Every so often, reality cracks open.
Not through a ritual, not in ceremony—just in the middle of a normal day.

You might be sitting at the beach, light flickering on the water, and suddenly it hits: What even is this? How is any of this real? How do I exist in the middle of it?

It’s not a thought. It’s an awareness.
Something in you remembers: this isn’t ordinary.
It’s miraculous.

I hope fall is treating you well. The days are so noticeably shorter now— there’s more time for rest, and early bed times seem inevitable.

It’s also the season for finishing up projects outside, and making small shifts to prepare us for the quieter months ahead.

With that said, a friend mentioned that she and her fiancé were debating about whether to add a bench out front — part of a new landscaping plan.

Without thinking, I said, “Don’t put a chair where you don’t want people to sit.”

Instagram once felt like a place to share glimpses of life. A meal, a walk, a moment in nature. Over time, it’s shifted into something else — a stage. Now, it’s not just about sharing. It’s about curating, performing, and playing the role of a self that others will recognize.

And now, the curtain never falls. The algorithms ask for constant output. The stage is our living room, our breakfast, our walk in the woods. What was once a persona reserved for a moment has seeped into the daily fabric of who we think we are.

Noticing. Observing. Remembering.

Every night, I clean the coffee pot. Every day, the laundry piles up. I finally get a load done, and within hours there’s another heap of wet, dirty clothes waiting in front of the machine, carrying the faint smell of damp cotton. I vacuum the house, and by the next day tumbleweeds of Labrador retriever fur are blowing in the fan’s wind, clinging to socks and skimming across the floor. I pay the bills, and new ones arrive with the slap of envelopes hitting the counter. The cycle never stops.

We think we’re moving toward “done,” but life always circles back to messy, dirty, empty, or due again. It’s not a flaw in the way we live — it’s the fabric of reality itself.

There are just some foods that are summer. Like, have you even had a summer if you haven’t had potato salad? Watermelon. Lemonade. A burger. Maybe a popsicle dripping down your hand on a porch somewhere. It’s not just food—it’s a feeling.

Potato salad has always been one of those for me. Growing up, my best friend Lauren’s mom made the best version I’ve had to this day—

Most people don’t realize they’ve built a life around survival cues. Urgency, pressure, overcommitment, hustle, people-pleasing—these stress signals often become the foundation of our routines, not because we chose them consciously, but because they’re normalized.

The result? Lives that look productive on the outside but feel chaotic, disconnected, and unsustainable on the inside.

But what if we stopped designing our lives around what keeps us stressed—and started designing around what helps us feel safe, steady, and well?

We’re told to push through.

Push through the tiredness.
The headache.
The short fuse.
The gut feeling that something’s off.

We reward it. Celebrate it. Build entire identities around being the one who never quits. And for a while, it works. You get things done. You check the boxes. You hold it all together.

But at what cost?