Yesterday, my accountability buddy told me I’d really changed - and I reckon she was right. My intention this year was to rest in my work (which doesn’t mean doing less, just doing it with less frantic energy). Apparently, it’s working. I hadn’t fully seen it in myself until she said it - funny how friends sometimes spot our growth before we do.

When we first met years ago, I was driving myself hard: late nights, weekends, juggling everything with an “I’ve got this” intensity. Now? I’ve been pulled out of my usual routine by life (as it does), and while things have been intense, I’m not panicking about work. I’m just… doing what I can. Gently. And that feels new.

Turns out, I've had two formal accountability buddies and about a dozen informal ones disguised as good friends. They’ve helped me shift from my “do it all now” approach to something a little more strategic and much, much kinder.

I’ve even (semi-regularly) adopted the “rocks and pebbles” method of planning - starting the day with what really matters, before email eats my soul. At the end of each day, I write tomorrow’s top tasks (“rocks”) and tuck the smaller stuff (“pebbles”) around them. Sometimes a pebble becomes a rock if I keep dodging it. Apparently procrastination has weight.

So here I am again, walking through a tree-lined avenue under a sky full of stars, slightly distracted by a tiny frog and the distant sound of trains - but mostly just feeling lucky. Lucky to be learning how to live and work a little more lightly. And lucky, too, to be witnessed in it.

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