February 7th, 2026
When I realize my life is moving forward, my instinct is to make it move faster.
November 19th, 2025 marked one year since my final chemotherapy session. While the day was unremarkable, how much everything had changed was not. I had been so sick, so recently. But now I was pursuing a master’s, exploring entrepreneurship, and dating. Life started to feel more poetic, less tragic.
Instead of calmly noticing the beautiful contrast of my circumstances, I felt the urgent need to flip some “go-time” switch. “Who can I reach out to for the first time?” “What can I post online that will plant some flag?” Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was waiting to launch into an inspirational movie montage.
Flooring the gas pedal has pushed me to overcome real hurdles. But most of the time, it leaves me straining and sputtering, wanting reality to move at the pace of my racing thoughts. Weeks could go by before I noticed how much tension I was holding.
In my previous career as a guitarist, I was often held back by bodily tension. I had high-flying ambitions, and my strategy was the same: acceleration every time. Though I practiced for hours every day, my technique sometimes suffered. My vibrato too shaky, forearms too stiff, and my mind too chaotic to express itself.
I’ve always had bad handwriting. Someone once affectionately called it “boy handwriting.” But scrolling through past journal entries, a clear cycle emerged. Every few weeks, my pen stroke would grow shaky, and the entries more like a scheme and less like a reflection. The burden of failing to control external reality was seizing my ability to control my internal reality. That’s why I was holding my breath, furrowing my brows, and pursing my lips.
One morning, instead of scribbling my daily manifesto, I began following along with this video. The first few tries looked like someone relearning how to hold a pencil after a traumatic brain injury. But it quickly laid bare where all of that stress was being stored, allowing me to address it consciously. Fixing my handwriting became a way of untangling my mind from the outside in, forcing myself to come into contact with the speed of reality, and to begin accepting it.
I try to treat living an ambitious life like a beating heart. Pushing it is necessary to move forward, and stagnation is dangerous. But at some point, not slowing it down enough will also damage the body and mind. So even though it’s still tempting to chase the high of sprinting, I’ll settle in for the long run instead.