There’s a particular kind of tiredness that doesn’t show up on any test or scan. It’s not dramatic enough to name. You’re functioning fine — delivering, showing up, keeping things moving. But underneath it all, something just feels... off.
I didn’t know how tired I was until I stopped.
I’ve just come back from almost a month away in London, the Netherlands and Greece. And somewhere across those three places, something started to come back.
It wasn’t anything I did. It was everything I didn’t.
Each place gave me something different.
London gave me depth. Reconnecting with people who have known me across different chapters of my life, who hold versions of me I sometimes forget existed. There’s a kind of ease that comes from being with people who don’t need you to explain yourself. You just pick up, somewhere in the middle, as if no time has passed at all.
We don’t talk enough about how much energy goes into managing how we’re perceived. And how much lighter it feels to be somewhere that energy simply isn’t required.
The Netherlands gave me presence. An afternoon on top of hay bales with friends, talking about nothing in particular while the sky shifted colours over fields that stretched on forever. No itinerary. No destination. Just the pleasure of being exactly where you are with no desire to be anywhere else.
And Greece gave me permission.
Permission to eat slowly and well, without tallying anything. Permission to nap in the afternoon when the heat made everything else impossible. Permission to sit by the sea for hours and call it enough.
Though I’ll be honest, that permission didn’t come easily at first. I kept feeling the pull to do more. See more. Make the most of it in the way I’d spent years conditioning myself to make the most of things. The guilt of a day not sufficiently filled.
I’d be surprised if that doesn’t sound familiar.
But the rhythm of the place had other ideas. And gradually, without quite deciding to, I let myself follow it.
What I noticed in that slower pace was how much stiller things became. A kind of background noise I’d stopped registering, because it had been there so long, started to lift. I ate delicious food every day and felt no guilt about it. I moved because the days invited movement, not because I was managing something. I slept well. I laughed a lot.
One evening I watched a group of children playing football in the town square. Strangers, different languages, no shared history. Completely absorbed in the same game as if they’d spent years together. Nothing to prove. Nothing to perform. Just fully, completely there.
I haven’t stopped thinking about what it would mean to live a little more like that.
Towards the end of the trip, I was sitting on a balcony in Greece with a glass of wine, watching the sun go down over the water. The kind of sunset that stops you mid-sentence.
What struck me sitting there, wasn’t just how beautiful it was. It was that I felt equally good about the life I was going back to.
For the first time I can remember, I wasn’t using a holiday to escape. I was excited to come home. To new work I’d stepped into. To my friends and family in Melbourne. To my apartment, my routines and the small ordinary joys of an average day.
That’s not something you can decide to feel. It’s what happens over time, when the life you’re living actually reflects who you are.
And I wonder about that for you. Not the holiday, but the feeling underneath it. Are you living a life you’re genuinely excited to return to, or one you feel the need to get away from?
The trip wasn’t the point, really. The insights I came home with weren’t about the travel. They were about what became visible when things finally settled enough to see clearly.
That the guilt I felt for doing less was a habit, not a truth.
That the people, places and moments that filled me most weren’t the impressive ones, they were the simple ones. A sky changing colour. A meal that went on too long. A child doing a dance for a stranger. A glass of wine at the end of a day that asked nothing of me.
And that the life I’ve been building, one honest choice at a time, is one I actually want to be in.
That’s not nothing. For a lot of people, it’s everything.
I’m not sure there’s a shortcut to what I felt on that balcony. But I do think it starts with the same question, whether you’re on holiday or in the middle of an ordinary Wednesday.
What would it feel like to want to be exactly where you are?
Holiday seems to have done wonders Shalino. I do appreciate that the holiday isn't the point. Very happy for you.
I will forever hold the image of those kids playing in the square in my mind💜