The Wonderland Journal

The new year brought some exciting adventures for me. I picked up a new sport. I started this blog. I began training for the Pacific Crest Trail.

2026 is going to be an awesome year! And I’m just getting started.

I just didn’t expect these past couple of months to shift so dramatically compared to last year.

The drawback? I’m tired. I feel like I can’t keep up with the speed of life moving around me.

My new sport has me out until 8:30 or 9:00 most nights of the week. When I get home from those late nights — call me old, but that’s basically my bedtime — I’m starving, the root of which is that I wasn’t eating enough earlier in the day. After an afternoon workout straight into jiu jitsu, I’m famished. Eating right before bed leads me to waking up around 2:00 a.m., and once I’m awake it takes time to fall back asleep with everything spinning through my mind. Then, because of my work schedule, I turn around and wake up at 5:30.

Week after week now, I’m getting less than seven hours of sleep. And this girly needs her beauty sleep.

My attention feels divided every day — church obligations, two athletic communities, friends, family, work, this blog, and PCT preparation. I’m getting a little fatigued.

I’ve also noticed I’m not showing up for people as well as I want to. When I’m with friends, I feel distracted and unfocused, and my conversations often circle back to the same things — my schedule, the trail, what I think I want to do afterward. I feel selfish not being able to fully lock in on the person in front of me or ask deeper questions about their lives and endeavors.

Lately I feel completely dysregulated: restless, overstimulated, like my internal equilibrium is off. I feel like I can’t quite find my footing on a ship sailing across an ocean of deeply fulfilling things. My mind is constantly moving. It drifts to jiu jitsu and what I’ve learned. Then it wanders to the trail and how challenging and rewarding that will be. Then it moves beyond the trail, to the life I imagine afterward — and to the possibility that those dreams might change entirely.

I think about teaching English abroad in the coming years. I think about returning to jiu jitsu. And then I wonder if I’ll want any of those things when I come back. Will my desires shift into something else? Will I meet someone on trail who introduces me to a completely different opportunity? Will I move to another state? Will I come home the same person?

Will I even come home at all?

It feels like I haven’t been able to find my balance since the start of the year. This contrasts with the complete stability of last year. Just a few months ago, I was cooking dinner regularly, reading before bed, learning languages, spending intentional time with friends. I expected to carry that rhythm into this year.

That steadiness has completely unraveled, and I know the culprit.

Jiu jitsu.

Jiu jitsu is beautiful, frustrating, humbling, and deeply rewarding. It’s also something I’m not willing to give up. Maybe some of this excitement is just the newness of it — but I don’t think that’s the whole story.

So for now, I’m just dealing with it until I say goodbye to my job, when my schedule frees up. I’m eating earlier in the day even when I’m not hungry, taking shots of apple cider vinegar at night to prevent the midnight wake-ups, and cutting back on TV and music to calm my mind. My thoughts feel scattered and stretched thin, but I’m doing my best to stay the course I believe I’m meant to be on.

Just one month and one week left of work. Then I can fully focus on tying up this life here in my little town — the life I’ll leave behind for the PCT, and the one I’ll likely return to changed.

Maybe this pull in every direction is just the storm before the quiet I’ve been pursuing since last summer at Dad’s, when I first began to understand the value of discomfort.

Maybe I’m not supposed to feel settled right now. Maybe this stretch of exhaustion and uncertainty is part of loosening my grip on the life I know so I can step into the one ahead.

For now, I’m just trying to stay steady in the middle of it — tired, anticipating, and moving forward anyway.

The Noise Before the Silence