After a long day filled with laughs, coffee, and wedding planning (for non-existent weddings), a friend said to me upon our reflections about work and our chosen profession: "It isn't something you just half 'do.'"

He was right, but I think that's really true about anything you're passionate about. You have to work hard and there are sacrifices that go hand-in-hand with it, and as you throw yourself deeply into the career you've picked, you'll also find that that dedication ends up bleeding into other parts of your life. Half-assing anything is no longer an option.

But lately I've been wondering about what happens when that light dims a bit. Where does all the motivation and the passion go if it isn't wrapped around you every day? Did it burn out with the rest of your fire, or did you build walls around it in your heart so you could save it for later?

My brain has felt like a word cloud lately. It's not a pretty picture, and the largest words are the most dangerous ones to say out loud because although they've never been spoken to you, they've surely been spoken about you (if anything, they've been spoken by the other voice in your brain that keeps you grounded every day): unnecessary, irrelevant, obsolete, in the way.



There's this fear that I've developed lately that I'll cease to exist the second I stop doing all of the things that have defined me professionally, which I've come to realize is more harmful than helpful. Whereas in the past, I dove into piles of creativity in order to breathe, these days it feels more suffocating – to wake up and feel scared to let down yet another person, to move through the day as if it weren't making a difference, to go to bed wondering who you forgot to show up for.

I'm afraid I'm not a very good person.

I'm confident I should do more to reclaim the creativity that got buried in conference rooms and under spreadsheets.

I believe there's more than whatever my bullet journal tells me there is to do in a day.

And now we've veered, yet again, into that "too honest" territory that serves no real purpose other than to empty my brain of anxiety.

Good night.