Author: Adam Boyd

I used to think I was pretty good at self-reflection. I’d make a cup of tea, stare out the window, and let my brain wander down its own messy hallways. Sometimes I’d scribble in a journal—the kind with a battered cover and pages that smelled like old paper and forgotten plans. It was private, a […]

I was sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor at 11 p.m., surrounded by three half-empty journals, a mug of cold chamomile tea, and a candle that claimed to smell like “inner peace” but mostly just smelled like burnt vanilla. I was trying to have a genuine moment of self-reflection. You know the kind—the deep, honest, […]

I caught myself the other day staring at a blank journal page, pen hovering, and my first thought wasn’t “What am I feeling?” It was “How would I caption this?” The moment was so perfectly, pathetically on-brand for my brain that I had to laugh. I was alone in my kitchen, wearing a sweater with […]

I used to think I was a deeply introspective person. You know, the kind who stares out rain-streaked windows, journal in hand, pondering the big questions. Then I realized I’d just spent 45 minutes staging a single Instagram story about my “morning mindfulness routine” and hadn’t actually been mindful for a second. The candle was […]

Last Tuesday, I sat down to journal for the first time in months. I had the whole scene set: a candle flickering, a mug of tea going cold, a fresh notebook open to the first page. Then I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out if my handwriting looked “aesthetic” enough to post on my […]

Last Tuesday, I sat down with a cup of tea, a candle that smelled less like “coastal forest vibes” and more like a basement after a rainstorm, and a brand-new journal. The goal was embarrassingly modest: ten minutes of honest, private self-reflection. No phone. No buzzing. Just me and my tangled thoughts, untangling themselves on […]

I caught myself journaling the other day. Not the old-school way, with a pen and a spiral notebook that smells faintly of coffee and bad decisions. I was typing into my Notes app, and before I even finished the sentence about my anxiety, my thumb was hovering over the “copy” button. I was mentally formatting […]