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I’m Tired of Acting Like I Want to Climb the Ladder | PeonyMagazine

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  Like allergy season, it occurs every quarter. We’re all auditioning for jobs we don’t really want when someone mentions “stretch opportunity” during the Monday stand-up. There are new OKRs, a new round of “visibility,” and another calendar block that is inexplicably named “ Career Pathing .” I watch my colleagues click into performance mode: bright voices, bullet points, cross-functional collabs, and I feel it again: that small, stubborn honesty rising like a blush. I’m tired of pretending I want the next rung. There was a time I did. I collected mentors the way other people collect houseplants, arranging them near sunny windows and asking for watering tips. I volunteered for special projects, took a course in “influencing without authority,” and learned the taxonomy of titles. I kept a promotion packet like a scrapbook, curating artifacts of productivity: dashboards, kudos, and before-and-after slides. I knew how to say “impact” while pointing at a bar chart. It was a decent gam...
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The Freedom in Uncertainty: Why You Don’t Need a 5-Year Plan

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  Sometimes the hardest part of life is having a plan. I used to believe that a real adult had everything mapped out, career, savings, love, success, all neatly arranged five years into the future like pins on a board. I thought not knowing meant I was failing. So I forced myself to create timelines I didn’t believe in and goals that didn’t feel like mine. I would write them down, stare at them, and feel nothing but anxiety. What no one tells you is that  a plan can become a cage . I wasn’t scared of the future, I was scared of choosing the wrong version of it. What if I planned my life too carefully and still ended up unhappy? What if I followed a path just because it looked responsible, not because it felt right? So I kept rewriting my five-year plan, hoping one version would finally feel like home. It never did. There was a moment when everything I had planned fell apart. The job didn’t work out. The direction I was so sure of suddenly felt empty. I remember sitting alone o...
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Your Career, Your Way: Redefining Success in the Soft Era | PeonyMagazine

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  I used to think success had one clear shape. The kind of answer that sounds acceptable at family gatherings. The kind you say confidently when a relative asks, “ So what are you doing now?”  Something neat, explainable, and easy to be proud of. However, I was tired. Not just physically, but  emotionally.  Tired of pushing. Tired of proving. Tired of pretending I was okay with a pace that didn’t feel human.  I didn’t realize it at first.I learned to accept exhaustion by watching everyone around me wear it like a badge. Late nights were praised. Burnout was joked about. Rest was something you earned only after proving you were tired enough.  So I stayed. I tried harder. I ignored the quiet voice inside me that kept asking,  Is this really the life you want? The soft era started the moment I admitted to myself that the life I was building no longer felt sustainable.  I noticed how guilty I felt when I rested. How my worth felt tied to how busy I wa...
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Words That Matter: When Love Needs to Be Spoken | PeonyMagazine

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  I used to think love didn’t need to be explained. I remember sitting across from someone I cared about, the conversation drifting past my feelings without ever touching them. Nothing was wrong, exactly. There was no argument, no goodbye. Just an unspoken understanding that as long as we were still there, still choosing each other, everything must be fine. Words felt optional, even unnecessary. I told myself actions mattered more, that needing reassurance was a weakness I should eventually outgrow.  Then I fell in love with someone who rarely said what they felt.  He wasn’t unkind. He just believed that love was understood. When I needed reassurance, he would offer logic instead of comfort.   It usually came up in small moments. Late at night, when the day was finally quiet, I asked something simple, “ Do you still feel the same about us?”  He would look at me, confused more than annoyed, and say,  “You know I care. Why do I need to say it?” When I tried t...
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West, Before the Light Leaves A Poetic Essay on Endings | PeonyMagazine

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  “Can you feel it leaving?” the blind boy asked, dragging his fingers over the rim of the park bench. “I think so,” the other boy said, squinting at the sky. “It’s like the air got softer.” The wind changed, brushing warm edges against their cheeks. Somewhere, a distant siren wavered in the half-light. The day didn’t snap shut, didn’t fall with a hammer. The horizon glowed pink, then amber, then a tired gray, folding itself into night. “Sun’s down?” the blind boy whispered. “Yeah,” the sighted one said. “But it’s not gone. You can feel it here,” he tapped his chest. I remember thinking then how the world could teach you endings without ever saying a word, like a change in  temperature , a pause in sound, a sky leaning into itself. That evening, I noticed that the comfort it left behind lingered in different ways, like a sensation that pulls you to just keep walking. January feels like that. The holidays fade, the commotion dissolves, and right there, things seemed to go slowe...
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South: The Geography of Return - Peony Magazine

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  January is often framed as a month of forward motion, a relentless push toward a  new you  that stands somewhere in the shimmering, distant future. We are told to look ahead, to purge the old, and to burn the maps of where we’ve been. But in the deep, heavy silence of mid-winter, this forward gaze can feel cold and hollow. It is hard to run toward a new version of yourself when the ground is frozen, and the air is thin. In this season of quiet recalibration, the most vital direction isn’t forward: it is South. In the symbolic compass of the soul, South is the direction of origin. It is the path back to the heat of the sun, to the soil that raised us, and to the versions of ourselves we left behind in the rush to “improve.” To turn south in January is to realize that you cannot build a new house without honoring the foundation, and you cannot start a new chapter if you have forgotten the language of the book. The Myth of the Blank Slate The world tells us that January 1s...
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East, Before the Sun Shows | Peony Magazine

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  The house wakes up like a cat. First one eye opens, then the other. You can hear the radiators making a lot of noise as they get hot. The light in the kitchen is really yellow. I am standing there wearing wool socks. I want the kettle to work correctly. I want the kettle to remember that it is supposed to boil water. My old enamel cup has a chip in it from when I moved in. I got this chip on moving day. I never got around to fixing it. In January, you start to notice all the problems with everything—the house, the kettle, and the cup. Everything seems to have a lot of issues in January. No one cheers for this hour. I do not feel new. I am still the person who slept with my phone on my pillow and neglected to respond to an email, and the calendar is just a piece of paper placed on top of yesterday’s mess. It isn’t easy to open the oat container’s cover. Halfway through, the drawer containing the spoons becomes stuck. It’s chilly on the floor. In my life, fresh beginnings look like...
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