When the Existential Crisis Hits… and the Easy Button Isn’t So Easy

I’ve been in a mood lately.

Not the cute cozy “socks and tea” mood — I mean the existential crisis mood.
The classic “What am I even doing? Who am I? Why does everything feel so loud?” spiral that shows up uninvited like a raccoon who heard you opened a granola bar.

I wanted answers.
I wanted clarity.
I wanted someone to hand me a neatly labeled path like, “Here you go, sweetheart, this is your life now.”

Instead?
My brain said:
Panic.
Pick apart your entire identity.
Then panic again for fun.

And because I’m me, of course I tried to problem-solve it with tech.

I bounced between:

• Substack

• YouTube analytics

• Canva

• My Etsy shop

• My manuscript

• My camera roll

• My Notes app

• And yes… AI
  …hoping ONE of them would magically tell me what to do with my life like some overworked digital oracle.

Spoiler:
None of them did.
If anything, it made the spiral even worse.

Sometimes technology really does feel like an “easy button,” but when your brain is already overwhelmed, that button launches you straight into a boss battle you did NOT sign up for.

So I did something outrageous.
Radical, even.

I put my phone down.
I grabbed my shoes.
And I walked.

Just a simple 10-minute walk with a book playing in my ears.
Ten minutes of movement and story and nothing else.

I didn’t check anything.
I didn’t try to fix anything.
I didn’t try to think my way into clarity.

I just… let myself exist.

And when I came back home, something in me softened.
Not fixed.
Not epiphanied.
Just softened enough for me to breathe.

That’s when I pulled out my traveler’s notebook — the one I never use as much as I want to — and I wrote out three tiny menus:

• a Writing Menu

• a YouTube Menu

• a Self-care Menu

They weren’t fancy.
They weren’t Canva-fied.
They weren’t polished or aesthetic.

Just pen, paper, and my messy handwriting.

And you know what?
It felt… grounding.

Like my brain said, “Oh. Thank you. This I can handle.”

It reminded me that sometimes the tools meant to make life easier actually make it heavier.
Sometimes AI feels like a shortcut until you’re knee-deep in “productivity hacks” and “content strategies” and you suddenly realize you’re more stressed than when you started.

Sometimes we don’t need a dashboard.
Or an app.
Or a perfectly designed PDF.

Sometimes we just need:
a walk,
a book,
a notebook,
and ten minutes of being a human instead of a machine.

So if you’re spiraling too — creatively, emotionally, existentially — here’s your gentle permission slip:

Put the tech down.
Pick up your pen.
Go for a walk.
Come back to yourself first.

The clarity won’t come from an algorithm.
It’ll come from you.

And if all you do today is scribble a messy little menu in a notebook?

That absolutely counts.

xoxo,

Courtny