NEW PATHS & QUIET WARS

A Thousand Lives and None at All

I’ve been quiet for a while. Offline. Distant. Not because there was nothing to say, but because life had me sitting face to face with myself.

This year began with decisions that tasted like truth. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just inevitable. Last year, I already took the first step — I left my studio behind. I didn’t know what I was walking toward, only that I couldn’t stay where I was. And so the journey began. A chaotic, beautiful ride filled with fleeting ideas, tempting paths, and constant inner noise. Do I want to keep tattooing, but on my terms — free, untethered, traveling? Or do I want to paint again, just for the love of it? Or maybe — after all these years of building a self-employed life— I want to try something entirely new, something steady, something still.

For someone like me, this kind of freedom is dangerous. I am the kind of soul who wants everything. A thousand lives. A thousand doors. A mind that sparks at the thought of learning something new, of trying, of evolving. But that kind of desire is not always a gift. It’s a curse too. When every path looks tempting, how do you choose? That’s when fear, my oldest companion, slips in again. Not loud, but steady. And before you know it, all those beautiful options start to feel like pressure instead of promise.

It’s not easy to walk away from a life you’ve spent years building. Dreams mix with doubt. And the question that haunts me most: What if I’m not good at anything else? I had become used to life just… happening. Jobs fell into my lap. Paths unfolded without much planning. Things happened to me, not necessarily because of me. And the things I wanted, I often didn’t finish. It was always someone else’s fault. The timing. The people. The distractions. But the truth I’ve come to face is this: it was always in my hands.

And that realization is terrifying — because when it’s your own hands, there’s no one left to blame. I stood there with a thousand ideas in my head, wanting to do everything at once, unwilling to give any of it up. I’ve always been a workaholic. Balance was never my thing. In my world, you can do everything if your time management is sharp enough. Every hour packed, every day squeezed until there’s nothing left. And it works — for a while.

But then I always reach the edge. The burn-out. The heaviness. The questions. The lie of “it’s all possible if you just work harder” starts to crumble. Because time doesn’t stretch. And the more I crossed things off my to-do list, the longer it grew. I was running on a treadmill with no off switch, believing one day I’d catch up. But I never did.

That’s where 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman found me — exactly when I needed it. Like all important books do, it arrived in crisis and offered me something radical: a truth I had been too scared to face. We don’t have time for everything. We never did. And we never will.

For someone like me, who wants to do it all, this realization was a punch to the gut. But a necessary one. A beautiful one, even. Because it’s only when we realize we can’t do everything that we start asking what truly matters. It was freeing. Deeply, painfully freeing. It released me from the lie of endless possibility and gave me something far more precious in return: presence.

The questions I ask now have changed. What do I want to do with this year? With this week? With today? What truly matters now? No more infinite parallel futures buzzing in my head. Just time — real time. The time I actually have on this earth, and what I want to fill it with.

I know now that I want to keep circling this world with all of you, sharing the beauty I find in darkness. I will write — because I’ve fallen in love with writing and it feels like home. That’s where I’ll put my heart. And I’ll paint — because I miss it deeply. But I’ve accepted that not every gift must become a job. Some things are allowed to stay sacred, quiet, and only mine. If something grows from that, I’ll welcome it. But I don’t need to chase it anymore.

Since I’ve let go of that pressure, I feel lighter. Stronger. Healthier. More creative. And —above all else — free. Free in a way I hadn’t felt in years. Happy with the choices I’ve made. At peace with what I’ve left behind. Because it isn’t endless options that make us free — it’s the courage to choose one path and walk it fully, letting all the others die a quiet, honorable death.

As Oliver Burkeman wrote: “You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results.”

And maybe — just maybe — that’s where real freedom begins.