Tonight’s story: how I optimized myself into a cage

Two weeks into my new “system,” I felt worse than ever: tight-chested, frantic, hollow. Then Helix (the Weimaraner) staged an 80-pound intervention.

Let’s be honest about something: the universe has a wicked sense of humor.

For years, I’ve approached my annual goal-setting through a yearly theme, choosing a word that serves as a North Star, something to orient toward. But looking at 2026, I was done with dreamy. I wanted effective.

Deliberate.

I wanted a theme I could grip in my hand.

So I chose: Operational Rhythms.

(Cue the “AHHHHHHHH” music overlay)

It sounded so productive and intentional. The year I’d finally master the mechanics of my days, weeks, months. I thought I was graduating to a “high-performance system.” I’m not kidding. I wrote that down.

(Spoiler alert: It was just hustle culture wearing a very expensive, very convincing disguise.)

The Headless Turkey Paradox

I re-learned a valuable lesson: it’s remarkably easy to optimize your way right into a cage.

Two weeks in, the Department underwent a surprise inspection by R.E.A.L.I.T.Y. and failed on every key metric. My “Operational Rhythms” looked like a turkey with its head cut off. I was running everywhere and managing every minute. Checking boxes with frantic intensity that left me feeling more scattered than when I started.

Here’s the thing: I knew it was wrong from the beginning.

Operational Rhythms. Doesn’t that phrase just make you want to eyeroll? I was trying to sound fancy, trying to make hustle culture sound sophisticated. And I had this moment, right at the start, where something in me asked: Are you really going to do this?

And I gaslit myself. Told myself it was a great idea. What was I even talking about, questioning my own brilliance?

I was so optimized in my time management that I wasn’t actually managing my time at all.

My to-do list grew monstrous. The work got done, technically, but my chest carried that familiar tightness, the physical signature of “productive” days that leave your soul feeling hollow.

I was building a treadmill and calling it a path.

The 80-Pound Intervention

The breaking point didn’t happen in a boardroom or over a spreadsheet.

It happened on the floor.

My body had finally had enough. I was resting in Savasana. Corpse pose. In the living room. In full access of the dogs. That should tell you I really wasn’t doing yoga.

And that’s when Helix, my Weimaraner, decided he’d seen enough.

He didn’t bark. Didn’t whine.

He just walked over and planted his massive paw directly on the center of my chest. Pinning me down. Standing over me with that singular canine clarity that says:

REST. DAMNIT.

And I did.

We sat there in the quiet of my space. In that stillness, I realized how many times over the last week I’d told him “not right now, buddy” when he’d stretched out on the couch next to me, looking for scratches and attention. How I’d just repositioned him like a throw pillow that was in the wrong spot.

How I’d turned my dog into an interruption.

Life is far too short, and far too precious, to spend it being the most efficient person in the room while feeling dead inside. This is the Department of Aliveness, after all. Not the Department of Deadness.

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Ahem… speaking of, if you haven’t subscribed yet to this publication… you should! Subscribe to feel less dead.

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The Autonomy I Stole From Myself

As I sat with that tightness in my body (and it wasn’t just my chest, my shoulders had been riding up toward my ears for days), the real truth emerged.

It felt like being at a concert with the volume turned up too high and no earplugs. Everything amped up, everything too much, everything vibrating at a frequency that made my whole system scream.

I was missing autonomy.

And I realized, I was the one who’d taken it away.

When you’ve survived chaos you can’t control—homelessness, job transitions, dances-with-semi-trucks, divorce—your instinct is to white-knuckle the future. You try to eliminate surprise by sometimes, unintentionally, eliminating your own choices.

The lesson I’d learned from those experiences was simple: more control equals better outcomes. The tighter my grip, the safer I’d be. It’s also not the most correct lesson. 🙃

So I’d been responding to my life by giving up my agency in the day-to-day, without even realizing I was doing it. I’d convinced myself I was being intentional. Really, I was just trying to prevent another “wasted” year. Another imperfect year. Another year that didn’t go according to plan.

Forgetting, of course, that years just don’t happen perfectly.

I didn’t need a better schedule.

I needed to restore my own sovereignty.

Creative Sovereignty

Not just sovereignty. Not just creativity. The combination matters.

Sovereignty acknowledges that my time is my most valuable resource, and I’m the one holding the scepter. It’s about reclaiming the authority I’d been systematically handing over to my own systems, my own schedules, my own supposed “optimization.”

But the creative part? That’s what makes it living rather than limiting.

Creative sovereignty means I get to build the systems that serve me, not become a servant to the systems I’ve built. It means my work as a research leader and my writing here aren’t separate domains requiring separate rhythms, they’re expressions of the same creative force that gets to decide, moment by moment, what matters most.

It’s the difference between being a well-oiled machine and being the actual architect of the factory.

Sovereignty isn’t about doing everything perfectly. It’s about having the authority to choose what matters and the grace to let the rest go. And creativity? That’s what keeps it from calcifying into just another rigid framework.

I’m only a few days in, but the tightness is starting to unfurl.

The Headless Turkey has left the building.

The monarch is back on the throne.

(And yes, he’s currently sharing it with a very large Weimaraner who knows exactly when to step in and remind him what actually matters.)

But here’s what I’m watching for: the moment when Creative Sovereignty starts to calcify. When I catch myself trying to build a system around sovereignty itself. When the freedom becomes another framework I’m enslaved to.

Because the truth is, I’m really good at taking beautiful concepts and turning them into cages.

So far, I’m resisting. Trying to actually be the sovereign here, to have real autonomy over my time and influence over my own decisions.

But I know myself. And I know that the urge to optimize, to systematize, to control? That doesn’t just disappear because I found prettier words for it.

The difference, maybe, is that this time I’m watching for it.

This time, Helix is on the throne with me.

And I’m pretty sure he won’t let me forget what actually matters.

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Be on the look out for our next Sunday practice, coming to you on… you guessed it. Sunday!