This summer, I was planning on doing some serious self-improvement.

Until I realized that summer isn’t particularly interested in personal development.

Summer doesn’t want goals.

Summer wants you to sit on the beach, enjoy the sun, then feel an itch because the sand has somehow reached somewhere it shouldn’t have.

Or relax in a park, enjoying the breeze, only to discover that every good spot seems to contain either pinecones, roots, or both.

Or take a walk in the forest and spend twenty minutes arguing with mosquitoes about who gets to enjoy nature.

Summer wants you to buy ice cream, get lost in its wonderful taste, and then realize it is melting faster than you can eat it.

Summer wants your children to wake up earlier despite being on holiday.

Summer wants you to finally unwind and forget about work, only for someone to ask if you’ve got “just a minute” to discuss something.

Summer wants you to stay up late because the evenings are beautiful, then act surprised when you’re tired the next morning.

And somehow, we all agree to this every year.

Without complaints.

We see a bit of sunshine and immediately decide that this time will be different.

This season isn’t for optimization.

It’s for losing track of what day it is.

The summer is busy becoming summer.

I’ll still be writing, of course.

But if the next few essays contain slightly more sunshine, mosquitoes, melting ice cream, and questionable life decisions than usual, at least you know why.

There used to be a song
I often sang to myself
when I was on my own.

Not the whole song.
Just the chorus,
the words that stayed.

It just seemed to fit
those in-between moments
when I had nowhere else to be

The years went on
other songs came and went
but this one stayed.

I remember singing it
while playing video games
while being out in nature
while walking along the river

Sometimes with headphones
sometimes without

Back then
I had more time to myself.

Gaps in the day
that didn’t belong to anything.

Walks without a destination.

I’d sit somewhere
and let time pass.

Not really waiting for anything.
Just being there.

And suddenly
I’d start singing
without deciding to.

I’d go along with it
let it run for a while.

And sometimes repeat the same line
without realizing it.

But at some point
it stopped.

Not all at once.

I just don’t remember
the last time I sang it.

I met my wife
somewhere along the way.

We started building
a life together.

And now that I think about it

I haven’t sung that song in years.

It used to come up on its own.
It doesn’t anymore.

I suppose I needed it more back then.
Or maybe I just had more space for it.

…

I’m curious if you’ve had a song like that.
One that stayed for a while,
and then quietly disappeared.

And if you feel like guessing,
you can try to guess which one it was for me.

…

If this felt familiar,
you might like the rest of what I write.

I keep a library of these essays here: Library

I wake up
Already a bit behind.

I feel like I should do something,
But not sure what.
It was clearer earlier.

I make coffee.
It sits in the pan
Until I remember it.

Then I sip my coffee
While I open my laptop
Scrolling through the news.
Reading headlines without taking them in.

I open something I meant to work on.
I look at it for a while.
Then close it.

I have a list somewhere
Of things I should do today.
I know it’s there somewhere.
I just don’t remember where.

I try to do something small.
I reply to a message.
Then another.

I check something else.
Then go back to the first thing
and read it again.

I’m going in circles.

I stand up for a moment
Walk to the kitchen.
Forget why I went there.
I walk back.

So I sit down,
Drinking another coffee,
Staring through the window.

I stay there longer than I need to.
My coffee has gone cold.

I almost force myself to start something.
But I don’t.

I see dust on the shelves.
I remember the laundry,
And the dishes in the sink.
Not urgent, but there.

I start with one thing.
Then another.

Clothes are folded and stacked.
A few things back in their place
The sink a bit clearer than before.

Nothing changes.
But things feel slightly more in place.

Later, I put something on.
The series I started watching.
Something that doesn’t ask much.

One episode turns to another.
Then to another.
And another.

For a moment, I think I’m supposed to do something
Then another episode starts.

Later,
I try to think about what I did today.

Nothing really stands out.

A few things at home are taken care of.

And something in me
has slowed down.

If this felt familiar, you might like the rest of what I write.
I keep a library of these essays here:

The day starts with my daughter waking me up.

She climbs up next to me on the bed, holding a stone.

“Look what I found,” she says.

I blink.

“Where did that come from?”

“Living room,” she says.

I sit up.

“From where in the living room?”

She shrugs.

“On the floor.”

A pause.

“There was some glass around it.”

I’m out of bed before I fully register it.

I run to the living room.
Already thinking about who I need to call.

But the window looks fine.
No broken glass. No holes.

I turn back to her.

She’s standing in the doorway.
Smiling.

“April Fools.”

She’s still holding the stone.

I sit down on the sofa, heart pounding.

At daycare, a woman is waiting by the door.

She steps forward as soon as she sees me.

“Hi, just so you know, we’ve had a stomach bug going around, so we’ve decided to close for the day.”

I look down at my daughter. She looks back up at me.

I start running through options.
Trying to remember if I have any meetings I can pretend don’t exist.

The woman watches me for a moment.

Then she smiles.

“April Fools.”

A couple of the staff members inside laugh.

I nod back, feeling a drop of sweat running down my spine.

At work, things are quiet for a while.
Emails. Coffee.

Then the calendar invite comes in.
Mandatory all-hands meeting. 13:00.
No description.

I stare at it for a bit.
I hover over the accept button, trying to decide if this is one of those things.

The company hasn’t been doing great.
Nothing alarming, but enough that a “mandatory meeting” means something.

Around lunch, people start talking about it.
Some are joking. Some aren’t.

At 13:00, we all join.

The CEO comes on.
He looks serious.

“I wanted to gather everyone because we’ve had to make a decision.”

A pause.

“We’re restructuring how we use our time.”

Another pause.

I feel my shoulders tighten slightly.

He stares into the camera. Then puts on a grin.

“April Fools.”

He chuckles.

No one reacts.

“We’re actually just going to have coffee together. Company pays.”

Silence.
Then some laughter.

I look at my colleague next to me.
We both look back at the screen.

When I go to pick up my daughter, I’m already expecting something.

The staff look at me as I walk in.
They don’t smile.

“One of the groups hasn’t returned from the park yet,” one of them says. “And we haven’t been able to reach them.”

I stop.

“Which park?”

They tell me.

I’m already halfway out the door before I finish the sentence.

I walk fast. Then faster.

I round the last corner.

And then I see them.

The group is just walking back through the gate, chatting as if nothing happened.

My daughter spots me and waves.

I slow down.

For a moment, I just stand there.

Everything settles back into place.

No one says April Fools.
No one laughs.

At home, my wife looks panicked.

She’s standing in the hallway, holding a stone.

“Why are you holding a stone?” I ask.

“I found it in the bedroom.”

I stop.

“Where in the bedroom?”

“On the floor.”

A pause.

“There was some glass around it.”

I look at the stone.

It looks similar.

I hesitate.

“That looks like the one she had this morning,” I say.

My wife glances down at it, then back at me.

“Maybe,” she says.

I hesitate for a moment longer.

Then I move past her.

The bedroom window looks fine.
No cracks. No broken glass.

I stand there for a second.

Then I turn back.

She’s still in the hallway.

Watching me.

A small smile starts to form.

“You still checked,” she says.

I let out a breath.

“Yeah.”

Turns out I don’t need April Fools to fool myself.

My mind gets there on its own.

If this felt familiar, you might like the rest of what I write.
I keep a library of these essays here: Library

I wake up and check the time. 6:37.

It’s too early to see a happy and rested face in the mirror, but not late enough to pull my pants on.
So after the bathroom, I slip back under the blanket and hold onto what little warmth is left. Just ten more minutes.

I feel it almost happened. That slow, weightless drift, like the bed is finally letting me go.

And then I feel an itch in my knee.
It grows until it’s all I can feel.
I scratch it. Reset. Just five more minutes.

Then my alarm goes off.
I turn it off quickly, briefly wondering how I managed to annoy myself before getting out of bed.
I lie still again. Just a few more minutes.

But I know I’m not going back to sleep.

At some point, I stop trying for real.
But I don’t get up either.
My body stays in bed.
My day has already started somewhere else.

The coffee I had yesterday is still bitter.
A meeting later today.
Wait. That argument earlier in the week, replaying slightly differently.
Dust on the floor I’ve been stepping over for days.
That I should call my parents.

My hand reaches for my phone before I’ve decided to wake up.
I check the time again.
Open a notification, scroll a little, then another one.

Suddenly I’m somewhere else.
Already halfway into the next day.
In other people’s lives.
In things I didn’t choose.

I put my phone down. The room is the same. Just a little more light leaking in.
The morning hadn’t started yet, but I had already drifted into someone else’s first.

And I’m not even sure when it started happening.

If you notice where your mornings drift, I’d be curious what it looks like for you.

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We went to a photography appointment for our baby.

When we arrived, the door was still locked. The photographer hadn’t arrived yet, so we went back into the car to wait.

My wife started breastfeeding the baby. Our two other daughters at first sat in their own seats in the backseat, playing some hand game with each other.

After a little while, our oldest daughter had had enough and climbed into the front seat with me.
It was fun to test pressing all the buttons.
The radio came on. Channels switched. Then static.

Suddenly, the volume jumped too loud, and I reached over to turn it down.

Once we had discussed why we shouldn’t turn up the volume on the radio, she started pressing buttons on the steering wheel. Most of the buttons didn’t do anything while the car was parked and turned off, until she found the horn. We got a few odd glances after that.

Our younger daughter watched intensely from her seat in the back; she isn’t big enough to climb over to the front yet. She decided to get involved by pulling on my beanie. Once that was off, she started pulling my hair.

The baby then needed a diaper change, which got both of our daughters’ attention. They watched with much interest when my wife brought out a cover for the car seat and started changing the baby. I needed to hold our oldest daughter back so she wouldn’t get too involved.

Then she found the doorhandle.
The door opened, and she nearly fell out.

I heard our younger daughter laughing behind me while I quickly pulled the older one back inside and closed the door.

Finally, I saw the photographer arrive in the rear-view mirror.

The wait in the car was over.

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I went to the Moomin Museum with my kids this week.

The visit didn’t begin the way I imagined it would. I thought they might be excited immediately, as they love to watch Moomins at home. Instead, they were cautious and clinging to me. They are 1.5 and 3 years old.

After some time, they began to acclimate to the space. They still didn’t really care about the Moomins. Instead, they noticed the light and the echo in the rooms. Their favorite was a small town built under glass in the floor, something you could walk across and look down into.

Over the course of an hour, they walked around it and over it. They pretended to swim across it, pulled me into it, and were completely awed by seeing a small town below their feet.

On the way out, they found their reflections in a glass door, and they started to play with it.
I just stood there watching them.
At some point, I noticed my face had a huge goofy smile on it.
I hadn’t even realized it had formed.

Throughout this afternoon, I wasn’t thinking about anything else.

Not the renovations still ongoing at home.
Not the legal issues that continue to sit in the background.
Not my back, still recovering and reminding me of its limits.
Not the flu that has lingered for two weeks and refuses to fully leave.

Just two small children discovering that a reflection can be that entertaining.

And at home, life has grown louder since our third daughter was born.

The birth itself was a triumph for my wife, as she finally got the water birth she wanted. It was the most grounded and successful of her three births.

As could be expected, neither of us has quite gotten enough sleep since the birth. Nights are interrupted. Mornings begin earlier than we’d prefer.

If the house wasn’t loud before, it certainly is now. It carries even more life. There’s something undeniably happy about that.

Her two older siblings run around her, playing tag, tossing toys with more force than we’d prefer. My wife and I are constantly bracing for a ball or a chair to land a little too close.

Our newborn seems to sleep through almost anything, wrapped in her own small world of warmth inside a blanket, and she barely stirs.

The children are just there.
We’re the ones a few steps ahead in our minds, bracing for things that haven’t even occurred.

Sometimes I wonder if they have it right.

My back still forces me to move more carefully than I’d like, but I can keep up with the kids’ games. I feel frustrated about how slowly my body recovers, and I’m not even 35 yet. But I’m still here, still running around with them.

So my Early March looks something like this.

I’m a bit tired and slightly worn. I’m still dragging a few unfinished things behind me.

And somehow… content.

The days are louder now, and the nights shorter.

There’s less space.
But more life in it.

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I never had a plan.

No map.
No steps to follow.
No timeline pinned to the wall.
Just a direction I couldn’t ignore.

And a quiet sense
when something no longer fits.

When I moved to another city, it wasn’t a strategy.
I packed what fit in the car.
Because I needed distance.

Staying would have meant a slow erosion.
Repeating the same arguments
and the same emotional gravity.
So I left.

Later, I launched a company
because I couldn’t stand being replaceable.
I stepped down as CEO
when I didn’t recognize who I was becoming.

I could still do the job.
That wasn’t the problem.
It just no longer felt like me.

Not every decision led somewhere good.
Some led to pain.
To endings.
To lessons I wouldn’t have chosen on paper.

Like doors I had to walk through
before any of it made any sense.

After a while, I started noticing what I was missing.

I want to stand somewhere
and not feel like I drifted there by accident.

I don’t know the path.
I never did.
I only notice
when staying feels smaller than leaving.

And when it tightens,
I move.
With or without a map.

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Over the weekend, I found myself thinking about my writing here.

Not the topics, but the tone.

There’s a part of me that really wants to grow fast. Expand. Reach more people. See something land widely.

And my brain is very helpful.

Can I make something go viral?
Maybe I just need that one perfectly engineered post.
That’s how it works, right?
At least my monkey brain claims it is. And it’s persistent.

Then I start thinking about certainty. About sharper language. About stronger conclusions.
If I were more decisive, I’d probably travel further, right?
I could try that. There’s just the small issue. I’d have to be certain about things I’m not certain about.

Just a tiny detail.

Then there’s the frameworks. Oooh, my brain really loves the five-step lists to a perfect morning.
I have circled enough ideas that I could package them into something clean. The three steps. The seven principles. The ten promises. A tidy arc.
But life has rarely followed my tidy arcs, and the curveballs keep derailing me.

Then my brain gets really excited like a little puppy: what if I just write more? More posts. More notes. More replies.
That would for sure increase my visibility.
I’m sure my future self and my wife would love that schedule.

Then my brain thought of the real spicy option: become controversial.
Certainty and outrage. That would really drive attention.
I’d just need to care enough to argue about it.

Then I thought about niches.
Maybe I should properly choose a niche and stick with it.
To stop writing about tensions and become “The Guy Who Fixes This One Specific Thing”. I could probably do that.
And apparently, the internet likes clarity.
I’m just not sure I do.

Then my brain shows up surfing on a wave: ride the trends.
To chase every viral topic. To borrow momentum.
Timing is everything, right?
I’d just have to stop writing about what I actually notice.

Or perhaps I’ll start optimizing for headlines.
Using every keyword. Polish my hooks. Exploit curiosity gaps.
Write the “5 Reasons I’m Quietly Sabotaging Myself”.
That should work, right?

Or I could start waking up at 4:32 AM.
Do the cold shower, bullet journal, and green juice.
Hey, surely this is the missing piece.

Somewhere in that internal brainstorming session, I decide to go back to my gray area.

So if my writing ever goes viral, it’ll probably be by accident.

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Sleep doesn’t always come easily.

Not because I’m not tired, usually I am. But there are nights where a restlessness settles into the room and keeps changing shape.

My daughter can’t find a position that lets her settle.

She tries my arm first. It works for a while, until something unsettles her.
Then she gets on my chest. I guess the heartbeat helps. Until it doesn’t.
Then she falls onto the other arm. It’s softer, maybe better.

At least, that’s what I think she’s looking for.
And she keeps repeating this.

Each position almost works. Almost long enough for her to let go.
She moves through them with quiet determination, as if sleep is just one adjustment away.

Eventually, she falls asleep, almost like she’s passed out.
I feel relief more than anything else, relief that the movement has finally stopped.

Watching her, I recognize something.
The feeling of resisting sleep without really knowing why.
Wanting to stay just a little longer in whatever state comes before it.

At the time, it felt harmless. I’m not sure I knew what I was asking for.

Now I can go to my own bed, and sleep takes me quickly.

But it doesn’t last.

Some time later, she comes running again. Maybe it’s from a nightmare, or maybe she’s just awake enough to want company. I let her in beside me.

And then the restlessness returns.

She shifts again. My arm. My chest. My pillow. Back to my arm. Then the other one. Nothing works for more than a few seconds. I try to stay patient. I try to help her calm down while staying close enough to sleep that I might still fall back into it.

But it isn’t working.

After some time, my patience gives way to irritation. Not slowly, but abruptly.

I pick her up and carry her back to her bed, pull the covers over her, and tell her to sleep, more sternly than I would have liked. I don’t wait to see how it lands. I just leave.
This is not my proudest parenting moment. It is, however, a very tired one.

Back in bed, I check the time. Not much time left until I have to wake up. So I set an alarm, and then I fall asleep again.

But I sleep past the alarm.

My wife wakes me up. I thank her and get up, and go to wake our daughter. It’s time for her to get up too.
Kindergarten doesn’t care how the night went. It opens on schedule.

This isn’t the first night like this, and won’t be the last. Morning will come anyway.

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I am living in the middle of things.

Winter feels heavier this year, for multiple minor reasons. It’s colder, and hence slower and more resistant.

The kind of cold that makes you pause at the door, checking once more that you have everything before stepping outside. Gloves, scarf, keys. The kind that turns simple errands into something that requires preparation.

Days still move forward. Work gets done. Meals happen. They just take more effort than they used to. And that effort is constant enough to be felt.

Much of my life right now feels unfinished. Sleep comes in fragments. Another child is on the way. My body has started sending small signals that ask for adjustment. Money, work, and a renovation are all tied up in processes that cannot be hurried. Sitting still is occasionally uncomfortable after injuring my back a couple of weeks ago. None of this feels like a crisis, and very little of it can be resolved quickly.

What makes this harder to place is how ordinary it all looks from the outside. Nothing is actively falling apart, as routines still hold and responsibilities are met. But there isn’t much slack. Small inconveniences start to linger, as things that would normally be adjusted or fixed have to be carried instead, day after day. The days ask for steadiness more than action, patience more than solutions.

I notice myself moving through them with responsibility clearly defined, but with only partial agency over how things unfold.

That background weight showed up recently.

My wife had an appointment that was clearly stressing her out. I knew it mattered to her, and I did not question that. At the same time, I struggled to find a way to meet her where she was. I didn’t feel like I could help her in any meaningful way. When she talked about it, part of me reacted by pulling back internally. What she was worried about didn’t feel like a realistic scenario to me. I know that was not how it was for her, and I do acknowledge that she had valid reasons and circumstances to feel that way. It is simply how I saw the situation.

She asked me to come with her to the appointment. I hesitated, but then decided to take time off work to do so.

The day before, we misunderstood each other about where we would meet. In my mind, we were talking about the area near where our car was parked. In her mind, I would meet her when she got off the bus and then walk to the car. We did not realize we were picturing different places.

In her state, that small uncertainty mattered far more than it would have on an ordinary day.

At the time, it didn’t feel like a big issue to me. Like a minor misalignment that gets smoothed out once you’re in the same place again. I assumed that being there, showing up, would be enough to close whatever gap had opened. I didn’t realize how much weight the moment had already taken on for her.

The gap felt like it was widening by the moment, and I didn’t know how reach her. I also couldn’t come in with her to the appointment. After the appointment, her immediate fears eased, and we were able to start closing the gap again. We stayed in the conversation. We worked through what we could.

What unsettled me was not that she was hurt, but that I could not make sense of the depth of it from where I was standing. I struggled to experience it with the same weight. It felt as if the stress that had been building became visible between us. I noticed myself becoming overwhelmed, not by anger, but by realizing how little internal room I had left to hold both her experience and my own at the same time.

Even after we have discussed the event, I still don’t really know what I missed there, only that I did.

Afterward, I noticed a hollow feeling in myself. Not resentment. More of a quiet awareness that I had missed something important without being able to fully name what it was.

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The kids were halfway through their crepes, with plenty of jam on their fingers, and laughing about something that made sense only to them. One of them tried to tell a story and lost it halfway through, because she was laughing too hard to finish the sentence. The other finished it with yapping and seemed pleased with that version.

I sat at the table with them, my left hand around the mug, and listening more than participating.

Outside, the morning was ordinary. Grey in the way mornings often are here.

My phone lit up on the table. I glanced at it once and turned it face down.
Across the table, my wife caught my eye and smiled. I smiled back.

Someone spilled a little jam on the table. My wife wiped it with a paper towel that tore immediately. We laughed and reached for another.

For a moment, I didn’t reach for anything.

I watched them eat. I took a sip of the coffee. It tasted thin, but fine.

The table stayed cluttered. Crumbs everywhere.
Laughter came in short bursts, then stopped, then started again.
I stayed seated longer than I usually do.

After a while, one of them asked if we could make crepes again tomorrow. I said maybe, knowing it wasn’t a promise.

The morning moved on.

If this landed with you, I’m glad you were here.

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I’ve noticed that sometimes, when I say I need to rest, what I really want to do is to escape.

From the outside, they both look the same. I might sit or lie down, and then I disengage. I might put something on in the background. Even to myself, I might easily mix the two.

But the underlying feeling is different.

When I rest, there’s a softness to it. There’s no urgency, and no need to disappear. My body settles, and my thoughts loosen. If someone speaks to me, I’m still there.

When I escape, there’s something I don’t want to feel or stay present with. I don’t really choose the pause, but I take it. Just for some quick relief. It’s not really recovery, but numbing myself enough to continue later.

It took me a while to notice the difference. To look back at what I was actually feeling in the moments that I thought were rest. Sometimes they were. But other times, “rest” was just a cover story. A socially accepted way of saying I didn’t want to be here right now. I didn’t want to engage with this conversation, or this responsibility, or this moment.

Rest rarely needs justification.
But escape often does.

I’ve also noticed how differently they end. After rest, I return more available, more open, and sometimes more groggy. After escape, the thing I stepped away from is still there, with an added layer of avoidance on top.

I’m not saying escape is wrong. Sometimes it’s the only thing possible. Sometimes it’s the only way to keep going.

But I’m trying to be more honest with myself about which one it is. I’ll probably still say out loud that I “need rest” when what I really want is to escape for a bit. But privately, I want to name it more clearly and honestly.

To ask myself:
Am I trying to restore myself,
or am I trying to disappear for a moment?

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It doesn’t arrive all at once. It settles gradually, once everything that needs to be done is finished and nothing new has arisen yet.

Outside, winter holds the landscape still. Snow softens the edges of sound. Darkness comes early and stays. Inside, the house is warm. The fire has been burning for hours, steady and unremarkable. Someone adds a log without comment. Someone else pulls a blanket closer around their shoulders, almost without noticing.

I’ve come to recognize this moment by how little anyone speaks.
Or maybe it’s just the way the room feels heavier and calmer at the same time.

We’re sitting together with nowhere to be and nothing left to finish, just enjoying each other’s company, the way you do when there’s no reason to rush anything.

There’s an ease to it. Familiar faces. Voices kept low without thinking about it. Silence that comes and goes on its own, sometimes longer than expected, never awkward, never needing to be filled.

We all acknowledge the same thing quietly: this is the last night that will feel like this for a while.

The calendar and responsibilities will wait. Tomorrow is their turn.
But not tonight.

So we stay a little longer. The fire burns low. The room remains warm. Time moves, without much direction, the way it does when no one is watching it too closely.

What matters is being together. That’s enough while it lasts.

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Then I reconsidered.

So instead, we pause. Not because growth stops, but because this isn’t the moment for it.

In the meantime, a few thoughts better suited for today:

• What do you call Santa when he takes a break? Santa Pause.

• What do you get when Santa loses his job? Santa Unemployed.

• What do you call Santa when he forgets to show up? Saint Nick of time.

• Who delivers Christmas presents to cats? Santa Paws.

• What do you call Santa when he’s had enough? Burnt-out Claus.

• Nope, now this is too many Santa jokes.

Christmas is loud, warm, chaotic, and slightly unreal.
It does not ask for insight.

It asks for presence.

Merry Christmas, and we’ll continue after the holidays.

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