Momentum

The first law of thermodynamics goes something like, energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed. But does it mention anything about a brief pause? A pit stop at a cosmic rest area to stretch your legs and look at the map of life? The moment when a swinging pendulum reaches its highest point, hangs weightlessly for a moment, then continues on.

By the end of September 2025, I had hung up my microphone for textbooks, cameras, and wood neatly piled in their respective corners of the studio. The leaves were starting their transition to the warm tones of autumn while I stood in front of my mirror, adhering what amounted to a human version of one of those buttons that pops on a Thanksgiving turkey when it’s done cooking to my chest. 

The heart monitor itself was fairly small and unintrusive, much like wearing the last two Mentos in a roll on your clavicle. The diodes themselves were much more intrusive, clinging to my skin by large, colorless, sticky suction cups that collected lint around the edges and would only grow more yellow as the days wore on. 

For the past year or more, I had been picking up momentum with my creative and professional endeavors, putting effort in therapy, and weight training. I was at cruising altitude and, albeit self-imposed, overworked. I was content; I felt like my life was coming together quite nicely, and I was beyond treading water. For the first time, I really felt like I was getting somewhere. 

On the horizon was the promise of school. I had been accepted to Portland State last January and had decided to start classes in the fall. The dynamic shift from creative workaholic to student and creative workaholic wasn’t a surprise, but a transition that required an unexpected and unnerving amount of self-care to pull it off. 

The stress of wrapping up projects to focus on school was intense, to say the least. Though it wasn’t until I started having the “episodes” that landed me in the urgent care that I considered my momentum was reaching out-of-control speeds. I was fine, ready to go even, until I was gripping the rim of the Safeway cooler for balance while buying goat cheese, heart pounding and light-headed, gasping for breath.  Terrified, I was dying, my body forced me to slow down, no more heavy lifting, no more long days, no more side hustles - put my phone on silent and toss it out of sight. A doctor prescribed chill-out. 

When a pendulum has reached the end of a swing, it momentarily slows to zero before changing directions. My moment of zero came in the first weeks of fall classes. My head was spinning. I was sucking herbal tinctures out of cold glass eye droppers and lying in prolonged exposing yin poses, my hips and chakras splayed like a spatchcocked chicken. 

While trying desperately to focus on my breath to earthy notes of lavender, I couldn’t help but ask myself what happened to the momentous high I had been riding just a few weeks before. It felt like everything I worked for had been flushed down the toilet in an instant.

I was scared and frustrated with myself. What was wrong with me? I felt like I was failing myself. I had set aside everything that was making me happy to pursue another goal and It didn’t feel nearly as good as I had expected it to — it felt more like I was fumbling the ball steps away from a touch down. 

In retrospect the whole thing makes sense. Change is hard and I was doing something , attending university, that felt impossible to me for a long time. My schedule had flipped, my network was sidelined, funding for my job felt uncertain, not to mention the impending threat of the National Guard militarizing my city. And so like another else, I cracked. I needed to glue myself back together.

As I now begin my pendulous swing in the opposite direction, finding again, my groove in academia, the realization that for some, momentum looks more like a swinging pendulum rather than a long boarder careening down a never-ending mountain road is what is healthy for some. Healthy for me. Despite the discomfort that comes with change – the learning to say no, learning what is enough and what is too much, the brief pause needed to pivot without crashing.  

Peeling off the heart monitor, I’m glad to report I’m feeling much more grounded, school is going well, I’m feeling strong in my strength training, I’m juggling all the balls of my day job, and I have another essay for all of you. 

As we move towards the new year, I reflect on the last and how I can be a little bit better moving forward. What I came up with includes prioritizing my own goals above all else, and taking a few more breaks for play and exploration so that my pendulum can slow down and recalibrate. I invite you to think about how you can manage your momentum in 2026. Let’s start the conversation below.  

But most importantly — take a fucking break — respectfully, of course.  

Talk soon,

KM