brb, i'm sleeping.

i'll see you when i emerge

Lately, I’ve been exhausted.

Like, bone-marrow-deep-exhaustion.

After struggling with bouts of insomnia the last year, now all I want to do is sleep 10 hours a night, take afternoon naps, watch TV, and scroll TikTok for the rest of the evening.

Some say it’s because of the eclipse.

And indeed, I have felt extra tired during this two week window.

I could also blame it on quitting caffeine, again, as I approach my record of nearly one month without coffee since I began drinking it ten years ago.

(side note: I don’t know if anyone believes me but caffeine detox is so real. It feels like it’s evaporating out of my pores, my skin tingling as if I’m levitating out of my body. It feels good though, even if all I want to do is sleep.)

In tandem with the cosmic weather and abstaining from the elixir of the gods, my life is literally changing. Perhaps, the exhaustion is surfacing as a way for my body to physically process these changes, forcing me to slow down and submit to doing the bare minimum.

I just signed the lease on my own apartment. I won’t be moving in until the end of April — I’m currently shuffling between AirBnBs and a friend’s house. Everything feels slightly unstable as I wait in this space in-between. But I will gladly wait knowing it’s only a matter of time before I enter into this new chapter of adulting.

This is the first time I’m going to be living alone, which I recognize is a huge privilege. Like, me? I get my own space? Really? I am the sole person responsible for paying the bills and doing house chores? I get to decorate and furnish it however I want?

This apartment was literally handed to me on a silver platter. I didn’t have to trawl through listings or go through any of the typical painstaking apartment-hunting things you usually have to do. I didn’t even have to compete with anyone else’s application. Essentially, I was invited into taking over the lease of my current place. It was a decision I knew was coming for months. Yet, it didn’t stop my mind from freaking out and coming up with stories as to why it wasn’t going to work out. Dealing with bureaucracy as someone who is technically unemployed and has no consistent income is the bane of my existence. It’s a fear I have to confront regularly — but it never ends up being as bad as my mind makes it out to be.

The application process was seamless. I was approved. I didn’t even need a co-signer.

Each time I make a major decision through strategy and authority — or rather, watch the decision unfold — something clicks and integrates on a deeper level. My mind goes, “oh shit, this weird way of living actually does work,” and it reaffirms to me that there truly is nothing “to do”; everything happens in the right timing without any effort or trying on my behalf. This is what a “correct” decision feels like to me — it’s like walking through an unlocked door. 

It’s hilarious that only a few months ago I was hell-bent on finding a job. I went to several interviews, one cafe offering me a staggering $8.50 an hour as my base pay before tips. I’m embarrassed to admit I was seriously considering it. But as my emotional wave came down, I watched my body do nothing and continue to wait.

It’s not that I am opposed to working or getting a job. I am still open to the right opportunity coming my way. But it has to feel right and it has to find me, because I genuinely don’t know how to push or “make things happen” anymore. My mind has absolutely hated not working these last three years, and I’ve spent much of this time obsessively judging myself for not being a productive member of society. Yet, it’s been exactly what I’ve needed to decondition. I’ve needed this time to untangle my relationship to work, money, and the material plane. And now I feel like I am only just scratching the surface.

(My new theory is that everyone spends the first seven years of deconditioning rewiring their relationship to the material plane — most people I know deepest in their experiment are dead-ass broke or make significantly less money living as themselves. It’s a process to learn how to make decisions which are not based on financial pressure. Especially for Projectors who’s primary purpose in life is not correlated to what we “do”.)

Anyways, thank god I didn’t end up getting a job (yet). Because I recently had the horrifying realization that even after three years of not working, I haven’t actually been resting.

I have been busy trying to fill my time — coming up with ideas and offerings and things to do — in order to avoid this phase of deep ugly rest.

The kind of rest where the nervous system can truly heal and the body can fully relax.

This isn’t achieved in an afternoon or even the first few years of deconditioning. I think it takes time for the mind to slow down and accept what it means to radically wait.

I mean, isn’t that what it always comes down to?

Waiting.

The not-self mind loathes waiting — it wants to resist it at all costs.

And yet, it has proven to me time and time again that everything works out better than I could have imagined when I wait for life to come to me.

I think I am only beginning to surrender to it.

I am finally at a place where I want to rest.

I am finally at a place where I can enjoy doing nothing.

And moving into my own apartment feels like finally, I can sink into this space of deep rest with open arms.

***

I started this newsletter with the intention of telling everyone I’m going on hiatus and won’t be posting for the next several months.

And indeed, I might not.

I plan on sleeping as much as possible in between the weddings and events I’ve been invited to attend this summer.

I basically plan on doing the bare minimum, which may include not writing much at all on here.

But I never really know when the words will come. For example, I felt almost certain I had nothing to talk about when I began this piece. Yet, through the process of writing this, it turns out I did.

Writing continues to be therapeutic when I don’t put pressure or expectation on it.

I cannot force myself to write. I trust that those of you who are here understand by now my creativity is not consistent.

(I would argue that creativity for everyone is not consistent — it’s mutative and happens in a pulse.)

I know there is no need to explain myself. But I do want to inform you since you are paying for my writing: I will be prioritizing rest over the next few months.

If you are okay with supporting me during this time of potentially slower output, I am incredibly grateful. But if you are looking for consistency and regular content, it is probably best you look elsewhere.

I have never been more excited to do nothing. Each day, I understand more and more as to why it takes so long to decondition.

It takes seven years to start, to clear all the mental garbage, to become aware of all the not-self pressures which pull on the mind and create distortion.

It’s taken me five years to even begin to allow myself to rest (and not work) without guilt or shame.

And I want to indulge in it. I want to savor every last drop of it. I want to be carried down the stream where I don’t do have to anything but the doing still gets done (it does, I promise).

So brb, i am sleeping.

I’ll see you know when I emerge.