There’s a quiet kind of grief that builds when you realize someone likes you just enough to keep you close, but not enough to let you in. It doesn’t arrive dramatically. It drips. It seeps in slowly, washing away your clarity until you can no longer tell the difference between affection and ambivalence. They don’t harm you outright. They just don’t feed you emotionally. And so you wither while convincing yourself that you’re full. We are so skilled at rationalizing absence. Especially when the idea of someone—the version we’ve created in our …
I Didn’t Trek to Heal. I Trekked Because I Was Done Disappearing.
Some mornings, I’d wake up and sit on the edge of the bed, toothbrush in hand, wondering if I had it in me to pretend I was fine again. The pretending was heavier than the silence. It didn’t look like a breakdown. I still showed up. Smiled when expected. Hit deadlines. But under the surface, it felt like something essential had slipped through a crack and I didn’t know how to ask for it back. So I started walking. First out of habit. Then out of restlessness. And then—without knowing why—I signed up for a trek that scared me. Not …
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What Remains After the Summit
There are two kinds of people who go to the mountains. Those who chase peaks. And those who let the mountains undo them. Steve House belongs unapologetically to the second category. You won’t find Instagram reels of him posing atop a summit with dramatic music. His story reads more like a quiet undoing—of ambition, ego, identity. In Beyond the Mountain, he writes not about triumph but disintegration. His greatest climbs are the ones where the summit dissolved the moment he reached it. Where the descent became the story. Where success, as …
I Like Myself Better When No One’s Around to See It
You know, sometimes, I wish my inner critic would take a hint and a very long coffee break. Seriously !! It's not like it's yelling but constantly whispering in my head and somehow that’s worse. It judges how I sit, how I speak, and the whole weird life I’ve built. It keeps comparing my slow years to everyone else’s sprint. And for some reason, it's always blasting on loud-speakers anytime I’m alone. My inner monologue seriously needs a mute button. So, I do the most sensible thing, I go off-grid, usually some place high and cold, and …
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What a Frozen Tent Taught Me About Staying With Myself
I never anticipated a winter trek serving as a mirror. Yet, that is precisely what happened. Somewhere between the sub-zero wind slicing through my gloves and the grueling nights where sleep simply refused to show up, my entire perspective silently altered. It was far from an epiphany. We seek out these extreme winter treks thinking they will give us some cinematic breakthrough. But the reality is mostly just shivering in the dark while your toes go completely numb. Only making itself known when there is absolutely zero warmth left to distract …
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Work-Life Balance Is a Myth. Build a Rhythm Instead.
We don’t need better schedules. We need better systems. Work-life balance sounds reasonable—like a goal any responsible adult should aim for. A neat line down the middle, separating the “work” you do for a paycheck from the “life” you live for meaning. It’s tidy. Logical. Easy to say on a webinar panel. But in practice? It’s fiction. Your life doesn’t divide neatly into blocks. A sick child doesn’t care about your strategy meeting. Your deadlines don’t pause because your body needs rest. You can set your Slack to “Do Not Disturb,” but …
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