A Day of Doing Nothing
On a rare day without any work, the entry reflects on how much has changed since younger years spent prioritizing pleasure, friends, skateboarding, video games, and travel with no deadlines or agenda. That earlier lifestyle now seems both insane and amazing in hindsight, because the current reality revolves around working and pushing beyond comfort zones every single day, to the point of wondering whether this drive is compensation for the lack of effort in youth. The day was instead spent building Lego with four-year-old Alice and drawing with Mathilde, including a picture of the family dog, and there is a genuine sense of happiness and pride in those small, meaningful moments — a reminder not to forget the love and little things that count for so much.
Journal pages
Text transcript
No work today. 28.2.2026 Today I did not work. Zero. Nada. This is rare enough to surprise me & to make me write about it. When I was younger, this was quiet the opposite. I was making all my life choices to be able to spend time NOT working. Be with my friends, play video games, go skateboarding. Go on travel or adventure. Really the easy life: Focusing on pleasure, having no deadline, no agenda was my main goal! In retrospective that looks totally insane & stupid, & so amazing. Because today, the mindset is the opposite.
Working is my new reality. Pushing outside of my comfort zone. Every single day (I have framed that next to me where I write this to remember it). And sometimes this is so extreme that I wonder if it's related to my period of NOT working — that I want to compensate for this lack of effort while I was younger. And just the fact of asking myself that question already answers part of it. So today, I celebrate spending time with Alice (4 years old) building Lego. And Mathilde, drawing amazing stuff, like our dog. And I am happy & proud of this: the journey. the love. the little
things in life that count for so much. So don't forget about these. Sending some good vibes. ♡ Romain