Is this really it?
I felt trapped in the life I wanted. So I napped to escape.
A few years ago, while living in Victoria, walking the beautiful streets in Spring as the cherry blossoms bloomed, I remember thinking…I should feel happier.
I had an objectively good job, doing work I loved and was good at. A great group of friends, with a full social calendar. I was living what I thought was my dream life.
And in many ways it was.
But I had this extreme fatigue I couldn’t seem to shake. I’d struggle getting out of bed in the morning. Nap during my breaks. Lay in bed after work staring at the ceiling, unable to move…despite having everything I thought I wanted.
Underneath the tiredness was a voice I couldn’t silence — a quiet internal tug that kept pulling at me. Kept asking me the same question: is this really it?
I wanted more.
And then felt immediately guilty for wanting more, because I already had so much. I felt stuck in a life I thought I wanted…that I had created with such intention. I felt ungrateful…silly even, for being so exhausted by a life that I’d dreamed of and that was so objectively good from the outside.
I had work that fulfilled me. Friendships that filled my cup. Lived in a beautiful city by the ocean. And had my family nearby to love and support me.
Yet, no matter how much I napped, I could never seem to escape the tiredness.
Because it wasn’t that I was simply tired from lack of sleep. It was a soul-deep kind of tired. And napping wasn’t helping me escape exhaustion — it was helping me escape the feeling that the life I was living, as good as it was, still didn’t feel like mine.
That’s what I couldn’t see at the time. The tiredness wasn’t about sleep. It was about spending day after day in a life that, however good it looked, wasn’t quite mine. And no amount of rest was going to fix that.
The feeling is easy to explain away as burnout. And while burnout is a very real thing, and often a contributing factor, it isn’t the whole story.
Because this isn’t just about needing more rest. Taking a break seems simpler — even if you won’t let yourself do it. But actually making a change? That requires something different from you. When you already feel like you have nothing left to give.
At least that’s how I felt.
And what I know now is this feeling — it wasn’t simply burnout. It was a signal. That something beneath the surface — beneath the gratitude, beneath the good job and the great friends and the beautiful place — was quietly (and then very loudly) demanding my attention. Saying that something needed to change, and I had to be the one to change it.
And that’s a much harder thing to sit with.
Because taking a break is simple. But changing my life, especially when I thought I was living my “dream life”…that’s more complicated.
There’s no clear answer or obvious next step. So instead of moving toward it, I hid from it.
I carried on business as usual, napping to escape the persistent hum of my inner knowing that something needed to change. Told myself I’d deal with it when things calmed down…but shockingly…they never did.
I share this because I suspect you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The feeling that follows you through days that are objectively fine. That settles in your chest at night. That tightens in your belly on Sunday afternoons when you look at the week ahead.
This feeling has a particular quality. It coexists with gratitude. You genuinely know that you have things to be grateful for. A life that from any “reasonable” external angle looks like it’s working.
And it is working. It’s just not fully yours.
Somewhere along the way, you started building the version of your life that made sense on paper. The responsible version. The one that accounted for practicality and other people’s needs and what you were “supposed” to want. You made good, sensible decisions. And in doing that — slowly, imperceptibly — you lost the thread of what you actually wanted.
You’re not sure when it happened. You’re not even sure exactly what you lost. You just know that something feels off.
You suspect there’s a version of your days that feels more alive than the one you’re currently living — you just can’t quite see it clearly, but you sure can feel its absence.
That absence has weight. It settles in your chest. It follows you into the day.
Here’s what I’ve noticed, after eight years of sitting with people in this exact place:
We call it burnout because we don’t know what else to name it. But it’s deeper than that.
You’re tired of the fundamental shape of your life being woven around something other than your true self.
Burnout lets you keep the life you’ve built and just...rest it a bit.
But the thing underneath burnout — the quiet persistent sense that something needs to change, that the life you’re living isn’t quite the one that’s yours — that doesn’t get better with rest.
It gets louder.
The longer you leave it unnamed, the louder it gets.
That feeling isn’t a problem to manage. It’s a question worth answering.
And the first step isn’t a plan. It isn’t a strategy or a framework or a list of things to change. It’s simpler and harder than any of those things.
It’s honesty.
Really honest honesty — about what’s not working, what you actually want beneath all the conditioning and the “shoulds” and the “responsible” decisions, and what’s been quietly keeping you exactly where you are.
That’s the beginning.
If you’ve been running the, is this really it? loop — laying in the dark at 11:47 PM staring at the ceiling, or feeling your belly tighten on a Sunday afternoon looking to the week ahead, or in the middle of rest that is never quite restoring you —
I want you to know something.
You’re not broken. You’re not asking for too much. And that exhaustion you’re feeling, it’s more than just burnout.
You’re just not quite living as yourself yet.
And something in you knows it. Has known it for a while.
That quiet, persistent pull toward something more — it’s a signal. One that deserves to be heard rather than avoided.
You don’t need to know what the answer is yet. You don’t need a clear vision or a plan or certainty about what needs to change. You just need to be willing to look at it more closely, get curious about what it actually is, and be really honest with yourself.
That’s enough to begin.
If this resonated and you want to explore what’s actually there — I’d love for you to join me at Ignite Your Spark, a free 90-minute workshop happening May 8th at 11am MST. We’ll go beneath the surface of what’s keeping you stuck, and you’ll get to experience what this work actually feels like — not just think about it.
Link in my bio. Come find me.
Follow Your Inner Fire is a space for the ones who know they’re meant for more — and are learning, slowly and honestly, to claim it. If this essay found you at the right moment, share it with someone who needs it.