Thread: The Work
For most of my life, I believed energy came from effort.
From grit.
From will.
From pushing through the part of the day that asked me to slow down.
Later, I started to believe it came from something else.
From coffee.
From a can pulled cold from a cooler.
From a jolt that promised clarity, speed, alertness.
Sometimes those things worked. At least on the surface.
They sharpened the mind. Tightened the focus. Made the world feel louder, more immediate, more possible.
But every time my heart slipped out of rhythm…
Every time it fluttered against my chest in a way that didn’t feel natural…
Every time I felt that subtle sense of “too much”…
There was always the same thread behind it.
Sometimes it had been coffee.
Sometimes a Red Bull.
Different forms.
Same signal.
For a while, I tried to ignore that pattern.
It was inconvenient.
Annoying.
Hard to admit that something so small had such a powerful effect on me.
But after Toronto, ignoring it was no longer an option.
My body had already done the talking.
All that was left was the decision.
So I stopped.
Not in a dramatic moment.
Not with a declaration or a plan.
I simply finished what was in the cup… and did not refill it.
At first, the absence felt strange.
Like a silence that was almost too quiet.
The edges of the morning softened.
The urgency disappeared.
Time began to stretch instead of compress.
I noticed the subtle rhythms I had been numbing for years.
The rise and fall of actual energy.
The natural dips.
The natural returns.
The real tiredness.
The real clarity.
And beneath it all, there was something else.
Calm.
My heart no longer felt as if it needed to jump ahead of itself.
My thoughts no longer felt as if they needed to race to be important.
And in that new stillness, I started to feel something I hadn’t known I was missing.
Trust.
Trust in the body as it is.
Trust in the strength that already exists.
Trust that energy is not something to be taken from the outside…
…but something to be protected, grown, and honored from within.
Alcohol followed the same quiet departure.
It had been a soft companion for years.
A way to take the edge off.
A ritual at the end of long days.
But I began to see it for what it really was.
Not relaxation — but disturbance.
Not connection — but blur.
Not rest — but interference.
So I let that go too.
What surprised me most was not the absence of these things…
It was what returned in their place.
Deeper sleep.
Clearer mornings.
A quieter mind.
A steadier heart.
An emotional presence that felt more available, more honest, more alive.
As if by removing the artificial waves, I finally allowed the ocean of myself to settle.
This was not about restriction.
It was about respect.
It was the same choice I was making in my training.
The same choice I was making in how I speak to others.
The same choice I was making in how I move through the world.
Less noise.
Less force.
Less borrowed energy.
More truth.
More clarity.
More presence.
And in that presence, a new form of strength began to grow.
Not the loud kind that announces itself.
But the kind that hums quietly underneath everything I do.
The kind that does not need a stimulant to exist.
The kind that simply is.