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Chasing Dreams or Chasing your tail? Now is a good time to stop and take stock.
- Jessica Matthysen
- Feb 21
- 3 min read
How discontent do you feel about your life right now? Pause. Measure it. Put a number to it—I dare you.
For me, it wasn’t happiness or sadness that I could measure. It was vitality. And by that metric, I was 95% away from how I wanted to feel.
I was exhausted. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. The kind that lives in your bones. And anxiety had wrapped itself around my chest like a steel band, squeezing tighter by the day.
I would spend hours hidden in a bathroom stall at work until I could finally find the energy to walk to my desk, pack my things and take the seven floors down to my car. And then another hour and half if I was lucky, back home through traffic. If you have ever had an anxiety attack, you know how consuming the fatigue can be. (Side-note, this was pre-covid)
And then there was my body. I wasn’t eating. Wrong.
My stomach wasn’t digesting any food. It couldn’t. It felt like a system failure in slow motion—every input rejected; every function strained. At one point, the only thing I could ingest was blueberries.
Massive energy output.
Minimal input
.A slow and torturous depletion.
A system crashing in real time.
The saddest part? I was supposed to be happy - ecstatic, even.
On paper, my life was perfect. Those eighteen months had been a checklist of achievements. I was the first in my direct family to obtain a degree and had achieved distinctions despite having to balance that with full time work. I had given birth to a beautiful baby boy, had been promoted and doubled my salary.
So why, when I looked at a photo of myself from a night out with friends, did I see someone I didn’t recognise?
My gaunt face, my hollow eyes, my barely-there smile. A ghost of who I once was.
I was living on autopilot, surrendering to the whims and wishes of everyone around me. The epitome of the ‘good girl’ and in the process become severely disconnected from who I really was or wanted to be. Life had gifted me so many wins, but somehow those wins also, took away my health and my happiness. It cost me relationships, and the most important one of all, the one with myself.
In that moment and space where I didn't recognize who I was, was darkness. At first I didn't recognize it for what it actually was. Facing it, filled with fear it felt like dread and doom, but it also brought stillness. A quiet I hadn't heard before. It was a moment of reprieve. a moment no-thingness, the place of pure potential.
Maybe you’ve felt it too—the slow erosion of self under the weight of duty, expectation, and performance. The belief that if you just keep going, keep achieving, keep holding it together, one day it will all make sense. Success was supposed to feel good. Instead, it left you exhausted, restless, and questioning what’s next. You’ve spent years pushing forward, meeting expectations, and achieving more—but at what cost?
In my own pursuit for sanity, calm, quite and softness, I learnt the skills needed to be comfortable in the space between. Between who I was, which had its own set of gifts, and who I wanted to be, but couldn't quite feel yet. That dark space became the dream time for me. Filled with imagination, creativity, surrender, flow, and feeling. It also helped me realize that when we weave, time and attention with the intent to be present with our stories, it becomes a sacred moment where wisdom is cultivated.
I began to turn inward, gave myself the permission I needed to pursue myself. To stop seeking external validation and permission to create and LIVE the life I needed in order to feel fulfilled.
✨ You don’t have to choose between ambition and well-being—you just need a better way forward.
This is why I created Endeavors. A place where we sit together at the "proverbial fire" in the in-between space. Where you share your stories, of who you were, to uncover your gifts. and let go of what no longer serves you. Then we dream, vision and feel into the One who wants to be.
It is the place most fear, but also the place of pure potential. Where we get to start again, fresh, leaving the mantle of the old behind us, begin looking inward having found our OWN answers in pursuit of ourselves and in doing so, walking forward with freedom.
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