I'm tired of trusting the process. Can't it trust me for once??

Thoughts on patience, unclenching your jaw, and trusting yourself

✨Welcome to Follow Through—essays on showing up, staying the course, and building something that lasts.

💭 Thursday Thoughts

I’ve been an anxious human for as long as I can remember. My brain is a wheel that never stops spinning—playing back conversations, planning for things that might never happen, driving myself crazy with incessant mental chatter.

I think, at its core, anxiety is about control. If I can just worry hard enough, maybe I can bend every outcome to my will… right? Right???

Wait, what do you mean?? That’s not how that works??

This year has been... a lot. One complication after another since literally New Year’s Eve. Most of it I didn’t see coming, and even if I had, there’s nothing I could’ve done to stop it. No amount of planning would have softened the grief, the ache, the slow unraveling of things I thought were steady.

And yet recently, I feel oddly calm. So much has been out of my control that I’ve been forced to just... be.

It’s like the universe (or God, or whoever is up there) grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted, “When are you going to get it??? You’re not in control here!”

Sigh.

Hey, Google, play Surrender by Cheap Trick.

The past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about

Anna Seirian

’s article Holding my future like a small, baby bird recently. She writes about how she’s been living life on “hard-mode”—holding on too tightly, moving through life with a clenched jaw and a white-knuckled grip because that’s just… how things have always been done.

I saw a lot of myself in that article. Hard mode has become my default setting.

In the piece, Anna shares advice she once heard about holding your creativity like a baby bird. Which, as it turns out, is also a well-known tip in the golfing world.

The advice originally came from Sam Snead, an American golfer famous for his perfect swing. The advice Snead gives to golfers is this:

“You should be holding the golf club with the same pressure you would hold a small bird. Tight enough so it doesn’t fly away, but soft enough so you don’t crush it.”

Adam Alter quoting Sam Snead, Anatomy of a Breakthrough

Ironically, you’ll also often hear golfers talking about the importance of good follow through. (Do I maybe need to start playing golf? I feel like it has a thing or two to teach me...)

When we hold our creativity, our ambition, our life goals too tightly, we choke them. We push ourselves into rigid paths with no room for grace or detours. We trade flexibility for tunnel vision.

And if the path ahead suddenly gets blocked? We baulk. We’ve been so focused on the road in front of us that we miss the small side street that might’ve gotten us exactly where we wanted to go. All we needed was the courage to veer off-course.

That’s what I’ve been practicing lately. Loosening my grip and letting things shift and change. Acknowledging that rejection, failure, and detours aren’t signs of disaster—they’re part of the larger plot.

Earlier this year, I was operating with so much tension that my body protested. My chest muscles were so tight I couldn’t take deep breaths. My back, shoulders, and neck were constantly in pain. Not to mention the perpetual migraines.

I swore to myself I’d figure out how to relax. To loosen my grip. To breathe again.

I’m unemployed now, which is scary. But I’m also working with a few branding clients. I’ve got an interview lined up for next week. My creative gates have been wide open for weeks, and I actually feel like me again.

No amount of structure or discipline could have gotten me here.

It feels counter-intuitive to let go when things get scary and uncertain. Every anxious bone in my body is telling me, “You have to fight! You just have to try harder!” But operating on hard-mode is exhausting, and I’m finding that there’s another way. One where my ambition and creativity can co-exist.

That being said, I’m tired of always having to trust the process. It hasn’t failed me yet, but can’t the process just trust me this once?

I have so many ideas rattling around in this little brain of mine! I love to experiment—to iterate, to evolve and try new ways of doing things. But that kind of play requires an abundance of something I don’t have: time.

If each experiment requires at least 90 days to yield real insight but I have 20 ideas I want to explore, I end up with a backlog. I shelve more creative projects that I finish, and as a creative person, that doesn’t feel great.

I remind myself over and over again that it’s good for things to take time. That writing a novel is a marathon. That growing an audience over time fosters authentic connection. That fast isn’t always better. That going slow, in fact, gives my nervous system space and time to adjust and really enjoy what I’m building.

And yet, wouldn’t it be so nice to wrap a project in a few days and be done? To just word vomit a full draft in a week and get some brain space back?

But I guess that’s the thing about holding your creativity gently. It might take longer to settle in your hands. It might flutter a bit. You might not get the neat timeline or the clean finish you were hoping for.

But it stays alive that way.

So I’ll keep practicing the looser grip. Keep reminding myself that progress isn’t always loud or linear. When things feel too hard, I’ll take a walk instead of trying to brute force a solution. And maybe that’s where the real magic lives.

---

What’s something you’ve had to let go of lately? A time when slowing down actually helped things click? Lmk in the comments 😚💖

🗞️ Good News!

1. Illinois approved direct admissions for public universities.
   Governor Pritzker signed HB 3522, enabling students meeting GPA criteria to receive automatic admissions offers from nine of the state’s 11 public institutions, including community colleges. Starts fall 2027 and removes barriers while saving students time and stress. read more

2. New materials could lead to cleaner lithium-ion batteries.
   Researchers have discovered innovative solid electrolytes that may reduce flammability and increase battery lifespan. This breakthrough could make electric vehicles and renewable energy storage safer and more durable. read more

3. Arizona erased medical debt for 350,000 residents.
   Governor Hobbs announced a sweeping forgiveness program that wiped out hospital collections for nearly 350,000 people in Arizona, easing financial burdens and improving access to healthcare. read more

4. Denmark plans to give people legal copyright over their face and voice.
   A pioneering amendment aims to fight AI deepfakes by granting individuals rights over their likeness. Support is broad, and it could become law by late 2025. read more

5. Global health insights show community hospital success.
   A BMJ Global Health study reports community hospitals in low-resource settings significantly reduced maternal and newborn mortality, demonstrating scalable interventions in global healthcare. read more

🎨 Mood Board

all via pinterest 📌

That’s all for now! Thank you so much for reading. Can’t wait to yap again next Thursday 💙

---

Missed my last post? Check it out here! 👇🏻

You might not want to hear this, but...

---