WHEN YOU FINALLY HEAR YOURSELF
Your next chapter begins where performance ends.
Welcome to Issue #036 of Sojourn. Each week, I share two original essays to help you slow down, reconnect, and rebuild with intention — in a private community that uses travel as a path to reinvention.
This is when i finally realized:
Exhaustion doesn’t come from doing too much,
it comes from pretending everything is fine.
I went through a tough chapter a few months ago.
I wasn’t burned out from work.
I was burned out from performing.
Trying to look okay.
Trying to stay positive when I was clearly not.
Trying to be ‘on’ for everyone around me, even when I was running on empty.
The moment things took a turn wasn’t a huge event.
I wasn’t journaling in Bali.
I wasn’t at a retreat.
I was sitting alone in my car, in a Whole Foods parking lot, wiping snow off the windshield so I could gather myself before driving home.
And the only thought running through my head was:
“I can’t keep pretending I’m okay.”
That moment, as unglamorous as it sounds, is when I understood something that changed everything:
Honesty is the beginning of every real reinvention.
Not the pretty kind.
Not the ‘highly-curated’ kind.
The uncomfortable, “I’m not who I want to be yet” kind.
Once I finally stopped performing, I could finally ‘hear’ myself again.
And here’s what I learned:
Your real direction only shows up when you stop forcing momentum.
Clarity requires discomfort… the kind you can’t bypass with productivity.
Listening to yourself is a skill, not a personality trait.
Reinvention starts quietly (and slowly), long before it becomes visible.
This is why winter is such a powerful metaphor for rebuilding.
It’s the season where everything slows down enough for the truth to ‘land’.
Remember this:
You don’t need to push harder this week.
You don’t need to perform stability you don’t feel.
You just need the courage to tell yourself the thing you’ve been avoiding.
Honesty is uncomfortable.
But it’s also the doorway back to yourself.
~Ana