On Remembering to Recharge
How birthday reflections reminded me about presence, rest and the art of simply being.
Last week I turned thirty-four.
I celebrated the date of my birth the way I have been learning to celebrate most things in my life recently. With presence, with gratitude, and with honesty about where I actually am rather than where I think I should be. Unlike past birthdays, I didn’t feel the need for gifts or vacation trips. I simply wanted to take time to reflect. To focus on what I was feeling within and let go of anything clouding my joy. You know, the stuff that truly matters against the temporary pleasures.
Repeating those words out loud as I write them remind me of how much I’ve changed as a person.
Three months ago, I decided to sit down and begin writing more consistently than I ever had before. Not knowing exactly where it would lead me. I simply knew why I wanted to create. I had words needing to be told. Beyond the sake of general expression.
What I didn’t account for was how much the process of creating would ask of me. Not just creatively. Personally.
If you’ve been connected with any of my writing, you’d know that these past few months have been the most intentional period of my life. Complete with a routine and a state of knowingly choosing to follow through on my growth. Committed to the daily work of becoming more. Writing about it. Trusting myself to share it. Noticing a community beginning to take shape. Close to fifty subscribers who choose to be here.
And every single one of those details required something from me: energy, vulnerability, consistency, a blind trust in the process.
As I reflected on my birthday, I focused on moments in my life that pushed me to where I am today. And those moments gave me enough to acknowledge that I was a different version of who I once was. It was something I could be proud of.
And in the middle of celebrating all of it last week, I noticed something.
I needed some down time. My inner world needed to recharge.
I say that in a much different manner than what you would think. Most people would probably think burnout or exhaustion or doubt. It wasn’t at all like that.
More in a way that any person who has been giving a piece of themselves eventually needs to stop and receive for a while.
While burnout and doubt are very real when creating and working as a human being, it was more like I was telling myself it was time for a short period of simply being.
I decided to take some much needed time for myself. And in that time I did something I had been wanting to do for a couple of years: I attended the Law of Attraction workshop with Abraham Hicks, in Philadelphia with my partner, B.
Sitting in that room, I was reminded of things I had known for quite some time. Things I had written about. Things I had lived. But there is a difference between knowing something and having it anchor deeper into you. That is what The Law of Attraction workshop managed to achieve. It anchored ideas in me that needed to settle more fully; about presence, about alignment, about the energy you bring to what you create and why.
The reminder I needed most was the following: while I live to express and feel that it is my purpose, I must also focus energy on simply being, as often as I can.
As someone who is understanding his own nature more over time, it is just as important for me to simply be as it is to produce and optimize for myself.
When the work feels meaningful it is easy to convince yourself that more is always better. More writing. More Notes. More reach. More growth. The momentum feels good and stopping, even briefly, can feel like losing ground.
I find that feeling exists in every category of my life, and not just creating so that my words can be found online.
But I’ve learned enough about myself over the last five months to know that the well needs to be filled before it can give anything worth receiving.
So I let myself celebrate. I let myself rest. I let myself sit in the version of me that exists right now. Not just the version I’m building toward, or the version I came from, but the one that is here today. Thirty four years old. Clear. Purposeful. Grateful.
I think about the future of this publication. With a mindset away from anxiety or urgency. I’ve done enough inner work to know that those are not the energies that build something meaningful. I think about it with quiet intention. With a sense of direction that feels chosen rather than chased.
There is more coming. Deeper writing. More practical work. A community growing into something real. But none of that happens well without this: without the willingness to pause, to celebrate, to recharge, and to return to the work from a place of fullness rather than depletion.
If you’ve been giving a lot of yourself lately, to your work, your growth, your journey, bring your awareness to how much you’ve done.
Take a pause long enough to receive.
The creating will still be there when you are replenished.
If you missed the release of my free guide last week, feel free to download it and check it out here:
With it being the first guide created, it’s intended for you if you know there’s something tugging at you that deserves your attention. Please share it with someone if you know they can benefit from immersing themselves in the start of this work.
Thank you for reading and going deep with me today.
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See you next week. 🪐
Belated happy birthday! I hope you enjoyed your special day. Birthdays are indeed meant to be spent in reflection of the past year and the incoming year, gratitude of the provision of the past and hope for the future.
I like that you emphasized the need to pause and to celebrate our work before the next step. We can easily get caught up with the grind especially in this age when productivity is glorified.
Happy be-irthday!