+ a list of things keeping me sane while the world falls apart
JUL 19, 2026
As uncertain, wild, crazy, despicable, confusing, scary and confounding as the world is right now, I am fiercely excited about the future we get to co-create with the mystery of life from this wreckage.
Mother Earth is protesting with environmental extremes, our economies are volatile, the job market is precarious, and nobody seems to know up from down.
Yet, the wildflowers keep growing through cracks in the cement, young artists pursue their craft while the very walls of reality melt before them, more people are investing in their local communities than ever, and the sun rises every morning without hesitation.
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Ribbons of rain slick the black tar road, a warm tropical wet that does nothing to deter the morning walkers from their daily routine as I begin to write. From my perch up high, I track the stormโs advance, listening as the next wave rattles the tin-roof shed twenty meters away a few seconds before it reaches me. I cradle a cup of hot hibiscus tea, my legs stretched out to lean on the balcony railing, content to watch my tiny world move below.
I am caught in the bittersweet gravity of missing a place before I have even left it. Knowing my departure is less than a month away acts as a filter, softening every raw imperfection and washing this place in a sweet, doughnut-glazed luminosity.
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This past week, flattened by a brutal cold, I spent every hour of the day drifting between heavy sleep and bleary-eyed awareness, a raspy cough rattling my chest. Lying there letting a small death move through my body, I was filled with a strange, deep optimism.
All I can think about is how futile it is to try to optimise or manufacture our way through a life and a world that is simultaneously falling apart and rebuilding itself. We try anyway, driven by a perverse obsession to maintain control because control feels safer than surrender. But letting go is exactly what we need to practice. We cannot effort or self-improve our way through this chaos; we have to be with it, letting life lead us through the dark until the cycle is complete.
The only true antidote to a crumbling world is a tunnel-vision focus on beauty, rest, joy, creativity, and nurturing ~ both myself and those around me. It requires letting things be simple. It demands letting what is be enough. Because I cannot control the macro-chaos, I turn my attention to the micro.
Here is a list of things that currently offer me sanctuary and reprieve.
PRP microneedling: Focusing heavily on my under-eyes to strengthen thinning skin, triggering a rush of collagen and elastin. It is the perfect marriage of nature and science, satisfying my vanity metrics while treating my body with respect to its natural processes.
Somatic and non-linear movement: Obsessively attending every myofascial release, yin yoga, and primal movement class I can find. Learning to move my body in non-linear, unforced, and unformatted ways breaks down the stagnant, clawing, clutching-at-certainty feelings my mind so easily defaults to.
The JSTOR Archive: Seeking refuge from online noise, I recently opened an account to anchor myself in peer-reviewed publications. I find I no longer trust the random, fleeting thoughts people throw online. Stepping into this archive is a quiet revelation, a space where I can lose myself in the brilliant, enduring works people have spent lifetimes creating.
Fiction and film: Devouring novels and watching beautifully filmed series every day. Stepping into these visually stunning, curated stories provides a soft place for my mind to rest. Here is the running log of what I am currently into, or waiting impatiently to dive into, at the moment.
Long walks: I have been, and will forever be, a lover of long walks. My favourite ritual here is to make my way down to the beach and sink my bare feet into the black volcanic sand, letting the foamy ocean lick at my toes. I walk until the heavy confusion of my mind is entirely shaken loose, replaced by a constellation of new ideas, hopes, and dreams, and my legs ache pleasantly from the effort.
Voice notes and solitude: In this season of life, my closest friendships are kept alive through long voice notes sent across time zones and vast oceans. I have mentioned before that I have found Bali to be lonelier than most places, but without bypassing the reality of that isolation, I have also found this quietude deeply nourishing. It is just me with me. In this space, I have stripped away the noise, reconnected with my essence, and tuned back into my own spiritual energy.
Wanting less and needing less: We live in a culture that demands we engorge ourselves on things, metrics, and endless striving, but the soul does not grow by accumulation; it grows by shedding. When I stop lunging at the world to fill me up, I return to my true psychic weight. I am learning the ancient medicine of the empty hand: that when we cease our frantic grasping, we are finally light enough to be carried by the current of life itself.
Current food hyper-fixation: A double-shot iced latte with oat milk in a cup I bring to the pop-up coffee cart up the road and then carry home to drink in bed while I work. A simple 3-egg scramble with a slice of sourdough toast, no butter for lunch. In the afternoon, a young coconut, sucked dry, its wet jelly roughly scraped from the dark hull with a spoon.
My work: Running Practical Dreamer: a live, three-month mentorship for six incredible women ready to birth their own bodies of work, as well as supporting four women building their businesses and guiding three long-term private life-coaching clients. As these women stretch and grow under my care, I find myself stretching and cracking open right alongside them. Standing in the gap between who we were and who we are becoming is a bruising, terrifying labour. Redesigning a life to mirror the soul requires standing naked and raw until things we are creating become tangible.
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The wind is howling around the sharp corners of this building, a restless current cutting through the air. From my perch on the balcony, I watch the budding rice stems below get whipped and pushed completely sideways. It is a perfect, grey, dreary Sunday.