Follow What Makes You Forget to Eat

At ten, quitting was simple. If something stopped being fun, I dropped it. No second-guessing. No pep talks. Just a clean break and on to the next thing.

Then adulthood arrived with its exhausting rules. Push through. Be disciplined. Don’t quit just because it’s hard. So I did. I stuck with things long after I stopped caring. Dragged dead weight. Powered through boredom, exhaustion, even the quiet voice that whispered, This isn’t for you.

But what happens when you find something so consuming that quitting never crosses your mind?

Nineteen days ago, I set a secret challenge: one blog per day for February. Didn’t tell anyone. If I quit, no one would know. But here I am, staring at my 46th blog. The math doesn’t check out. Somewhere between stubbornness and obsession, I lost count.

I stay up late—two, sometimes three, extra hours just to write. During the day, I steal moments between work, between calls, between the parts of life that don’t pause just because I decided to do something ridiculous. The last few days, I’ve been skipping meals, reheating my coffee four, five, six times, until it’s nothing but a sad, bitter memory of what coffee was supposed to be.

And yet, I don’t feel drained. This isn’t burnout. I’ve felt burnout before—when every task felt like dragging a boulder uphill, when even rest didn’t feel restful. This? This is exhaustion that makes sense. The kind that says, You’re exactly where you should be.

I used to think changing the world meant doing something big. Turns out, it’s mostly quiet, unglamorous work. Not grand, dramatic moments, but small, relentless steps that feel pointless until suddenly, they aren’t. It’s easy to say, I want to do something meaningful. It’s harder to ask, What did I do today to make that happen? Purpose isn’t something you find. It’s something you build—word by word, step by step.

Some things make me forget to eat. A great book. A tricky problem. A conversation that sparks something in my brain. Lately, writing has been one of those things. That’s the breadcrumb trail. That’s the fire.

Forget chasing passion. Follow what makes you forget to eat. Because hunger for the right thing beats a full stomach any day.