23/06/2026
Something in me has gone a little still lately and I don’t know when it started.
I noticed it the way you notice a song has ended — not during, only after. One day I realised I wasn’t curious the way I used to be. Not about ideas, not about what I was feeling, not really about much. And the strange thing is I could see it. Like standing slightly outside myself watching the lights dim and thinking — hm. interesting. what’s happening in there.
That gap between the one who’s dimming and the one who notices the dimming — I keep returning to it.
This isn’t burnout. I know what burnout feels like — it has edges, it’s loud in its own exhausted way, it asks something of you even in the asking to stop. This is different. This is softer. More like a season than a wound.
And I’ve been sitting with it differently lately. There’s something almost beautiful about flat seasons. No noise asking you to feel more, be more, want more. Just a strange, honest stillness. Like the world paused mid-sentence and you’re waiting — not anxiously, just waiting.
I know this will move. Phases don’t announce themselves when they leave, same as when they arrive. One day the light shifts again. The paragraph pulls you forward. Something catches and you think — oh, there I am.
Until then I’m just here. Noticing. And letting it be enough.
Do we even notice when we go flat?
~J
