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.

A reflective essay on how loss became a language of its own — from losing a phone in a Scottish bog to losing jobs and identities years later. A story of creative recovery, writing as an anchor, and learning to live through the in-between.

Every October teaches me how to let go. This year, it’s fear I’m shedding — fear of not being enough, of being judged, of wanting too much. Because joy, I’m learning, doesn’t come from certainty. It comes from trying.

By society’s standards, I’m a loser — unemployed, living at home, writing from the same bedroom I grew up in. For a long time, I carried the weight of that label like proof I’d fallen behind. But the truth? Living at home became the foundation for everything beautiful, brave, and free about my life. This Tiny Rebellion is about redefining what “making it” really means — and learning that sometimes, coming home is the most radical move of all.