Friday Finds & Feels #27
A weekly collection of discoveries, musings, and moments that have sparked something in me this week. May these small moments of joy, inspiration and thoughts light up your weekend
This Week's Joy: While helping my mom go through some old piles of things (a slow and slightly chaotic excavation of a lifetime worth of items), I found something that caused me to pause and look a little closer—a small, cross-stitched piece from my grandma that I had never seen before.
It read:
"To love and be loved is the greatest joy on earth."
I never really got to know my grandparents in the way I wish I had, so finding this felt like a tiny thread connecting me to her. I held it like it was a letter meant for me—maybe it was. I’m going to hang it on my wall as a reminder: love is always the greatest joy.
Something to Ponder: As someone with a borderline unhealthy obsession with healing, I’ve been wondering if healing isn’t about becoming someone new, but about returning to myself. The softer self. The sillier self. The version of me who had hobbies for the sake of joy, not productivity. Who stayed up late painting or rearranging her room just for fun. Who wasn’t constantly trying to earn rest or prove her worth. What if instead of trying so hard to “fix” ourselves, we just gave ourselves permission to be?
To sew crooked lines. To rest without guilt. To make art with no plan to sell it. To stop treating life like one long to-do list and just… live it a little. I keep returning to this thought. Trying to understand it all, to put the pieces together, to understand what all this striving is even for, to finally figure out what healthy healing looks like and not using it as another way to measure all the ways I continue to fall short.
What I'm Exploring: Sewing! Or… trying to. Because apparently what my life really needed was yet another hobby I know absolutely nothing about. And yet—here I am, dusting off my mom’s sewing machine, armed with a YouTube tutorial, a PDF pattern I have no idea how to interpret, and mild to moderate delusion. Will I become someone who sews her own clothes and says things like “Oh this? I made it!” with casual confidence? Or will I end up crying into a tangled mess of thread and unfinished seams? Only time will tell. Either way, I’m embracing the chaos and hoping at the very least I can pull off making some cute bags from the thrifted XL men’s shirts I bought this week.
A Little Treat: This is the part of my newsletter where I like to make a recommendation, sometimes it’s a podcast, a book, or a fun new recipe to try. But this week, my recommendation is to fill a box with things you no longer need or use. This could be old papers piling up ready to go to recycle, going through your closet to find things you no longer wear or that no longer fit to donate, downsizing your bookshelf and donating books you know deep down you aren’t going to pick up again. Whatever it is you feel called to let go of, set aside some time to fill a box. As someone who is on the painstaking journey of helping her mother go through an entire garage filled with things that haven’t been touched in 20+ years, either your future self will thank you or your children will thank you and maybe just maybe you will feel a little bit lighter after doing so!
In My Journal: Lately I’ve been thinking about how I don’t feel like I have “permission” to be burnt out. I don’t work a high-powered corporate job. I’m not climbing a career ladder or juggling a demanding office schedule. I work part-time, and on the surface, I have a lot of free time. So why do I feel so exhausted? The truth is, my free time never really feels free. It’s packed with pressure — invisible, but heavy. The pressure to do something meaningful. To get my life on track. To figure out my career. To turn every hobby into a hustle. To fix everything that feels “behind.”
There’s this constant hum in the background of my brain whispering you should be doing more, you should be further along. I’ve realized that ADHD burnout isn’t about how many hours I work — it’s about how relentless my inner world is. It’s the never-ending list in my head. The way I loop between ideas and plans and guilt. The way I romanticize the life I want but freeze in place when it comes time to build it. I rarely get to enjoy the things I actually love, because I’m too stressed about all the things I think I should be doing. It isn’t laziness. It’s not lack of ambition. It’s burnout from constantly carrying the mental load of trying to become someone I already believe isn’t “enough.” And I’m tired of that story. So today, I’m naming it: I am burnt out. And I’m giving myself permission to be.
Thank you for reading ‘With Love, Stacia’
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