Everything is hard until it's not

I am experiencing a really extraordinary moment of ease in my own personal life, which is unfortunately juxtaposed by a backdrop of global violence (perpetuated by the country that I live in and call home). It’s a strange dance of privilege.

I just exited one of the hardest times in my adult life, completing a massive life overhaul that included quitting my longtime job and moving across the county. I’ve cried a lot. Even though my weeks are now punctuated by a calendar that is more empty than it is full, I still find myself reeling from the past few years — a time of overcommitment, pandemic scarcity, and chronic burnout.

During the hardest parts of 2025, I found myself repeating a mantra. Everything is hard until it’s not. This was inspired in part by one of my favorite visual artists, Britchida, who makes poignant text-inspired artwork (and beautiful abstract paintings). They have a piece that perfectly captures how I felt for most of the last year, which I’ve inserted below (do take a second to click in and view the full image and any of their other amazing work).

Like phases of the moon, life can be so darn difficult, and then suddenly release. Packing and moving your whole life seems an insurmountable task, until it’s done and over.

Sometimes, I find I crave difficulty. It can be easy to wear the badge of suffering. As a recovering Catholic, I am no stranger to martyrdom and to penance.

In fact, I think I spent most of my life until recent years thinking that everything was (and should be) hard. For one example, my education about marriage and relationships in my religious high school emphasized that marriage is work, and hard work at that. I often found myself wondering why anyone would get married at all.

As I deconstructed my faith and investigated my own queerness, I found examples of people who did not act like their relationships were a burden to be born. Instead, they treated their relationships like a flowing interchange — of course, there are always sticky spots and challenges to navigate, but the joy of a relationship is in that very navigation.

I never want to be the person who complains about my wife. My relationship with her is one of the most special and sacred parts of my life. It is a commitment I value and prioritize, but it is not hard, and certainly not a burden.

I still remember one of the first times my perspective on the badge of difficulty was disrupted. In undergrad, I worked in the costume shop, and my boss had a whiteboard that she would periodically update with schedules, notes about upcoming shows, and tasks for the other student employees. In the upper right-hand corner, she had a quote that always remained: If it seems too hard, you’re probably doing it wrong.

I think it took almost all of the four years I worked there for me to realize the quote was not just about sewing (which is definitely easier when you are doing it right), but about life.

When I get in my own way and shoulder the burden of life’s difficulty, everything is too hard. There are a myriad of ways I get things wrong. When I release my own stubborn ego and let people help me, it gets a lot less hard. And for that, I am thankful.

Here’s to ease and gentleness. May we rest so we can keep fighting.

• Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman: I am enthralled with Burkeman’s work. He writes about life, time, and mortality in a way that makes me want to get up to watch the sunrise, rather than spend all day in bed in despair. This book of his is a peaceful series of meditations intended to be read over the course of four weeks (I did it in three because I borrowed from the library). Highly recommend!

• The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins: Though the language in this book occasionally leaves something to be desired (one chapter is titled “How to Create the Best Friendships of Your Life” which sounds more like a viral social media post than I’d like to admit), I find a lot of solace in the author’s ideas about handling the demand of what other people think. The basic ideas of this book soothe the reassurance-seeking part of myself, and the author’s perspective on the power we give to other people is challenging how I perceive my own sense of control (or lack thereof) over other people.

• The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş: This magnificent literary fiction novel follows a young couple as they search for a house to buy in a foreign city. Both of the main characters are immigrants from different countries, and the novel examines falling in love in a second language, leaving behind family, and pursuing shared goals in such a poignant way. To my point about relationships earlier, I think this book does an excellent job of sharing a relationship that is not free of hardship, but centered on mutual love and understanding. It’s so beautiful!

For more of my bookshelf, follow me on Storygraph (my favorite alternative to Goodreads).

• Station Eleven: I’m late to the party on this adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s novel by the same name (one of my favorite books and source material for an essay I published in 2020 during the pandemic). The plot follows a ragtag group of pandemic survivors who begin to perform Shakespeare as a means of survival. I’m only a bit into it because I have to take the pandemic content slowly, but it is stunning.

• Heated Rivalry: I caved and paid for a month of HBO to watch this one. Yes, it was worth it. The fifth episode had me in tears, and I’ve rewatched some of my favorite scenes a few times.

• Hacks: Also on HBO, this show follows a young writer and an older comedian. Honestly, it’s pretty painful to watch people blow up each other’s lives, but there are some standout performers that keep me coming back (and Robby Hoffman is in Season 4, so there’s that).

• Poker Face: I love Natasha Lyonne so much, and this show is a romp. With its Columbo-like inverted detective story format, each episode focuses on one mystery. There’s nothing I love more than something that is solved within the span of one episode. All is right with the world.