A year ago, everything was loud.
Cardiac sarcoidosis. An ICD implant. Meds that keep me alive while simultaneously wrecking my sleep, my mood, and my ability to trust my own body. A big career change, because apparently one existential crisis at a time isn’t enough. And under all of it, a quiet but relentless question:
I still don’t know. But I’m trying.
This isn’t a triumph-over-adversity post. I’m not interested in those. They’re tidy, and none of this has been tidy. What follows is mess. But it’s my mess, and I’m learning to steer inside it instead of just getting dragged along.
Health: From Problem to Priority
Twelve months ago, I was learning how to live with a condition I’d never heard of, a device in my chest, and medications that affected everything from my sleep to my emotional stability. With a side serving of keeping me alive.
For a while, it felt like my body was actively working against me. To some extent it still is. That’s what autoimmune conditions do. But something shifted. We’re not at war anymore. We’re negotiating.
I built a daily rhythm around food I can trust. Not aspirational eating. Just fuel that doesn’t make things worse. I committed to strength and mobility work I can actually sustain. Not the kind that looks impressive. The kind I can do on a bad week. I track medication effects the way I used to track project metrics: energy, sleep, mood. Data helps when feelings lie. And I accepted, finally, that fatigue isn’t a moral failure. It’s a signal. The trick isn’t pushing through it. It’s learning what it’s trying to tell you.
These medications are permanent. They’re not a temporary inconvenience I can optimise away. They’re infrastructure now. They keep me safe, and I can manage the side effects. But pretending they’re not a big deal doesn’t help anyone, least of all me.
I still get it wrong. Weeks derail. But I keep coming back. That’s the practice now. Not getting it perfect. Just not staying gone.
Gratitude: Not Just After the Storm
This year cracked me open. Which sounds worse than it was.
I used to feel grateful when things went well. Classic outcome-based gratitude. The kind that’s easy and costs nothing. Now I’m learning something harder: gratitude when things are going sideways.
This isn’t toxic positivity. I have zero patience for that. It’s a quieter thing. An “even this matters” perspective that I couldn’t access before, no matter how many books I read. I’m not convinced it’s teachable. I tried to learn it intellectually for years and got nowhere. It seems to require something you can’t simulate: living through something that makes the old frame too small.
I notice Anna keeping the family orbit steady, even when I’m not at my best. She makes me want to be a better man. To rise to her example. That’s not a line. That’s just true.
I notice the kids. Watching them grow into themselves. Finding what makes their wheels spin. Hearing them laugh in the next room while I lie on the couch, totally wrecked. They’re beautiful beyond description.
I notice a broader compassion I didn’t used to have. Toward myself. Toward people from my past. We’re all struggling to be our best. With distance, it’s clear: nobody’s trying to wrong you. They’re either hurting or unskilled. Either way, what they need isn’t your resentment.
I notice the warmth from friends and family. People I haven’t seen for years, living on the other side of the world. Their smiles are somehow always here.
I notice that I get another day. Not in a greeting-card way. In a let’s not waste this way.
Gratitude, for me, has stopped being about perspective and started being about presence.
Age: The Cogs Are More Visible Now
I’m at an age where you can see the machinery.
Not in a cynical way. I’ve done cynical, and it’s empty calories. But I can see how easy it is to drift. How your time gets colonised by other people’s priorities if you don’t guard it. How saying yes to one thing is always, always saying no to something else. Most people never do that maths.
Medication-induced fatigue makes these trade-offs blindingly obvious. When you’ve got about four useful hours in a day, you stop spending them on things that don’t matter. That’s not wisdom. That’s scarcity doing its job.
I’m not just riding the rails anymore. I’m starting to design the track. Slowly. Badly. But consciously. That feels less like enlightenment and more like waking up for the first time at 45.
Autonomy: Taking Back a Little Bit of Time
For a long time, I let life happen to me.
Some of that was necessity. Most of it, if I’m honest, was me. A former co-worker once said I was “too generous with my time.” Which is a polite way of saying I had no boundaries and called it being helpful. I see it now. The world will take everything you offer and ask if you’ve got more. Nobody stops you. You have to stop yourself.
This year, I reclaimed a few small things. Twenty minutes each morning for coffee and quiet. Nothing productive. Protected. Exercise that’s for me, not for anyone else’s approval. Saying no to things that aren’t mine to carry. Still hard, but seeing the pattern is half the battle.
And I’ve redefined what pushing myself means. It used to mean grinding through. Now it means managing energy so I’m actually present when it counts. Not just physically there and mentally gone. That’s a bigger shift than it sounds.
This isn’t a victory lap. I don’t believe in those anymore. They imply a finish line, and I haven’t found one.
It’s a check-in. A marker on a track I’m still building.
For the first time in a long time, I’m not chasing someone else’s idea of a good life. I’m shaping my own. Slowly. Incompletely. The warts are included. That’s not a compromise. That’s the actual thing.