Half of your stress isn't about the problem itself. It's about how afraid you are of not solving it or looking weak.
Half of your stress isn't about the problem itself. It's about how afraid you are of not solving it or looking weak.
Posts about “control”
Selected articles, stories, and notes. Total entries: 12.
Internal Violence
There is a special kind of violence we don't notice because it comes from within. It's the voice that demands: be different. Not who you are now. More focused. Calmer. More productive. Kinder. This voice seems like an ally — after all, it wants our improvement. In reality, it persecutes. We wage war against our own behavior without understanding...
The hurricane doesn't care what we think of its path.
Stop being the weatherman of your own life. Just live in the weather.
Stop being the weatherman of your own life. Just live in the weather.
Rumination
Anton checked the email for the fourth time. Three paragraphs to a client. Routine approval. He read it over, changed a word, changed it back. Sent. A second later, he was checking if it went through. It did. He opened his sent folder. Read it again. Found a phrase that now seemed harsh. Or did it? He couldn't tell. He imagined the client reading...
Rescue Contract
Mark was eating soup. Loudly, or so it seemed to Lena. She sat across from him, looking not at him but through him. In her head, invisible to the human eye yet heavy as a tombstone, lay the Instruction Manual. Item 42: "When I come home tired, he must notice within the first three seconds, come over, hug me, and ask what happened before I even...
The Decorator
At first, we are architects. We are born a wild, unmapped landscape. Somewhere lies a swamp of secret wants, somewhere cliffs of irrational fear, somewhere clearings of pure, causeless joy. Very early on, though, an inner perfectionist wakes up with a master plan for the build-out. He isn’t a tyrant. He’s a decorator. He undertakes the...
Freedom of the Cage
A man built the perfect cage for his canary. Every bar was measured. Every perch polished. He calculated the ideal distance to the feeder and the water cup. Everything was arranged so the bird would be comfortable. So her life would be fully predictable, safe, familiar. He loved his canary. He only wanted to protect her from the chaos outside. But...
Rust
Arthur was not a person. He was a function housed in a flawless exoskeleton. His title — “Senior Partner” — was a cuirass. His measured, emotionless speech — a sealed visor. His daily commute from sterile suburb to glass office tower — greaves that kept him from straying. Deep inside that armor didn’t sit Arthur at all, but a small, frightened...
The Collector
He lived in a departure lounge. Not a real one — in the one inside his head. He lived as if his real life was still on its way, as if everything happening now was a long, overextended prologue with his takeoff endlessly delayed. He sat in that lounge and stared through a foggy window at the runway where other people’s planes — bright, swift,...
Gods of the Cardboard Universe
This is your inner, pocket tyrant. A tiny mad director you yourself handed an unlimited budget and complete creative freedom. He sits in your head, legs crossed, sketching the storyboards of the future. Right here everyone else will say exactly this . And you will answer like that . Perfect lighting, measured pauses. He even picks poses for a...
The Blot
Victor wasn’t living. He was sterilising reality. His apartment was an operating room, and he, its chief surgeon, carved out any tumor of chaos. His balcony, tiled in flawless white, was his personal annex of sterility on the seventh floor. Deep in the basement of his skull, in a dark, reeking corner, a howling monkey sat chained. That monkey...