(for people who feel too much and are tired of pretending they don’t)
January has a strange texture.
It’s quieter than December, but louder in terms of expectations. The world keeps shouting “new year, new goals, new you,” while many of us are still carrying the previous year in our bodies. In our shoulders. In the way we hesitate before opening a blank page.
For sensitive, creative, emotionally porous people, this moment can feel especially dissonant. You might want more meaning than momentum. Alignment, yes, but not more pressure. A way forward that doesn’t require grinding yourself into a better version.
And yet, there’s that familiar weight: the feeling that you should be starting over already.
that you should be clearer, faster, more disciplined by now.
If that’s you, pause here for a moment. Instead of resolutions, planners, or rigid systems, I want to offer you four questions. This isn’t a productivity exercise, nor a way to “fix” anything. These questions can be asked in January, in June, or in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday when something inside you feels tight.
They are not a cheap hack, and sure won’t optimize your life in an afternoon.
What they do is quieter and more important: they help your nervous system feel seen. And when that happens, creativity tends to come back on its own.
You can journal these, voice-note them, think about them while walking, or sit with just one. There is no right order, no correct depth. Think of them as doors you can open in any sequence you want.
They were originally shaped with writers in mind, but honestly, they apply to anyone who creates, feels deeply, or needs a checkpoint.
1. If I’m brutally honest, what is exhausting me right now?
The real source of exhaustion is subtle, and often looks reasonable. That’s how it slips past your defenses.
For many creatives, exhaustion comes from carrying invisible weight. Saying yes too often. Trying to run a blog, social media, a creative project, and a long-term vision all at once. Doing the work of a small team while being a single nervous system.
And then there’s the quieter drain: unspoken grief, unresolved decisions, constant self-monitoring, the pressure to turn everything you love into something useful or sellable.
Let yourself be specific.
Is it insecurity? Uncertainty? End-of-year logistics still haunting you? Your body asking for a pace your life doesn’t allow? Relationships that no longer feel like home?
Be honest, and just take your time.
2. What would I say if no one needed me to be reasonable about it?
This is a letter you will never send. I mean, you can, if you want to.
It might be written to a person. Or to a stretch of life that reshaped you. Or to the version of yourself who learned to become smaller in order to stay.
Sometimes it’s aimed at something less human: a system, an industry, a promise that asked for everything and returned very little.
What gathers here is stalled energy. Words that never found a place to land. You never asked me how I was. I kept myself manageable so you wouldn’t leave. I stayed because leaving felt like failure.
Nothing here needs to be solved. There is no requirement for forgiveness, or closure, or understanding. The point is just to let it true exist outside your chest.
Sensitive people burn out more from holding without release than from feeling deeply. So this question opens a gap, just enough for the pressure to ease.
3. Who or what am I quietly grieving, even if it doesn’t make sense anymore?
There’s a kind of grief we rarely name: the grief of outgrowing. People. Identities. Dreams that once felt like everything. Versions of success your nervous system can no longer survive.
You can grieve something and still know it was necessary to leave it behind. Both can be true.This grief often shows up as numbness, irritability, or creative block. Not because you’re broken, but because something meaningful ended without ceremony. It’s okay to grief when something meaningful ended without ceremony. Plus, naming it releases energy that has been stuck pretending nothing changed.
4. If my creativity didn’t need to be impressive, validating, or profitable, what would it want to say right now?
This is the most subversive question.
Because many creative blocks aren’t blocks at all, but protective responses. Your system learned that creating meant exposure, judgment, urgency, or survival. So it learned to pull the brakes.
Ask this gently:
– What would you make if it didn’t need to be optimized, shared, monetized, or explained?
– What would exist if it were allowed to be small, strange, unfinished, or just for you?
Creativity feels safe again when nothing is demanding it prove itself.
If goal setting tends to shut you down, I explored a gentler alternative in Golden Era Bingo, which focuses on progress without pressure.
You don’t need to answer all four questions to “do this right.” Even sitting with one can be enough.
Let’s normalize not chasing to become a better version of yourself, but a more honest one.
If the coming year is going to feel different, it won’t be because you tried harder. It will be because you listened better. To your body. Your grief. Your creative instincts. Your limits.
You’re sensitive in a world that keeps confusing force with progress. And you’re allowed to choose another way in.
If you’re reading this and thinking, “Oh. It’s not just me,” then good. That’s the point. And you can find more posts below to help you stay creative.
