This winter has been aggressive.

We’ve had multiple weeks of snow, temperatures deep into the negatives, and the kind of cold where you can feel it inside your house. Normally, I enjoy winter. This year feels different. There’s a point where winter stops feeling cozy and just starts feeling limiting. I hit that point recently.

Working from home during storms sounds nice in theory. And at first it was. No commute. No ice. No rushing out the door into weather that feels personally offensive.

But after a while, being home because you want to and being home because you have to are two very different things.

At the same time all of this was happening, work shifted.

My manager is leaving. I’m genuinely happy for her. She was supportive in a way that made it easy to grow quickly in my role. That kind of manager is rare, and I don’t take that for granted.

But when someone like that leaves, it creates a lot of unknowns.

Right now, there isn’t a clear plan for what happens next. There are open roles. There are people still learning. And I’m sitting in this strange space where I’m already doing higher-level work while also knowing I don’t want the path that usually comes next.

I don’t want to be a manager. I don’t want 50–60 hour weeks. I don’t want to be on call or working during PTO. If I’m going to give extra hours to something, I want it to be something I’m building for myself long term.

So a lot of my mental energy lately has been going toward boundaries. Not whether I want to grow. I do. Just not in ways that cost me everything else.

The other thing that’s been very obvious lately is that I’m still dealing with burnout.

Last year was heavy. New job stress. Loss. Grief. Big life shifts. Friendship changes. I don’t think I ever fully reset from all of it.

It feels like I’ve changed faster than my life structure has. Some days still feel like my nervous system is stuck on high alert. I’m working on it. I’ve been in therapy for years. But progress doesn’t mean everything suddenly feels easy.

One thing I do know is that creating still feels like me.

When I was laid off in 2024, making videos and documenting small routines made me feel like I was finally living a life that actually fit me. I don’t want to lose that again just because life gets stressful.

So right now I’m focusing less on removing every hard thing and more on intentionally adding back things that make me feel like myself.

For me, that’s YouTube. That’s creating. That’s building something that belongs to me.

I don’t have clean answers right now.

Work is still uncertain. The future is still a little blurry. And I’m still figuring out how to feel steady again.

But I’m still here. I’m still showing up. And for now, that feels like enough.

Until next time,

Rachel