The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad
For most of my adult life, I’ve worked like I’m running out of time. Maybe because I am. (Aren’t we all?) The leukemia diagnosis and relapses certainly intensified the urgency I feel around work, but the truth is my sense of self-worth was tethered to my output long before that.
I used to think that once I made it—got the book deal, built a steady-enough stream of freelance work, stashed away some savings to weather a health crisis or creative drought—I’d finally feel free to slow down when I wanted to. That I’d be able to choose rest without guilt. That I’d reach some mythical state of work-life balance.
Instead, accomplishment—and the sense of “arrival” I imagined would come with it—proved elusive. Each time I reached one goal, two new ones grew in its place. With success, the cycle didn’t let up. And it didn’t just persist—it was reinforced by praise and rewards in the most insidious way. It bloomed into a many-headed hydra of ambition, self-doubt, and perfectionism.
That’s the strange double-edged sword of being a self-employed artist: nothing is guaranteed, everything is possible. No one can tell you when to rev up and when to clock out because the only boss breathing down your neck is the one who lives inside your head. And no one can fill in for you—because the work lives in your body, like a second heartbeat.
