When the World Is on Fire...

Listen to the essay:

I know life doesn’t pause when it feels like the world is ending, but sometimes I wish it did. I wish everything would slow down for a moment—long enough for people to breathe, long enough for the grief in the air to be acknowledged.

Instead, the day keeps moving.

We watch the news.
We check the apps.
We answer emails, make dinner, help with homework.

And even with the world on fire—my inner world included—I’m still expected to encourage people to buy my new book, go on a seven-city tour, and sell myself daily so people will buy, buy, buy.

I’m expected to teach at retreats and help move mountains in others, even when some days I can barely climb the hills in my own landscape. Keep moving, they say. Keep going, they say. Oh! And stay hydrated and well fed and...

And...

And...

ALL the things.

Some days, the contrast feels unbearable. Some days, I feel like I’m choking. Some days, I really hate it here.

The sky is falling. Families are hurting. Children are suffering. Entire lives collapsing—overseas and in our own backyards. This is not new. This will also never get old, and that’s the part that hurts.

Yet here I am, getting up every single day.

And here you are, too, reading this.

There’s a strange tension in it all—a life that holds both gratitude and grief at the same time. The blessing of being here, able to read, write, and make art, paired with the despair of being here, able to read, write, and make art while so much suffering continues all around us. Every single day.

And still, the day asks things of me. Trying to sellout a seven-city tour.
Answering marketing emails. Being on calls. So many calls. Recording the audiobook for The Company We Keep. Making sure my children have clean socks for school. Why are there so many socks, and why are there never any matching pairs?

This is the strange rhythm of living right now—holding the weight of the world in one hand and a pile of tiny, unmatched socks in the other.

Trying to remember to eat, too. Some days I forget. Sadness does that—it blunts the body’s signals. It’s like it feeds off the grief. Seasoning it. Simmering it. Savoring it, even. So I set alarms on my phone to remind me to nourish myself. Because between grief and my ADHD, I don’t even know what tastes good anymore. So, little chimes throughout the day cradle me. Saying: Eat something. Drink water. Stay here. My small attempt at being well…ish.

The human brain was not built for this much simultaneous reality—was it? The scale of the world’s suffering, sitting beside the ordinary rhythm of daily life, doesn’t feel normal. Is it?

If I’m being honest, a lot of days I don’t know what to do with that tension.

Because the world does not stop.

The children still wake up hungry. The bills still need to be paid. The work still calls your name. The body still needs to be held. We still have to show up.

I am grateful for the work I get to do. I mean that deeply. Writing has been one of the most meaningful relationships in my life. Teaching has allowed me to sit beside people as they tell the truth about themselves. As they heal, change, and grow in real time. Creativity has carried me through seasons that might have swallowed me whole. But there is another layer to this work that I’ve grown increasingly tired of.

The expectation to perform. To do the dance of being and staying seen. Of selling yourself, to keep someone else. It’s strange, especially now, especially today.

I’ll be thirty-seven this year, and every time I have to make, edit, or schedule a social media post, I say out loud, “I am too damn old for this.”

Instagram isn’t my job. Social media isn’t my job.

Writing is my job.
Teaching is my job.
Being creative is my job.

Community building is my job.

But somewhere along the way, the expectation became that artists must constantly perform their relevance in order to sustain their work.

You have to stay visible, they say.
Stay marketable, they say.
Stay “on.” Every. Single. Day.

Post enough so the algorithm remembers you exist.
Be personal, but not too personal.
Promote your work without looking like you’re promoting your work.
Stay likable.
Stay interesting.
Stay shareable.

Stay chosen. Stay followed by many to be worthy of what we already have. It is wild. All of it is weird. As if we’re meant to gather people behind us instead of walking beside them. The truth is, I don’t give a damn about any of that. Especially not these days.

Not while the planet is carrying this much grief. Not while my Nana’s memory is dissolving piece by piece, and my mother is standing in the heartbreak of watching her own mother disappear while she’s still here. Dementia is a bitch.

Not while I’m preparing to send my oldest daughter off to college, imagining folding her little life into boxes. Her big life into boxes. Trying to memorize the sound of her heavy footsteps in the house over shared cups of tea.

Not while I find myself somewhere in the middle of all of it—grief, gratitude, love, confusion—trying to stay steady inside a life that feels like it’s shifting under my feet.

And yet the expectation remains: keep performing, Alex. Keep posting. Keep proving that you matter. But when life is this tender, this full, this fragile, that performance feels completely out of step with reality. And that is because it is.

I’ve been in the book world long enough to feel the shift happening. People are tired. Readers are tired. Writers are tired. Artists are tired. Everyone is carrying something. Personal grief. Collective grief. Daily responsibilities. The exhaustion of trying to keep your spirit intact while the world asks more and more from your nervous system.

And in the middle of all that, we’re still expected to produce. To get it done. To smile and wave. To stay enthusiastic, even though many of us are drained. All of this creates a strange type of whiplash.

One moment, I’m reading about a tragedy somewhere in the world. The next moment, I’m supposed to caption a photo and remind people to pre-order my book—that’s crazy. Or I’m getting an email reminding me to share a link to something…while I’m texting my little cousin who is in the military—”Checking on you. You good?” His reply: I’m okay. We are on high alert right now though.

There is something deeply disorienting about all of this.

Truthfully, the only reason I still show up online at all is that it’s part of the ecosystem that supports my work—or so my agents tell me. And they’re not wrong, but it also not right.

The other day, I had to remind myself that the real center of my life exists elsewhere entirely.

At my writing desk.
With my students & clients.
With my children, family, and friends.

In the pilates studio with my favorite teachers. In my kitchen making custom tea blends for those closest to me. At the dinner table, with paints spread out across the surface.

In the small, daily practice of making something honest. Making something that feels real. That is real. That isn’t viral or for mass consumption.

That’s the stuff that matters to me.

The sentences that arrive slowly.
The conversations that change someone’s life.
The courage it takes for someone to tell the truth on a blank page.

Those things do not need an algorithm to exist.

They do not need virality. Only vulnerability.

It’s such a strange time to be alive.

And if I’m being completely transparent, I don’t care about hitting the New York Times list again. I don’t care about going viral. I don’t care about being on popular podcasts or being pitched to television shows. I don’t care about being marketed and sold as proof of someone else’s “worthy” narrative. I just want to make my art, support others in making theirs, and enjoy the harvest I’ve made over the last 13 years of my career.

There are bigger things to care about.

People are out here trying to survive. Communities are trying to heal. Families are trying to hold themselves together. The world does not need more perfectly packaged relevance. It needs people who are still willing to tell the truth.

So these days, I’ve been focusing on the parts of my work that still feel human.

The writing. The teaching. The making. The slow building.

The children who still need dinner.
The students who still need encouragement.
The page that still needs a damn sentence.

And to whoever feels similarly, or needs to hear this today: We will keep doing our work because the work is what matters. But the performance around it? Nah. No more.

Perhaps, for me, maybe that’s what growing older inside your calling actually looks like. You stop chasing the room. You start protecting the work. You stop trying to be everywhere. But instead, you start returning to the places where your life is actually happening. And maybe that’s enough. More than enough, actually.

In Gratitude & With Love,

Alex