Reflection: Two Books, One Revelation.

A little while back I read Where the Crawdads Sing and then, a few months later, A Gentleman in Moscow. Two completely different worlds: a marshland in North Carolina, a single elegant hotel in Soviet Russia. Different centuries, different stakes, different everything.

But both of them did something to me that I've been chasing in books ever since.

They had cadence.

Not just plot. Not just beautiful sentences. A rhythm — the way the story breathed, the way energy built and eased, the way I felt myself moving with the main character rather than watching from a distance. I was inside those books. Fully in the plot. And when I finished each one I sat with that particular kind of quiet that only arrives when a story has genuinely taken you somewhere.

I started noticing its absence everywhere after that. Books I'd pick up and put down, unable to name why. Stories that were technically good but left me at arm's length. It wasn't the plot. It wasn't the writing. It was the rhythm. When it was missing, I wasn't connected.

And then one afternoon it hit me the way the real insights tend to arrive: This is exactly what happens to me at work.

When my work has a cadence, when there's genuine rhythm between doing and resting, between creating and executing, between leading and listening, I feel like myself. Not just productive. Myself. Creative, curious, alive to the work in a way that makes it feel like mine.

When the cadence is gone, I'm just moving through scenes. Technically present. Emotionally somewhere else. Going through the transactional motions of a story I've lost the thread of.

Reframe: You're Not Burned Out. You're Off-Beat.

Burnout gets framed as emptiness like running out of fuel, hitting a wall, having nothing left.

But I think for a lot of us it's more like losing the rhythm of a story we actually care about.

Researchers describe burnout through three dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism, and a creeping sense of ineffectiveness, which feels like not being enough or capable. 

What I find so telling about that triad is how each one silently erodes your sense of self. Exhaustion takes your energy. Cynicism takes your caring. And ineffectiveness takes the part of you that once believed you were good at this, that the work mattered, that you mattered inside it.

By the time all three have set in, you feel like a stranger in your own life.

The work isn't necessarily wrong. The people aren't necessarily terrible. But somewhere along the way the cadence broke down — the pace became relentless, the recovery disappeared, the creative version of you got crowded out by the reactive version, and now you're reading the words but you're not inside the plot anymore.

That distinction matters because it changes what the recovery looks like.

If you're empty, you need to fill up. If you're off-beat, you need to find the rhythm again.

And the beautiful thing about rhythm is that it can be rebuilt. Gradually, intentionally, one small beat at a time.

The question worth sitting with: When did I last feel creative and like myself at work — not just productive?

If you can remember that feeling, you haven't lost it. You've just lost the conditions that made it possible.

Restore: Read the Room (Your Inner Room).

Here's a gentle practice for August, borrowed from your beach bag:

• Think about the last book, show, or story you got genuinely lost in. The one where time disappeared and you forgot to check your phone.
• Ask yourself: What did it give you that your day-to-day isn't? 
  Adventure? Stillness? Depth? A character who knew exactly who they were and moved through the world accordingly?
• Write it down. One word or ten — whatever comes.

That's not just a preference. That's a signal. A note from your own intuition about what you're hungry for that work hasn't been feeding lately.

You don't have to solve it today. Just name it. Naming it is how you start moving toward it.

Upcoming Events

Your Nervous System at Work — Free Webinar Series

The cadence you're looking for at work doesn't come from finding the right system or the right schedule. It comes from understanding the instrument underneath all of it — your nervous system — and learning to work with it instead of through it.

This August, I'm launching a free 5-part monthly webinar series called Your Nervous System at Work. Each 30-minute session covers one piece of the picture: what stress actually is, where it's coming from, what it's doing to your body, and how to start recovering your energy — so you have something left for the rest of your life, not just your workday.

The first session is August 20th at 12:30pm CST.

Interrupting the Stress Cycle — what stress actually is, how it quietly becomes burnout, and the one shift that changes the whole pattern.

Free. 30 minutes. No commitment to attend them all.

Register here.

Come to one, or come to all five — each session stands on its own.

Ready to go deeper on this? Let's talk about what rest, pace, and presence look like for you — specifically. blackbirdlifecoaching.com

© Blackbird Life Coaching 

2105 Wilmette Avenue | Wilmette, IL | United States | 60091

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