STAYING STILL NEARLY BROKE ME

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One of the hardest things to do is get out of a rut you know you’re stuck in.

Not because you don’t recognise it — you do — but because growing up comes with a quiet realisation no one warns you about: no one is coming to pull you out.

At some point, you realise the rescue boat isn’t on its way.

If you want to move, you have to move yourself.

For eighteen months, I worked a 9–5 office job that felt like it belonged to another era. Not just in how it functioned, but in how it thought. Old-school ideas about productivity. About presence. About what work is supposed to look like. I don’t say this lightly when I tell you it was the most depressing chapter of my working life.

Every day felt the same. Drive. Desk. Screen. Lunch eaten mostly alone. Drive home in the dark. Dinner. Pack lunch for tomorrow. Shower. Sleep. Repeat.

A hamster wheel I didn’t even want to be on — but kept running anyway.

And yet, here’s the inconvenient truth: those eighteen months funded the life I was desperate to build. They paid for flights. For freedom. For proof that another version of life existed. So I hold that chapter with both resentment and gratitude. It broke me a little. It also bought me time.

Still, staying still nearly did me in.

I’ve never believed life is linear. The idea that you get on at one stop and ride it neatly from A to B has never made sense to me. Life feels more like standing in the centre of something vast, with opportunities orbiting you — appearing when the timing’s right, disappearing when it’s not.

It’s less bus route, more TV guide.

You’re in charge of what you watch next, but the programme you really want doesn’t always air when you want it to. Sometimes you have to sit through reruns. Sometimes you turn the TV off altogether. Sometimes you change rooms.

That doesn’t mean the show you want isn’t coming.

Someone once told me — during a tarot reading of all things — “Access this version of you by action and movement, not overthinking how to get there.”

That sentence lodged itself somewhere permanent.

Because movement has always saved me.

When I finished travelling and came home, it felt like a crash back to earth. The kind that leaves you winded, lying on cold ground, wondering how everything got so small so quickly. After over a year of being everywhere — moving cities, crossing borders, waking up in places I couldn’t pronounce — I was suddenly back at a desk wondering if this was it now.

My Christmas was filled with family and job-hunting, which to my surprise, I saw more success at. Before the New Year had even started I’d signed a contract to start a new job.

That’s when the Chinese takeaway became the highlight of my week.

Crispy salt and pepper tofu. Boiled rice. Curry sauce. Salt and pepper chips.

Possibly the most boring English Chinese order imaginable — except for the tofu, which sometimes isn’t even on the menu. But it has a hold on me. When I’m home, it wouldn’t be unrealistic for me to get a Chinese every weekend. Sometimes I can’t get through the week without thinking about it.

That wasn’t the problem, though.

The problem was that the Chinese represented relief. Escape. Something to look forward to. A small, glowing moment in an otherwise grey routine. A routine almost identical to the one I so desperately despised. How did I end up back here again?

Anyway, with every order came fortune cookies. I never eat them, but I always open one. I know they’re factory-made. Generic as hell. But I like to believe the one I get found its way to me for a reason. Call it delusion.

One Friday night, two weeks into a new 9–5, I watched my boyfriend open his fortune first. He read it out loud. I remember thinking if I’d got that one, it wouldn’t have resonated at all.

Then I opened mine.

‘Hang on to your dreams.’

Then there was the feeling. The sharp, uncomfortable sense that it was talking directly to the part of me I’d been trying to ignore. The part that knew this version of life wasn’t sustainable. The part that knew I wasn’t lazy or ungrateful or dramatic — just deeply misaligned.

That’s the thing about ruts. They don’t announce themselves. They convince you this is just adulthood. That everyone feels like this. That dissatisfaction is normal and you should be grateful anyway.

But I don’t think humans are built to stay still for too long.

Movement doesn’t always mean running away. Sometimes it’s walking toward something. Sometimes it’s just refusing to rot in a place you’ve outgrown. For me, movement has never been about geography alone — it’s been about momentum. About staying connected to the version of myself that feels awake.

The version of me that exists when I’m planning something. Leaving something. Becoming something.

Staying still dulls her.

I used to think there was something wrong with me for always wanting more. For feeling restless in places other people loved. But now I think some people are just wired for expansion. And when you trap them in small rooms — physical or emotional — they start to disappear.

No one tells you this when you’re younger. No one tells you that one day you’ll wake up and realise the life you’re living isn’t one you consciously chose — it’s just one you didn’t stop.

And no one tells you that changing it will be uncomfortable. Lonely. Expensive. Unclear.

But no one is coming to save you from the wrong life.

If you want out, you have to move.

Even if you don’t know where you’re going yet.

— Em