Day 24 charting a way forward

I didn’t forget Day 23. I paused.

There’s a difference.

Yesterday was a doctor’s appointment. More tests. More waiting. Information I didn’t know I needed, arriving whether I was ready or not.

Sometimes things don’t happen for reasons you can celebrate. They happen because a system has pushed long enough that something finally resists. Not loudly. Just enough to interrupt the momentum.

I learned things about my health that forced me to reconsider the story I’d been telling myself.

Maybe losing the contract wasn’t failure. Maybe it was friction— the point where a body stops cooperating with conditions it was never meant to endure.

I took a stress test. They stopped it early.

Five minutes in, my blood pressure hit 268.

I remember sitting there afterward thinking: This is controlled. This is monitored. This is supposed to be safe.

Which means what I was doing at work— night after night, under constant pressure— was something else entirely.

There’s a strange pattern to how people survive environments like that. Strain becomes background noise. Adaptation gets mistaken for resilience. Endurance gets rewarded until it collapses.

The body learns to stay quiet. The mind learns to justify. Eventually, you stop asking whether the situation is reasonable— only whether you can keep going.

That’s how these structures hold. They don’t crush people all at once. They stretch them slowly, until endurance gets mistaken for health.

Like the frog in the water. The temperature rises gradually. Adjustment feels like strength. Until it isn’t.

Maybe my body had been negotiating longer than it should have. Absorbing strain so the system didn’t have to. Covering for a situation that was never designed to care whether I lasted.

And maybe—this is the part that’s hard to say out loud— if nothing had interrupted it, I might not be here talking about it.

And for anyone listening to this and wondering if it sounds scattered— if this feels like rambling—

it isn’t.

This isn’t confusion. It’s reconnaissance.

When something collapses, you don’t move in straight lines. You walk the perimeter. You take notes. You figure out where the ground still holds.

This is me mapping the terrain after impact.

We’re heading into the winter solstice now. The longest night of the year.

Normally, I’d be marking it. Calling old friends. Re-entering parts of myself that went quiet while work filled every available space.

It’s remarkable how much can be taken without force. Just expectations. Just deadlines. Just the slow trade of self for stability.

So here I am.

Still standing on the ledge. Still rebuilding from the rubble. But oriented now. Seeing the structure, not just the damage.

I’m not going away. I’ll keep posting. I’m charting a way forward.

I hope you find rest in the coming days. However that looks for you.

Godspeed.