I Don't Know What I'm Looking For

A stream of consciousness

On day 62 of what feels like the longest creative slump of my life, I tell my husband I need to leave the house.

“I don’t feel like myself,” I tell him, dumping a packet of electrolytes into my water bottle. He probes for a minute, but one of the benefits of us being married for almost eighteen years is that we both know when to push and when to let go. Today is for the latter.

“Hope you feel better,” he says, releasing me to the coffee shop and thrift store without guilt.

Me too, I don’t bother to say, as I fly out the door.

At the coffee shop I see a mother with two young kids, an infant and a toddler, and I look at her with something between wistfulness and pity, that weird juxtaposition of simultaneously wanting to be her and being so glad I’m not her. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? One day you’ve got a sleeping baby strapped to your chest depositing dopamine straight into your skin while the toddler spills their hot chocolate all over the floor, and the next you are sending those same kids to the grocery store on their bikes, alone, to buy a single jar of peanut butter and two Gatorades with a crisp $20 bill in the name of practicing independence.

I sit at my table, which is not actually “my” table at all, but rather the table I tend to sit at next to the window. Same spot, same laptop, same Americano, same bacon and gouda breakfast sandwich. I work for as long as my mind will allow me to, which is not very long at all, and finally retreat back to my car to head to the thrift store across town.

As I walk across the parking lot, I realize I don’t know what I’m looking for.

One might argue this is the whole point of thrifting—going in without a plan, without a goal, and just seeing what you find. I know this, of course. I often refer to thrifting as treasure hunting, the ultimate act of exploration. If I were to get deep and spiritual about it, I’d even tell you I believe thrifting is an act of faith. Is hope not the main driver of digging through other people’s tossed belongings in the name of redemption?

But today, this lack of a plan is what bothers me. I’m loosely looking for art, I suppose, something to help me round out two separate gallery walls that have been blank in my house for two years. But even so, am I looking for paintings? Picture frames? Mirrors? Something else?

Two recurring thoughts swirl in my brain while I walk through the automatic doors and grab a shopping cart:

1. I don’t feel like myself,

and —

2. I don’t know what I’m looking for.

“Sounds like burnout,” my friend Sonya offers, after listening to me whine for the 17th time.

I’m fighting apathy in every area of my life. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to work. Last Thursday, I willingly chose to spend an hour of my day paying medical bills because that felt more alluring than tackling anything in my inbox. My ambition has shriveled up like a raisin in the sun. I thought maybe it was shifting hormones. Lack of sleep. Anxiety about the future of my work. Anxiety about the rising cost of literally everything. Anxiety about the daily news and ongoing horrors of this administration. (Come to think of it, that’s a lot of anxiety?)

I feel stuck, paralyzed, like my feet are in drying cement. And every time I sit down to write—the one thing that helps me feel like myself—I can’t seem to conjure up a single word.

So I pivot to rage cleaning instead. I power wash my patio. Declutter my house. Bake banana bread. There is no shortage of non-writing options to fill my day. I get on a Zoom call. Record a podcast. Bring a meal to a new mom, restock our little free library, read two dystopian novels back to back. Go to yoga. Go to the doctor. Sign field trip permission slips and make more dino nuggets. Who needs to write when there are so many bills to pay and so many dishes to wash and so many trips to Target because oh my gosh are we seriously out of toilet paper again?

At the thrift store I scope out the art section and don’t find anything. Then the books, nada. The cameras, zilch. Candles, dishes, shoes, what am I looking for? Pottery? Lamps? Direction? A plan for my life? I don’t know what I’m looking for! I start to hear those words like a chant, like a bully screaming at me on the school bus.

YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.

Is this what burnout feels like? To be walking aimlessly around your own life?

The pile of unfinished projects is getting larger by the day. Earlier this year I started writing a children’s book (!) and when I finally read it aloud to my kids, they asked if I had used ChatGPT. This was, of course, highly offensive to me—even though they meant it as a compliment. (They didn’t realize their mom knew how to rhyme without AI, which is truly depressing if I think about it for too long.) That book is stuck at 75%, and I cannot bring myself to finish it.

And then there’s The Secret Dream, the thing I want to make in honor of my 40th birthday next year. There is a self-imposed deadline for that project—March 20, 2026—and I’m at the place where I either need to commit to it or let it go. So every day I question, doubt, and ponder whether or not I should make this thing at all. On any given day, I think the idea is brilliant, clever, and would be life-giving to create. On any given day, I think the idea is stupid, pointless, and would be a complete waste of my time. That project is stuck at 1%, and I can’t bring myself to take a step forward.

A while back, I had dreams of running a small Create Anyway cohort over the summer. Like a private book club with a small group of women that would meet over Zoom and chat about creativity. But every time I think about selecting dates, building out a plan, trying to market and sell this type of offering, I feel so tired I want to climb into bed with a sleeve of girl scout cookies and forget I ever thought of it.

A few weeks ago I met with two women on my team to discuss, essentially, the same problem: Coffee + Crumbs is bleeding money. What can we do to earn more revenue? And yet I found myself staring off into space, fighting the urge to shrug every 30 seconds. I don’t know what to do. I’m out of ideas. I’m out of energy. It’s hard to beg people to support the arts when the price of eggs have surged 60% and counting. Gas is $5 a gallon where I live. Nothing feels stable or sustainable. I get it.

I continue to walk up and down the aisles looking for beauty among other people’s trash, but today most of what I see is trash. Faded clothes. Broken toys. Puzzles that are undoubtedly missing pieces. I keep hunting though, not willing to leave empty-handed. I pick out three Easter baskets for the kids. Two ceramic vases. A button down shirt for Everett with tiny bumble bees on it. The finds today are small. Simple. Enough. I spend $17 total, well under the random $25 budget I had set for myself.

When I get home, I am not magically better. Two hours alone did not heal whatever little hinge is broken inside of me right now. I still don’t know what I’m looking for. I still don’t feel like myself.

But God nudged me toward the blank page today as an act of exploration and an act of faith. So here I am, shining a light on the cloud sitting in my brain, offering these words up to anyone else who might need them—anyone else who might be feeling a bit anxious, a bit restless, a bit untethered, a bit sad, a bit lost. ❤️