Burned out from chasing productivity? Me too. Let's build a life designed around joy instead

Miss Rumphius had three dreams. I'd spent years chasing the first two — the travel, the coast. A someday life. It took burnout, a layoff, and rereading a childhood picture book to realize the third.

Creativity won't save you from burnout, but this might. What actually happened when I finally stopped making excuses and showed up to a pottery class: what I learned about perfectionism, why I hated being told what to make, and the unexpected thing that actually built joy. This is part of my series called Field Notes, a real-time experiment in cultivating joy.

What happens when you stop postponing life for "someday"? I'm spending my 33rd year running 12 experiments to answer one question: How do you build a state of joy that coexists with the uncertainty of life? This is autoethnographic research—documenting real-time experiments in creative expression, intentional living, and deprogramming from hustle culture. No guru shit, just messy truth from the wilderness.

January is loud. Everyone seems to have a plan, a vision, a glow-up timeline. Meanwhile, I’m sitting with a cup of tea, watching the trees rest, wondering why we expect ourselves to bloom on command.

This is a reflection from the space between endings and beginnings — about pressure, self-trust, and what it means to build a life without forcing clarity before it arrives.