I had a call with a leader this week, and before we got into any of it, we both admitted something we were feeling coming into this summer.

Every day is a quiet fight between wanting to take on the world and wanting to lie in bed, unreachable, with a book.

There is no in between.

We laughed, because it was true for both of us, and because saying it out loud made the absurdity easier to hold. Two grown women: one building a business, the other running a division of a well respected company, describing our inner lives like a light switch. On or off. Full throttle or fully horizontal.

I couldn't stop thinking about it all week. Because it reinforced something I've been mentally circling for a while.

The two settings aren't opposites. They're actually the same thing, just showing up differently. One is the wired version of empty. The other is collapse. It can feels like ricocheting between them, because those are seemingly the only two settings available, and as a society.. acceptable.

What neither of us could describe was the middle. The version where you do good work and then stop. Where you care about the thing without it consuming you, and you can rest without completely disappearing. We have vivid language for both extremes and almost none for the place most of us actually want to live.

I think that's the part we're all quietly trying to name. Not the collapse. Not the non-stop hustle. That space in between.

I also don't think the middle is a mood you can talk yourself into on a Sunday night.

So here's what I've been sitting with, and I'll ask you too. When you picture your own week ahead, do you have space for that middle setting? Or are you living on the switch, on or off, world domination or bust, with nothing in between?

In this with you and wishing you a great week ahead,

Alison