When it all falls apart

Maybe it needs to.

Well. It happened.

Last week, a red haze settled over New York City. I’d been running around, harried, chronically overbooked, and by the time the crimson cloud had darkened the windows of my downtown office, I was sick. The microscopic pieces of ash that hung in the air had nestled their way into my lungs, and the cold I’d staved off for two weeks by sheer force of will and ibuprofen finally knocked me the fuck out.

Thursday, I couldn’t get out of bed. The dog was not pleased. I called in sick (she liked this better), and though I’d planned to get up early on Friday to wrap up the story I’d been working on, when I woke up the next day, I could barely speak. I had to accept I wasn’t going to publish or do much of anything, and told myself I would resume writing as soon as I recovered.

By Sunday I was feeling better. Still, I didn’t write that day. Or the next. I felt bad about not writing, so I kept not-writing because thinking about it made me feel worse. Then, the quiet shame of avoidance crept in, and I was done for. It took me all of one weekend to go from being one of those proud jerks who bounces out of bed at 6 am, to a chronic snoozer who claws their way to the coffee pot around 9:30. Before I knew it, my 6-month streak of waking up at dawn to jog and write and meditate and post smug selfies on Instagram came tumbling down like one big Jenga tower.

Which is to say—sometimes shit just falls apart. And maybe it needs to.

It fascinates me—and I am choosing to be curious about this, goddammit—how quickly our self-perception crumbles, especially when it’s wholly reliant on the gospel of always be hustlin’. I am a hustler, and I am tired. I cannot listen to Atomic Habits one more time or I will scream. I am a writer and a runner and a meditator because these things keep me healthy, but also, they keep me feeling a certain way about myself. Mostly: Worthwhile. Also, distracted. The danger is that as soon as I fall behind, I am catapulted back to feeling like that 17-year-old kid who nearly flunked out of Physics.

I used to numb my feelings of not-good-enoughness with booze. Now, I placate that fear by keeping myself so busy I don’t have time to feel, only do. If I’m being honest, it’s why I stayed on the road for as long as I did, running down the next big gig like Peter Pan chasing his shadow. “We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet,” Pema Chodron writes. “We try a thousand ways to hide and tie up all the loose ends, and the ground just keeps moving under us.”

I believe there is something infinitely important about looking closely at those loose ends—they’re trying to show us something. Sometimes, we choose to look at them. Other times, we’re forced to.

Which is all to say, I’m still here. Still a writer, sometimes a snoozer. Still a person who occasionally cooks up an absurdly ambitious productivity routine just to spend the afternoon lying on the couch, eating Greek yogurt. I did eventually get back to my writing routine—definitively later than 6 am—and for 20 minutes a day, while I crawl back onto this creaky wagon. I’m working on my next story, an essay about my hometown’s first-ever Pride festival, which I’ll publish next Friday, June 23 (just in time for Pride).

If you fell behind on something—or like me, everything—this week, consider this an invitation to be gentle. What if instead of making it mean something about your character, or your ability, or your worth, you got curious? What is the thing trying to show you?

We all out here, hustlin’—and like, maybe we just need to lie down for a little while.

Until soon,
Aly