Pull up a chair.
The slightly wobbly one that makes you wonder if it’s gonna collapse into a million pieces if you lean back too far.
I’m not going to blow sunshine up your ass about how everything’s brilliant and we’re all crushing it in 2025.
Cause let’s be honest, are we? Really?
You know that feeling when you wake up and your brain immediately starts doing that thing where it catalogues everything that’s wrong, broken, or slightly off kilter in your life?
It’s like it’s doing some morning inventory of personal failures and mounting anxieties?
Yeah. That one.
I want to know how you’re actually doing. Not the LinkedIn version where everything’s “exciting opportunities” and “grateful for the journey.” The real version.
The one where you admit that sometimes you stare at your phone for twenty minutes pretending to be busy because engaging with actual productivity feels like climbing Everest in flip flops.
I’ve noticed and tell me if I’m full of shit or if I’m just projecting my own existential nonsense out into the internet…
Everyone’s running on fumes and pretending it’s premium unleaded.
We’re all out here performing competence while internally screaming at the joke of modern existence.
Social media algorithms feeding us the same recycled content and it makes it feel like it’s some super charged Groundhog Day.
A.I. grifters promising solutions to problems they created. Corporate overlords monetising our attention span until it resembles a goldfish with ADHD.
And through it all, we’re supposed to just… cope?
Optimise? Find our passion and turn it into a side hustle?
That’s some bullshit.
Here’s what nobody talks about in the productivity guru circle jerk…
Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is admit you’re tired. Not the cute kind of tired that gets fixed with a good night’s sleep and some expensive coffee. The bone deep exhaustion that comes from existing in a world that treats human attention like a commodity to be strip mined.
So today is about the real talk, no filters, no Instagram worthy wisdom.
How are you holding up?
Are you sleeping?
And I don’t mean the sleeping bit where you just doom scroll tiktok for another 3 hours before your alarm shouts at you.
When’s the last time you felt excited about something?
Are you eating actual food or surviving on whatever requires the least effort to consume?
(I’m a professional 2 day old pizza enjoyer…)
When someone asks “how are you,” do you give them the automatic “fine, thanks” or do you ever tell the truth?
Here’s what I’m learning. The people worth knowing are the ones who’ll sit with you in the messy, uncomfortable honesty of admitting that sometimes everything feels a bit much.
They won’t try to fix you or offer unsolicited advice about meditation apps. They’ll just nod and say “yeah, man, it’s been a weird one.”
Look, I don’t have answers all the answers.
I’m not gonna go all Tony Robbins on your ass and tell you to unlock the power within or some shit.
I’m not about that life.
This is about checking in. Really checking in.
The world’s going to keep being chaotic and overwhelming and occasionally brilliant despite itself.
The algorithms will keep serving up the same bullshit. The grifters will keep grifting. The endless content carnival will keep spinning.
If you’re struggling.
I got you.
If you’re tired.
It’s not a personal failing.
There’s always a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances. And if you’re just trying to figure out how to keep going without losing yourself in the process, well… join the club.
The membership’s free, the meetings are irregular, and the only requirement is showing up as honestly as you can manage.
So, seriously, how are you doing?
And don’t give me the polite version. Give me the real one.
The wall of text ugly crying as you bite into a block of cheese version.
We’ve got time.
Stephen Walker