inertia, interrupted

In praise of stillness, traffic jams, and leaving the suitcase half-empty

Newton got it right: an object in motion stays in motion. But does the same concept apply to humans? I argue yes, and offer myself as living proof.

For most of my life, I’ve been rushing – racing to avoid the [solidcore] five-minute late fee, sprinting to the office to make an early cameras-on Zoom meeting, choreographing evenings that require stopping by drinks, then a birthday party, then dinner, then another drinks. My schedule doesn’t run at capacity, it runs at overflow. While I recognize I’m crazy lucky to have each of the balls I juggle – friends, family, job, boyfriend – the only way to fit it all in is through military-grade planning.

I cannot count on both hands how many times I’ve gotten questions like, “How are you always in a new city? How do you do investment banking and still have a life?” I shrug and reply with some combination of meticulous planning, less sleep than recommended, and honestly, I don’t entirely know how I pull it off.

You might liken it to packing a suitcase: if you just toss everything in, it won’t close, but if you tightly fold, vacuum-seal, and methodically arrange each item into place, it fits. My life is that suitcase, packed so tightly it threatens to burst at the seams.

The cost of making it all work is that I’m never truly still. I plan three trips ahead, ten weekends in advance, and my mind runs four radio stations simultaneously, each one blaring a different frequency of obligation and anticipation.

Here’s the thing: I chose this. I make these plans, and I could brake at any moment, yet I keep accelerating.

Why? Let’s call it inertia. I’m so conditioned to perpetual motion that stillness feels fundamentally unnatural, and any gap in my schedule triggers an immediate impulse to fill it – text a friend, book a dinner on Resy, manufacture productivity somewhere.

Turning down a fun plan feels wrong, unproductive even, like I’d be wasting precious time. I can already hear my own counter-arguments forming: my work schedule is so consuming that weekends are my only time to see friends….we’re only young once…shouldn’t I be maximizing every moment?

Living in New York amplifies this tendency exponentially, and when you add an iPhone / social media into the mix, where opening a single app detonates twenty competing stimuli in your brain simultaneously, you’ve created the perfect recipe for relentless, unsustainable momentum.

I only understood the weight of this when I felt it lift.

This past weekend in LA with my boyfriend, I had a time-out from the incessant buzz of New York. Unlike New York, where I’m juggling six friend groups, in LA I basically only know Nacho, and when I go there we either just hang out us two, or I go with the flow of his plans and friends. There’s something liberating about that simplicity – no updating my Notion calendar, no intricate social calculus of whose brunch to attend or which dinner I’m disappointing someone by missing. I get to let go of that wheel I demand and clutch so tightly and let someone else steer.

On Friday afternoon, the ET / PT time difference gave me a free afternoon. I knew my boyfriend would still be in the office for a few more hours, so I grabbed a “Green Monster” smoothie from Main Squeeze and booked a solo tour of the Schindler House. Despite my Waze navigation, I immediately hit the Friday afternoon rush hour wall: bumper to bumper, barely crawling, the kind of gridlock where you wonder if getting out and walking would be faster. I was going to be thirty minutes late, maybe more, and lateness is my personal nightmare. In New York, restaurants and workout studios are ruthlessly unforgiving about tardiness – show up fifteen minutes late and you’ve lost your reservation, you’re getting charged a no-show fee, and the hostess is giving you sass.

So when I called the Schindler House, already rehearsing my profuse apology, I was completely disarmed when they said, “Oh, no worries at all. Just come whenever you get here.” I blinked at my phone. That was it? No attitude, no penalties, no passive-aggressive reminder about their policies? I could have spent that hour white-knuckled at the steering wheel, shoulders up around my ears, aggressively switching lanes to shave off two minutes here and three minutes there. Instead, I let my shoulders drop and actually exhaled. They didn’t care if I was late, so why should I?

I rolled the windows down, put on my Spotify curated daylist, and for the first time in months felt unhurried. I was present in that stationary car: I watched the distant palm trees sway and the golden hour light creep through the sunroof. I nosily peeked into other cars around me, wondering how they were all passing the time in traffic, wondering where they were heading to and coming from. I got to be aware and thoughtful of my current surroundings versus the laundry list of future to-dos and plans to be made.

Maybe traffic can be therapeutic.

Maybe stillness isn’t the enemy of youth, but rather the antidote to burnout.

Maybe the real luxury isn’t about fitting more into the suitcase but learning when to leave it half-empty.

Newton’s first law says that the object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an external force. Maybe all it takes for me to slow down is a little LA traffic-jam.

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