long-term, not to get caught up in some sort of masochistic Habit Tracker Hell.

Especially as an ADHDer, I need just enough structure to get traction, but not so much that I’m overly concerned about checking boxes perfectly.

Here’s the analogy I’ll use: you know when you go bowling and you can get those bumpers for your lane, so that the ball never rolls into the gutter? The ball can bounce wildly around side to side on its way down the lane, but it is moving forward nonetheless.

In the past, I was always setting goals for myself obsessing about making sure that metaphorical bowling ball moved in a straight-arrow line right down the middle. This is awful for an ADHD brain, because we don’t think or work linearly. It also sets me up for a ton of shame, because it sets up perfection as the only way to get to the goal. If the ball didn’t roll perfectly straight, it’s a failure and so I am I, and why do I even try and why am I here and dear sweet f*cking Jesus why is it so hard to be perfect when everyone else seems to do it effortlessly and and and and…

None of that is helpful when all I really care about is making sure the bowling ball knocks down at least one pin at the end of the lane. That’s it.

I want better, not perfect.

So this year, I decided to try something different, and maybe this idea will work for you too.

Directional Intentions instead of Goals

This year, instead of setting SMART goals for all the things I want to experience and achieve this year, I’m going to boil down everything that’s important to me into 3 basic categories:

1. Create.

2. Charge.

3. Connect.

Create means doing anything creative. Making something. This could be a piece of writing, a video for social media, doing research for an article I want to write, or even going to a museum to get inspired and fill my inner creative koi pond.

Charge means doing things that charge my internal battery and give me a sense of well-being. Some examples might be: setting aside dedicated Putter Days at home for me to revel in my homebody nature. Putting down my phone to spend an evening reading a book instead of watching TV. Allowing myself the satisfaction of dedicating a Saturday to working through a list of procrastinated to-dos. Going to the gym in short shorts and having a Hot Girl Walk/Run Session on the treadmill with a super c*nty playlist. If it makes me feel stronger, safer, more confident, more relaxed—it goes in this bucket.

Connect means spending more time with people I love and who fill my tank. It also means making an effort to be an active member of the communities I’m in—whether that is my local queer community, meeting local creatives like me, or even work events. It could even be as simple as shooting a text message to a friend to ask when they’re free to hang out next.

This Feels Like Cheating—But It’s Not. Here’s Why.

Here’s where it gets interesting: I’m not setting a concrete goal for any of these.

All I am going to do is ask myself what I’m going to do each day that falls into one of those 3 buckets. Just 3 things.

Those can be small things (for example, even writing just once sentence counts as “Create” if my tank is empty that day). It also means expanding my mindset of what falls into those buckets.

For example, my day job in Sales will fall largely into the Connect bucket—because even though I do have a sales quota (gross), the core of Sales is really about building relationships and giving clients what they need to be successful.

Reframing my day job as part of my Big 3 this way helps me feel more motivated to give energy to it, because then it is no longer something holding me back from becoming my creative, future self. It is instead something that is helping me get there today, right now.

Today was Monday, January 5, and here were my Create, Charge, and Connect actions:

• Create: Finish WLWW Goals post and schedule it for publishing (which is what you’re reading right now!)

• Charge: Wash my face, do my nighttime skincare, put on my cozy jammies, and crawl into bed with my dog and my Kindle for reading instead of watching TV.

• Connect: Reach out to my friend Jo to ask if she has time to hang out this week (we’re now gonna hang out Saturday!).

That’s it. Done.

And—this will feel like cheating, but I promise it’s not—you can even include things on this list you would have done anyway.

Why? Because even drawing your attention to that thing as an act you completed in alignment with your priorities and values is meaningful.

Reminding yourself you’re acting in alignment with your values stabilizes you. It grounds you. It anchors you deeper into the version of yourself you want to be. And most importantly: it reinforces you in your quest to continue moving forward.

When you are trying to change your life—when you’re trying to get off the wrong ladder leaned up against the wrong wall—that is going to be scary. And in scary, high-stakes times, you need to know why you’re choosing to make moves.

For me, breaking down my life for this year into those three categories—Create, Charge, Connect—reinforces my why and reminds me of its value. Those 3 things are the most important things to me right now. They may even be the most important things in my life, PERIOD.

And as long as I am doing them every single day, even if in some tiny small way, then I know I’m moving toward a version of myself that I will be proud of when 2027 comes.

Want to know how I figured this out and why I think this will work better? It’s a simple exercise you can do yourself in the space of a single evening at home.

Monthly and annual subscribers will get all the goodies in the rest of the post, below. If you’re not a subscriber already, please consider becoming one. It’s $5/month (or even less annually) and you can cancel anytime.

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You may have noticed that I went quiet in September and you haven’t seen much from me on here since then. That’s because for a big chunk of Q4 I was on medical leave for burnout and depression. I’m doing okay now, thanks to some really supportive friends and a great team of doctors.

I plan to write and share some content around that topic very soon (look for more episodes of the Burn(out) Book!). But given today is New Year’s Day, and because I also had some time while on leave to think about what’s next, I wanted to share this quick post to let you know what to expect on Wrong Ladder / Wrong Wall in 2026.

I have set 3 big directional intentions for myself in 2026:

Matt’s Big 3

1. Create.

   Write. Make videos. Start a YouTube channel to geek out about German history and travel. Give walking tours of Munich just for fun. Just make SOMETHING and put it out into the world as often as possible. Even if it’s bad. I have a lot of internalized fear here that I still have to push myself through!

2. Charge.

   This means taking care of myself by doing things that charge my battery and increase my sense of well-being. I’m a big homebody, so a major one here is making space for dedicated Putter Days, where I’m allowed to just stay home with no plans and agenda and putter around the house. It also includes learning new things, indulging my curiosity into rabbit holes, and prioritizing my sleep.

3. Connect.

   Spend more time with people I love and who fill my tank. Pursue creative community in my city. Participate more actively in my local queer community as well.

All of these will apply to what you’ll see on Wrong Ladder / Wrong Wall this year, too.

Create: You’ll see more regular posts and content from me. I also have several ideas for trying out new ways to connect with you all, including dedicated Hangouts/Vent Seshes, a book club, and a very special creative project that will kick off in mid-2026. More on that later ;) This is the area that will be the scariest for me because it requires the most vulnerability, but I hope you’ll be patient with me and give me feedback on what you want to see more (or less) of.

Charge: I’m going to allow myself the freedom to indulge my curiosity on some topics related to career, life in corporate, and overall business trends by sprinkling in some more research-focused, long-form article content. This might include my thoughts on what’s happening with our entire economy being bet on AI, on the real reasons for RTO policies, or even just calling out the latest bullshit from corporate leaders in the industry.

Connect: You’ll see more opportunities to connect with me and each other on a regular basis coming in 2026. I don’t want WLWW to just be some sort of megaphone I shout into, hoping that someone is listening. I want it to be a discussion and a place where we can support each other through the hellscape that corporate life so often is.

What is Coming in 2026?

2026 is going to be a watershed year for me, and there is going to be a lot of change.

One change I know is coming is a major shift in my career. This involves the creative project I referenced above, and it’s the one I am the most excited (and terrified) about. I can’t say too much yet, but just know that when it comes to my career in 2026… everything is about to change.

That’s why I hope you’ll come along with me and consider subscribing. Even a monthly subscription means the world to me, and it costs about the same as a trip to Starbucks. Monthly or yearly subscribers will have access to much more subscriber-only content in 2026 (including the big juicy creative project I’m being so cagey about).

No matter what, I’m excited for what’s coming in 2026 and I can’t wait to start sharing more with you all.

Happy New Year!

Matt

In Part 1, I talked about your company exploits hustle culture and manufactured urgency to keep you in a state of fight-or-flight that makes you more amenable to having your time and your attention stolen from you.

Part of the solution to this is learning how to slow down, so that you can engage your critical thinking, be present in what you’re working on, and show up fully in all areas of your life—both at the office and at home.

In Part 2 here, we’re going to talk about 7 super practical tips and tricks I have used (to varying degrees of success) that help me slow down.

This list is descriptive, not prescriptive. These are some things that have worked (or not) for me, but you may have a different experience, and that’s okay! If only one of these actually feels useful or appealing, then take it and ignore the rest.

So how the f*ck do we slow the f*ck down, exactly?

Slowing down will feel counter-productive at first, until you realize that you’re accomplishing just as much, if not more, when you’re not in a state of panic. Keep that in mind as you practice and try out these exercises.

Here are some practical things that have worked for me—and a few that haven’t:

1: Pay attention to your typing and/or handwriting.

Are your hands or forearms tense? Are you pounding the keys, rushing, and backspacing a lot because you’re making mistakes with speed? Gripping the pen so hard your fingers hurt? Try slowing down. Breathe. Press the keys gently and notice how it feels.

2: Slow your walking pace to a stroll.

This one seems silly but is a big deal for me. My “natural” (read: learned) walking pace is basically speed-walking. When I started paying attention, I noticed that I was speed-walking in a rush everywhere—even in my own home. Slowing my pace to a stroll brings my attention back to my body and reminds me I don’t have to rush.

3: Turn off all notifications you can live without.

My computer can only give me on-screen/audio notifications for 3 things:

1. Calendar reminders or incoming conference calls ringing because a meeting or time block on my calendar is about to start.

2. My Apple Reminders, which I use to make sure I don’t forget a time-bound task that’s important for personal life outside work.

3. My Flow app, which I use for Pomodoro timers. This has been a serious help for me as an ADHDer who has trouble with task initiation.

Nothing else—and I mean NOTHING ELSE—is allowed to send me any kind of visual or audio notification. Ever.

No on-screen notifications from Outlook or Slack a new message has come in. No badge tells me I have X unreads. No app badge at all - there is absolutely zero visual or audio notification in my desktop tray that I have anything waiting on me anywhere.

This seems small, but I swear to you, it’s probably the thing that has made the biggest impact for me. Why?

Because getting out of fight-or-flight means reducing the sense of over-stimulation as much as possible.

“But what if it’s urgent?” You might ask.

Listen. If it’s life-or-death, they’ll find you. Not once have I ever missed a Slack message or an email that couldn’t have waited until I came back from whatever I was working on.

(As a side bonus: you will never again have to worry about an embarrassing Slack message or confidential email preview coming through while you’re presenting something on-screen).

4: Morning Pages.

More than any other habit, this has brought clarity and slowness to my life. It’s a practice I learned from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Here’s how it works:

Every morning (it has to be morning) you sit down with paper and pen and you write 3 pages. It can be 3 pages of anything you want - you can treat it like a journal, or you can simply write a stream-of-consciousness brain dump (which is usually what I do). The point is to not self-censor, to keep your hand moving, and never re-read them. Just get it out of your head and put it away.

I notice an incredible difference in how I go about my day when I do this. It slows me down but it also allows my brain to “flush” everything weighing it down.

Doing this consistently for about 9 months brought a level of clarity about what I actually wanted from my life that no self-help book, seminar, or paid program ever has. I promise you: you’ll discover yourself in a new way.

Morning Pages are my time, before the world puts its demands on me. The practice reminds me that my time and energy belong to me—not someone else.

5: Box Breathing.

This one is popular and consistently recommended by mental health professionals and doctors alike.

Imagine a square with 4 sides and map your breathing to it. Inhale 4 seconds. Hold 4 seconds. Exhale 4 seconds. Hold 4 Seconds. Repeat.

This exercise brings your focus back to your body and helps you calm the physical fight-or-flight response.

This is one of the ones that works less well for me, because I usually find myself obsessing over whether I am counting from 1-4 at a consistent speed or whether I’m kicking off each breath/hold at the exact “right” time (and yes, I am aware that sounds ridiculous, but that’s my brain 🤷🏼‍♂️).

6: Use noise-canceling headphones with binaural beats or ambient mood music to your advantage.

This is all about (1) reducing the amount of external stimulation coming at you and (2) creating a mood into which your brain and body can relax.

Binaural beats have been helpful for me at work. When I need to focus on a task that’s very brainpower-intensive and I’m feeling a bit rushed or anxious about it, listening to binaural beats with noise-canceling headphones has been huge.

I also use ambient music with my noise-canceling headphones to create a relaxed, slow mood for myself when I’m commuting to and from work. Low-key ambient music really helps to calm me down with a full-body effect.

This is particularly helpful in the darker fall/winter months, when stress can be high due to peak sales periods. My favorite playlist is dark ambient on Spotify.

Finally, I use brown noise to be present when I either want to do something creative—or, ironically—something uninteresting like cleaning my house. There’s something about it that really puts me in a zone of concentration. I’m present with what I’m doing, rather than trying to rush through to finish it.

7. Be an absolutely ruthless b*tch / pr*ck with your calendar.

“Hey, do you have five minutes?”

Nope, I sure do not. Because I know it’s never five minutes, or even 30 minutes, to “hop on a quick call” for a drive-by like that.

And because I know that drive-by issue could very well de-rail the rest of my day and prevent me from getting done what I planned to get done.

I have a general rule that I do not allow unscheduled meetings to invade my calendar same-day, unless it is a life-or-death situation.

I decline same-day meetings or requests for help on things like these:

• A new campaign idea they are super excited about

• A problem with a process they’d like to discuss

• A advertising campaign issue that isn’t time-sensitive

• A meeting someone wants me to join last-minute to give my perspective

• A question someone has about how to solve a problem or topic that is not time-sensitive.

• Giving last-minute inputs or feedback for leadership doc reviews that have been scheduled for weeks.

Essentially what you’re doing here is forcing other people—and yourself—to respect your time.

Your CEO does not operate in a world where they’re constantly allowing their time and schedule to be de-railed. They protect their calendar, and you should too, even if you’re not high on the totem pole.

Protecting your time over the long-term this way will increase your sense of control and self-possession at work. That means less anxiousness about how your day is going to go, and less anxiousness means a relaxed body and brain that doesn’t feel a need to rush.

The goal here is to learning slow down - so be patient with yourself if it takes time.

It’s going to take time to figure out which strategies, tips, and tactics work well for you, because everyone is different. So try not to treat this as a race with a medal and a finish line labeled “Slow, Regulated Living.”

Instead, think of it as a series of experiments and exploration you get to engage in to discover what works best for you over time and as your life goes through changes.

Over time, you’ll discover what “slowing down” looks like for you - and how it might look different during particular phases of your life and career.

Just being conscious of it and paying attention to it in your daily life—even in tiny small ways like noticing how fast you’re walking—adds up fast.

You can learn to slow down faster than you think (see what I did there?).

"URGENT."
"Need an answer by EOP."
"ASAP"
"Please prioritize this request."

There's the simple answer to why everyone is in such a hurry... and then there is the deeper, more complex, and somewhat terrifying answer.

The Simple Answer

The simple answer is that time is money.

More hustle means more output/productivity. And that means more revenue/profit at the end of the quarter.

Better financial results means higher stock price. Money.

And on its most basic level, thats why. Because the company stands to benefit when more money is made. So they drive you faster.

They create a sense of urgency about things that are not actually urgent.

For example, it is an objective fact that nothing actually breaks—i.e. no one dies—if I don't hit my sales quota each quarter. The sun will keep rising each morning. The earth will continue to spin on its axis.

Yet you'd think a nuclear bomb would go off if I didn't deliver 25% YoY growth.

Now, this is the part where we hold two truths, one in each hand.

It is true that yes, there’s a ton of manufactured urgency in corporate life.

It is also true that you as an employee—especially if you’re an employee who is also a shareholder—benefit at least indirectly (if not directly) from the “more, more, more” culture of urgency. My bonus and my Amazon stock RSUs are two great examples.

However, as with so many things in life, there are more than two truths at play.

And when you have only two hands, holding them all simultaneously starts to get tricky.

But let’s try, by looking deeper at the less simple explanation for why everyone is such in a damn hurry in corporate life.

The Less Simple, Kinda Scary Answer

The more nefarious reason that corporate environments are built to be light-speed meat grinders is this:

When you are in a constant hustle mode—when it feels like every second ticking away is working against you—your body will enter a state of fight-or-flight.

Your nervous system is pushed into a state of arousal—meaning it is spiking adrenaline, flooding your brain with cortisol, quickening your heartbeat, dilating your eyes, widening your blood vessels. Readying you.

Your body is evolved to perceive urgency, whether real or manufactured, as a threat.

Because in nature, urgency only exists in a few very special circumstances, for example:

1. You see something you can kill and/or eat to survive.

2. You (or your young) are about to be killed and/or eaten and you need to survive.

3. You see a potential mate for procreation so the species can survive.

See the common thread? Survival.

Fight-or-flight is about your whole body’s drive for survival.

So when that email or slack message comes through with URGENT stamped all over it and Greg is having a meltdown at your desk and your boss Susan is coming down the corridor with a grim look on her face, you feel that shock of adrenaline and your palms start to sweat..

… in the midst of all of that, your prehistoric little lizard brain is only absorbing one thing:

“This is about survival. I must survive.”

You know what else happens when your little lizard brain goes in to fight-or-flight mode to survive?

Your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for decision making, planning, and most importantly critical thought—shuts down.

It goes offline.

Because nature knows that critical thinking isn't the most useful response when survival is on the line.

So now we come to the important question.

Who stands to gain from you being in a constant state of fight-or-flight at work?

It doesn’t make intuitive sense, right?

Why would a corporate employer want tens of thousands of highly-skilled, intelligent, educated people working for them to be in a state where critical thinking shuts down?

Isn't that antithetical to what you want as an employer?

In 1999, my über-Boss, Jeff Bezos, was interviewed by CNET’s Wendy Walsh about comments he wrote in a shareholder letter to the effect that Amazon employees should wake up “terrified” each morning. You can imagine that sentiment got a lot of press attention.

Walsh asked him to clarify what he meant:

Bezos: I ask everybody around here to wake up terrified every morning—their sheets drenched in sweat—but to be very precise about what it is they’re afraid of. They shouldn’t be afraid of our competitors; they should be afraid of our customers … those are the folks we have a relationship with. Those are the folks who send us money. And I believe that our customers are loyal to us right up until the point that somebody offers them a better service.

Walsh (smirking): So to better qualify that fear, it’s like a fear of abandonment?

Bezos (laughing): I think that’s right. You know, you gotta do a good job, and you have to earn the loyalty of customers every day.

Are you ready to hold competing truths simultaneously again?

• It’s true that customer loyalty has to be earned.

• It’s true that customers can and do jump to the best product/offer.

• It’s true that keeping customers takes dedication and commitment.

  and

• It’s also true that waking up every day afraid is a fucking miserable way to spend what is sure to be a very short life.

• It’s also true that a fear of constant abandonment in any sphere—whether personal or professional—will create an absolute truckload of mental health problems for you.

• It’s also true that anxiety about work being the first thing entering your thoughts in the morning is not normal and not healthy and not good.

You might be wondering, especially if you’re an Amazonian: I call bullshit, Matt. isn't thinking critically what we're all about? Isn't that why we have a culture of doc writing instead of Powerpoint? To force us to slow down?

Yes and no.

Employers—especially those with meat-grinder reputations like Amazon—do indeed want you thinking critically… but about only one thing.

Their business.

So while you're there, in their four walls—and ideally, also in the shower and at the breakfast table and on your commute and in between innings at your kids’ little league game and at dinner with your spouse—they will create an environment where everything else fades to black.

Urgency has a way of using its noise to drown everything else out, regardless of importance.

So yeah, sure, docs are intended to create a “slow-down, critical thinking” mechanism.

In reality, I’ve worked at Amazon over 9 years. Do you have any idea how many “slow-down, critical-thinking” 6-pager docs I have churned out in absolute bleary-eyed panic at 2am because of a leadership escalation at 11pm for a meeting that’s just been called for 9am?

Just because it’s intended to do something doesn’t mean it’s actually doing that.

(Kind of like your company’s IT helpdesk. Designed to solve problems, but only opening yet another fucking trouble ticket.)

So back to the question at hand - what does an employer have to gain by putting you in fight-or-flight mode?

Quite simply: your tunnel vision.

When you’re in fight-or-flight and focused only on survival, and “survival” is wrapped up 24/7 in your company’s mission - guess what is going to get your laser focus?

That’s right. Daddy Warbucks’ bottom line.

Meaning your personal need for survival gets hijacked by and in service to the company’s need for survival.

In nature, there’s a word for that.

Think I’m wrong? To see this in action, all you have to do is look back to the pandemic, about a year after we all went into work-from-home mode.

Remember what happened in 2021/2022, when we all finally realized we probably weren’t going to die and we were all now firmly entrenched in a new way of working? A new daily rhythm that was totally divorced from a physical office with physical coworkers and physical bosses? Where you got to throw a load of laundry in between meetings, or play with your kids, or sit down with your spouse on the couch for a few minutes with a cup of coffee to connect and talk during lunch?

Remember how you suddenly realized there were other things in life outside that office that brought you fulfillment?

Remember how you started wondering what kind of legacy you’d leave behind?

Remember how you took conference calls from the middle of the forest, staring up at the trees with leaves gently swaying in dappled sunlight while you walked and talked?

Remember how you exhaled?

That was your prefrontal cortex coming back online.

That was your critical thinking, your deep thinking, coming back online.

That was your humanity coming back online.

And what happened next?

The Great Resignation.

Employees left corporate life in droves - convinced that they could no longer plug back into what they now saw as The Matrix.

And what did employers do?

Enact RTO mandates.

RTO is about many things—real estate, innovation, supervision, collaboration, creativity, management skills (or lack thereof)—but more than anything else, it’s about one thing.

Control.

It’s about making sure you are in a physical environment shaped to the liking of your employer for as long and as often as possible.

Because employees with fight-or-flight tunnel vision are committed to survival - which in this case means the survival of the company.

Survival Isn’t Enough. Not Anymore.

We’re not being chased by bears anymore. You still need to survive, sure, but survival now is more about having enough money than it is about how fast you can outrun a predator.

Which means survival isn’t the same game. And neither is thriving.

So… What Do We Do?

I can’t solve the corporate culture crisis or come up with a solution for the late-stage capitalist hellscape we live in. But I can tell you what I’ve learned in nearly 20 years of corporate life that has helped me to slow down and get perspective.

That’s part of what this Substack is all about.

But the next post will be some seriously practical tips, tricks, and exercises that I use on a daily basis. They’re not perfect, and different things work well for different people. But I can tell you what’s worked—and working—for me these days with nearly two decades under my belt. I’ll tell you what I’ve tried and abandoned as well, because maybe what didn’t work for me will work for you.

Make sure to subscribe - part 2 comes next week!

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Now, this doesn’t mean there aren’t stressful days. This doesn’t mean there aren’t stressful quarters, even. But your body and mind flat-out cannot perform that way over the long-term.

If you stay in that state over the long-term, your body is eventually going to pull the emergency brake for you - and I promise you won’t like the timing it chooses to do so.

For over a decade of my career, I thought that this heightened stress state was just a normal part of work. I thought my feeling amped up on cortisol and adrenaline to the point that I was forgetting to eat lunch most days was just a sign that I was working really hard and doing a great job.

The thing is: I was working hard, and I was doing a great job.

You can run on caffeine, cortisol, and adrenaline for an astounding - and I mean really incredible - amount of time before it catches up with you. You truly can.

But it does catch up with you.

I thought I was “killing it” as a superstar, but I had no idea what it was costing me.

I never stopped to ask myself:

“Do I need a different environment? Do I need better skills and tools to manage my stress levels? Is it normal to have this level of anxiety about missing an email at 11pm? Is it normal that I forgot to eat today?”

I just soldiered on, until one day in 2019 when my body threw the circuit breaker and I landed in a doctor’s office.

You don’t want to end up that way, believe me.

It took two more burnouts over the next several years for me to finally come to one simple realization:

I deserve work that does not put me in fight or flight mode on a constant basis.

To get here, I had to learn to separate hard work from the feeling of adrenaline flooding my body. And I had to leave a couple of jobs and even companies/teams.

I had to learn that it was absolutely possible for me to work hard and to be challenged and to produce amazing work at a manageable pace that fit my nervous system and my energy rhythms.

If your work has you in a near-daily state of fight-or-flight, it is time to consider two possibilities: either (a) you need a new job, or (b) you need better tools and a different mindset so that you can continue to show up at your job without sacrificing yourself on the altar of corporate until there’s nothing left.

In the next installment, we’ll talk about what that looks like in practice - and why we’re doing it in the first place.

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!

Not because it’s lonely at the top or because you’ll never be able to spend all that money or because you got bored getting promoted too often - but because sometimes success doesn’t look like any of those things.

Sometimes it looks like face-planting directly into the mud. Losing everything. Starting over from zero. Failing over and over and over.

I have created an enormous - and I mean really incalculable - amount of stress and angst and anxiety for myself over the years because of my inability to understand this.

Lost too many nights of sleep worrying about “what if I can’t hack it in (fill in the blank here)?”

I recently started a new role in a job function that not only have I never done before and have absolutely zero experience in, but to make matters worse, this job function actually f*cking terrifies me.

I’m talking about sales.

(dun dun dunnnnnnnnn)

I’m an introvert. My brain works slowly. I think, consider, ponder, and then think some more before I do something. I prefer listening over speaking. I dislike aggression and smarmy, salesy bullsh*t. I feel my feelings deeply and then I think about what I’m feeling and then I feel things about what I’m thinking and then I feel more stuff about how I’m thinking about what I’m feeling.

So… how the hell did I end up in a sales role?

I ended up in a sales role because I eventually decided it was time to try something that terrified me. I knew I needed to grow, to be shaken up a bit, to be challenged.

So I jumped into the most terrifying thing I could think of.

But that’s not where the real danger is.

The real danger is in how I measure my success right now.

See, I’m new at this. Which means I’m like a drunk hamster paddling all over the living room in one of those plastic hamster balls. Bumping into stuff left and right. Getting wedged in between furniture. Figuring out that hallway was just a dead end.

If I were to fall into the trap of measuring my success in the ways I’ve been accustomed to measuring it my whole career up to now, I’d quickly be curled up in the fetal position in the corner, rocking back and forth like I belong in a straightjacket.

Because this is a New Thing.

And New Things mean we make lots of New Mistakes.

Lots and lots and lots and lots of New Mistakes.

So with that in mind, what does “success” look like for me right now?

It means I show up every day and ask myself two things:

1. What Do I Need to Learn Today?

2. What is the Next Best Action (for Each of My Clients, in my case)?

That’s it.

That’s all.

When you’re in the middle of the New Thing, success doesn’t mean making every shot, it doesn’t mean doing the thing perfectly (or even well), it doesn’t mean closing each sale, it doesn't mean being an expert.

It means being scared sh*tless. Because you’re in the New Thing. New is scary.

Success in the New Thing means embracing being scared sh*tless most of the time.

It’s part of the deal.

So take a breath, count to 10, and ask yourself what success looks like in this New Thing you’re doing.

Maybe your definition of success needs to be evaluated.

Maybe your definition of success needs to be questioned.

Maybe your definition of success needs to be introduced to a wrecking ball.

Because allowing yourself the freedom to redefine success for this particular season, for this New Thing, could be the key to your freedom.

See, this Future Matt I daydream about, he’s a creative.

Future Matt makes art - writing, mostly. But he dabbles in other things like painting or drawing or even video. Armed with nothing but his laptop, a notebook, and an internet connection, he makes a living with words and inspiration. He writes books, blogs, articles, things to help people, to teach people, and he does it all from wherever and whenever he wants. Maybe he even has a YouTube channel or a podcast where he gabs about whatever he thinks is important to gab about with interesting people. He lives in a world of ideas, messing about with them the way a child toys with play-doh.

Future Matt has no more meetings. There are no annual revenue forecasts. There are no sales quotas. There are no product development matrices. There are no conference calls. The phrase “can we set up a call to get aligned?” (shudder) has been forever banished from his vernacular.

For Future Matt, Germany is still home base but he spends a good chunk of the year on the mediterranean coast of Spain. Maybe Barcelona. Or Sitges.

Future Matt owns his own business. He earns his money through his creativity, and even if he never earns as much as Company Matt did, he’s doing just fine.

And most of all: he’s much, much, happier.

He’s so deliriously happy.

Healthy.

Whole.

Untamed.

Free.

When I dream about that future life and the Future Matt living it, the world feels like it’s expanding. As though a whole universe of possibilities opens up before me, waiting to be seized. What will I write about today? What projects will I start? What ways will I explore and grow and nurture my creativity?

And yet.

Company Matt - the today Matt - never fails to immediately shit all over it.

He comes in with alllll kinds of reasons why this can’t work, why that can’t be the future.

He says things like:

• “You’ll never make it happen.”

• “You can’t do it.”

• “Stop kidding yourself - you’re not good enough to make a living with your writing.”

• “Nobody cares what you have to say - who the hell is going to pay you for it?”

• “Even if you were good - building an audience, a business, is too hard.”

• “You’re daydreaming about this life because you’re lazy. You just don’t want to work hard.”

And the worst one of all - the one he knows will cut me to my core:

Read more

I don’t care if it was five years ago - I refuse to give up the gift of clarity that lockdown gave me.

You might think that after recovering from my burnout in late 2019, I returned to corporate life rested, recharged, and ready to restart.

And if that little burnout of mine had not happened exactly when it did, you might have been right.

But as we all know, everything started spinning in early 2020. Everyone’s collective compass went haywire and all sense of direction, predictability, and stability went straight out the window.

I’d been back at work barely 3 months when lockdown hit and we were all suddenly forced to work from home. So, like the rest of the world, I stocked up on canned goods, toilet paper, and alcohol - and nestled down for what we all thought would be a couple of weeks dialing into conference calls.

Narrator: “It was not a couple of weeks.”

I’d be willing to bet we all went through roughly similar phases during lockdown:

Phase 1: OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGholysh*tsholysh*tsholysh*t

Phase 2: It’s 7pm! Open the windows! *clap clap clap clap clap*

Phase 3: “Can you see my screen now?”

Phase 4: Jesus ever-loving Christ, is this ever going to end?

Phase 5: Jesus ever-loving Christ, I don’t want this to ever end. Taking conference calls in my underwear is f*cking liberating.

Phase 6: Nevermind. I definitely want this to end.

Phase 7: Silence

That final phase - the seventh circle of collective hell we all found ourselves in - was the hardest.

The quiet.

After we’d settled into a weird new rhythm and reality, after we realized the world had indeed continued to spin on its axis without us following our old playbook, it all got very quiet.

Because we were all finally alone with our thoughts for the first time in decades - some of us perhaps for the first time in our entire lives.

Remember what that felt like?

Between conference calls in our pajamas, taking the dog out or starting laundry between meetings, having groceries delivered, spending more time with the people we loved… a sort of quiet clarity settled over everything.

A quiet clarity that whispered:

“You already have everything that’s actually important.”

The hamster wheel of corporate life had slowed just enough for us to take a look around.

And a lot of us didn’t like what we saw.

We realized how much time and energy we were actually giving to these corporate careers we were building.

We realized how much our time - the one thing we could NEVER buy back - was actually worth. We realized how much we hated the way we were spending it - and how ludicrously unnecessary so much of it was (commuting, for example).

That realization about how we were spending our one wild and precious life made things really, really, uncomfortable.

Which brings us to the next logical consequence: The Great Resignation.

En masse, corporate workers started jumping ship. They started businesses. They began freelancing. They moved to smaller companies that were more nimble. Or maybe they walked away from corporate life altogether.

Remember what that felt like?

At the time - and maybe even now - many economic and business thinkers would say it was all just a booming economy buoyed by record-breaking corporate profits. That things were just so good out there that of course workers were looking for better opportunities and moving around more.

I think that certainly was part of it, but my intuition tells me what was happening was something far deeper.

I think the spell was broken.

I think we as Millennial corporate ladder-climbers finally got a chance to see what was at the top of that ladder we’d spent so much energy climbing, and we didn’t like the view.

We saw the executives we’d spent our careers emulating absolutely miserable, “stuck at home” with their families, unable to escape into their one place of refuge - the office.

We saw how our families and circles of friends started to function and bloom when actual work-life balance took root - not the shallow, work-life-“harmony” that we’d been sold by people who regularly work 12 hours a day and haven’t grocery shopped, cleaned their own houses, or cooked for themselves in years.

We saw that the things which made us happy and content weren’t what we expected - it wasn’t more, it wasn’t faster - it was less, and it was slower.

That realization haunts me to this day. I’m not ready to give it up.

I think the spell is still broken.

But we’re now living in the Time After.

Return-to-Office mandates seem to be everywhere as companies frantically try to tamp down on the sense of expansive freedom that made corporate workers - let’s just call it what it is - less malleable.

That (and real estate value) is what’s actually driving RTO - not collaboration, not creativity, not innovation. Everyone who has ever sat in a cubicle knows it. The CEOs know it. The press knows it.

The difference is that we’re now in this strange limbo world of the Time After. It’s a time where we corporate workers are all walking around with a completely different sense of self, sense of values, and sense of what’s important to us - while pretending to play by rules that we no longer buy into or think even make any sense.

Where do we go from here?

I’m not sure - yet.

But I do know that one day I’m going to be taking calls in my underwear again. Playing by my rules. Building what I want to build.

Maybe you feel that same way.

If you’re still haunted by that lockdown clarity, you’ve landed in the right place.

Thank God. I wouldn’t do well in prison.

Instead, the knowledge dawned on me over time, much the same way the sun rises- slowly, patiently, with the sky first growing lighter and then, bit by bit, the ground illuminating until everything is plainly visible.

So, no - not a sudden thing.

But there were signs.

Many, many signs over many, many years.

Like how, growing up, I used to draw and paint and write and read endlessly - literally walking around with my nose buried in a book - but then suddenly as an 18-year-old entering university I was declaring Business as a major.

Or how, at 13 years old, I was ignoring math assignments in class so that I could pull out the college-level book I was reading (much to my teacher’s rage) - and then 10 years later found myself staring at numbers on spreadsheets all day and wondering why I was so tired all the time.

Or how I had dreamed of being an actor, a marine biologist, a writer - never an executive - yet somehow felt a strange compulsion to twist myself into a pretzel and pursue that track anyway.

Or the time in my 20s when I experienced my first panic attack, working late at night in the Starbucks corporate headquarters overlooking Seattle’s Elliot Bay. I thought I was having a brain aneurysm and nearly jumped out a window to make it stop.

Or the time I came back to my hotel room in Shanghai, utterly spent, after spending 14 hours in an Amazon-contracted factory outside the city. I had to dial into a conference call with Seattle and burst into tears, live, in the first five minutes from sheer exhaustion and rage.

Or the time I MC’d one of our corporate events with all the humor, energy and sass of the Golden Globes. The crowd loved it. A manager came up to me after the summit, pulled me aside, and said quietly with a knowing smile: “You’re in the wrong job.”

Or the way I started noticing, after a few years at Amazon, that I loved nothing more than a day with no meetings and a 6-page doc to research and write. When I casually mentioned this to colleagues, they looked at me as though I’d said I loved slicing my own fingers off, one by one, to pass the time.

Until one day, as a fully grown-ass adult in August 2019. The day I finally had to pull my manager into a conference room and, with my head lowered in utter shame, say:

“I … I have a health issue. I can’t go into details, but I am going to need to be out for treatment for a while.”

This was true.

But what I didn’t tell him was that it wasn’t what he was probably thinking. It wasn’t some horrific disease like cancer.

I was depressed.

Deeply, horrifically, can’t-get-out-of-bed-anymore, ideating-how-to-end-it-all-with-minimal-blood depressed.

I was also burned out. But that was sort of like having a gaping hole in your living room floor when the entirety of the house is on fire.

And so, through the wonder of German labor laws, I was officially put on medical leave by my doctor for no less than three months.

Three months with nothing to do except go to therapy twice a week, obediently swallow my SSRIs, take my dog on long walks in Munich’s fall-foilaged English Garden, stare at the river, spend an ungodly amount of money at the nursery building a collection of no less than 47 houseplants - and contemplate my utter failure as a professional and human being.

The quiet - the idleness - drove me to the brink of my sanity. The lack of doing - and therefore the lack of being.

This was … existing? This was unbearable.

Until the beginning of month two.

At the beginning of month two, I began to write.

I bought a journal for the first time in years. I spent hours scribbling away at cafes, in hidden corners of pubs, on my couch, on trains. Words poured out of me. I couldn’t stop.

I built a blog, came out of the closet, and started telling my story for the whole world to read.

I kept journaling, privately. I kept writing. I said all the things I’d always wanted to say. Wrote down all the things I’d always wanted to feel - and gave myself permission to feel them.

Allowed the rage, the frustration, the sadness, the grief, the confusion, the anxiousness, the worry, and - somehow, oddly, the relief - to flow.

I gave myself permission to question everything.

Gave myself permission to simply be, and to write, and to breathe, and to sleep, and to cook, and to aggressively kiss my dog, and to dig around in potting soil for another plant with my bare hands so I could feel every gram of dirt under my fingernails.

And late at night on one dark, rainy autumn evening I finally wrote a sentence in my journal that promised to ruin everything I’d built.

The words stared back at me, blank ink on a page in the warm glow of dim lights: