There’s a kind of busyness that looks like progress but isn’t. The sudden urge to reorganize a drawer, push harder in a workout, scroll endlessly, or take on more work. It’s not momentum. It’s escape.
Productivity becomes the perfect cover. If the calendar stays full and the to-do list never ends, there’s no room for anything else. No space for thoughts that sting or feelings that sit too heavy. The disguise works—until it doesn’t.
Because the moment everything quiets, an unwelcome question slips through:
What’s being avoided?
That’s the real trick of it. The mind doesn’t announce, This is avoidance. It just keeps pushing forward, convincing you that more effort is always the answer.
But if all of it stopped, what would need to be faced?
The thoughts buried under tasks don’t vanish. They wait. They creep back in stolen moments—when restlessness turns to exhaustion, when silence settles in, when there’s nothing left to check off the list.
And so, the cycle repeats. More distractions, more movement, more noise. Until one day, the usual escape routes don’t work.
Stopping feels unnatural. But sitting with the discomfort, letting the thought fully land, is the only way through. No fixing, no numbing, no running—just stillness.
It won’t break anything. Avoiding it might.
The real work—the kind that moves things forward—doesn’t happen in frantic motion. It happens in that moment of stillness, when running is no longer an option.
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