Does thinking about your life drive you crazy?

Danna Walker
5 min readApr 7, 2023

A solution to overthinking — and don’t call it journaling!

Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

As a person with more years behind me than ahead, I am constantly reading and hearing about fulfilling my goals, living a good life, reimagining “this one life we’ve been given” and generally making these final years count.

After many decades of overwork, I couldn’t wait to get into my post-work life but I had big doubts about how I would handle it. I defined myself by my job.

I did know one thing: I was sure about what I wanted to leave behind but not as sure about what I wanted to go after. I knew I needed some down time, but the rest of it — the endless debates in my head about optimizing my time, making the most of this dwindling and precious resource — started to drive me crazy.

I was imposing the same pressures on myself in retirement that I did in my work life. What’s the right path? Figure it out. And do it now!

Clearly, constant deadlines and endless to-do lists aren’t as easy to shake off as I hoped. Two-plus years in, I’m seeing that this is an internal renovation process that might take a while and has nothing to do with rushing to get it right.

Enter The Artist’s Way, a philosophy that has been spreading through the creative community for three decades. I heard about…

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Danna Walker

I'm a writer, digital journalist and editor in the Washington, D.C., area and I've started getting out more.