Occasionally I end up working until 7 pm. But when I’m done working, I get to disconnect and feel done-done.

The urgent feeling to keep going is rare now. Instead of being my normal, I notice stress is unusually high if I’m having trouble powering down. Most nights, I’m not scripting conversations as I fall asleep.

I get to stop.

It’s an ordinary thing, in theory. But I've experienced more of this feeling in 2026 than in the rest of my life put together.

The word that keeps coming to mind is contentment.

That’s not a word I laid awake at night thinking about as a kid.

But it turns out, going from miserable to content is fabulous.

Actually feeling content has naturally made me reconsider some of my previous goals.

For example, I used to struggle to turn down any paid work as a small business owner.

But when I turned my attention toward how I wanted to feel, I realized my financial goals were fairly specific: meet needs, pay down student loans, and be able to relax.

I'm intentionally not growing this business beyond that.

Last month I turned off sign-ups for new one-on-one clients until Feb. 2027, because I’m at capacity. And I’m grateful for that ability.

You may have heard that my definition of capacity is different than it used to be. It certainly doesn't mean having five clients a day, like I used to.

After the basic needs are met, time and creative energy are what I turn toward.

Honoring that decision can be difficult.

Because when I clear out space in my calendar, suddenly I start to notice new and novel opportunities… collaborations, volunteering, fascinating people and communities.

It might even feel good to fill my calendar with those. But that means being close to max capacity all the time again.

The reason I’ve been carving out time is that I intend to spend my 40s creating the large compositions I’ve had in mind as the pillars of my career. I didn’t have the financial privilege to do that right out of grad school. So I spent over a decade working toward creating a life that would give me time for my most creative work.

And that’s already showing up now, in actually finishing poems I’m happy with for the first time in a couple years.

It’s tricky when you have a lot of interests, ideas, and what people call talents (as if developing those talents doesn't take a ton of work, but that's a whole other email ;)

There's always another interesting possibility on the horizon.

And if you're used to measuring your life by how much you're accomplishing, it can feel physically painful to leave any potential unexplored.

Especially when there are still things in your daily life that aren't going particularly smoothly.

For me, there are still periods when my routines fall apart. I still struggle with basic care tasks, especially when life gets stressful. I still have difficult days and weeks.

But contentment has become my baseline. And I’ve learned that if I want to keep returning to it, I need that space and wiggle room to absorb the inevitable tough stuff. It’s easier to enjoy what’s already here when I’m not trying to constantly cram in more.​
​

I no longer have to be on top of everything to feel like I'm doing enough.

It’s tempting to imagine that we’ll finally feel like enough when… the house is clean, the projects are happening, the routines are consistent.

Except that, at least for most of us, as our capacity grows, our dreams often grow along with it.

That’s not a problem—I love the stimulation of big ideas to explore.

But we deserve to enjoy our lives in the meantime.

And for me, increasingly, that means being able to finish a day of work and feel like I've done enough.

Even when there are still things on my list. Even when I could keep going.

I want to have energy left over for actually being alive.

That's a vision of flourishing I wish I'd been able to imagine years ago.

cheers,

Mattia

p.s. Have you ever had a moment (even a small one) where you genuinely felt like you’d done enough? I’m curious what that feels like for you if you want to reply & tell me about it.

p.p.s. I really do like hearing from you :)