i learned i couldn't earn my way into feeling alive. i needed space. to reconnect to myself. to others. to the deeper throughline underneath my life.
intermission is what happened when i stopped trying to rush through my own life.
i spent a lot of my life in motion. performing. achieving. proving. trying to become someone.
and somewhere inside all of that, i lost access to myself.
i thought connection would come after success. after certainty. after i finally became enough.
but i was constantly postponing my actual life. waiting for some future version of me to arrive.
disconnection felt like: living in my head. constant urgency. overworking. trying to outrun inadequacy. never fully arriving anywhere emotionally.
and connection, when it finally started showing up, felt quieter than i expected.
it looked like being present long enough to hear my own thoughts again. trusting my body. moving slower. feeling awe instead of constant fight. creating from truth instead of fear.
it wasn't about becoming a different person.
it was about coming back to the one that was already there.
the hardest chapter of my life happened in a small apartment in greenwich village. and every morning, before the noise of the city, before the to-do list, before the pressure to figure out who i was supposed to be, i'd hear them.
on the fire escape. on the roof. just outside the window.
twenty seconds of birdsong that let me take a deep breath.
i grew up by the woods. every home i'd ever lived in had birdsong through the windows.
when i moved to new york, i lost the sound of nature.
and then somehow, in this one tiny apartment, i got it back.
every morning, before the noise of the city, before the pressure to figure out who i was supposed to become, i'd hear them outside my window.
twenty seconds of birdsong that made me feel like myself again.
like home. like safety. like proof i hadn't gone too far from myself.
and every now and then, in the middle of work, or anxiety, or trying too hard, they'd come back.
a quiet interruption. a reminder to look up.
later i learned that starlings gather at dusk. during transitional hours. they move together. responsive to each other. never perfectly controlled. beautiful only when you slow down enough to really see them.
that felt important somehow.
i think most people are moving through life too quickly to notice they're here.
intermission is for the ones learning how to notice again.
i'm a writer building intermission from the inside of one. i'm also a strategist by trade, a podcast host by accident, and a person actively learning that fighting was automatic but never required.
if any of this resonated, i'd love to keep in touch. find me on substack, on the podcast, on instagram, or right here.
Join intermission →there is no version of your life where you finally become worthy of living it.
you're in it right now. you already have a place here.