When You Don’t Even Have a Minute to Yourself

I have always been an extremely on-top-of-things* person.

*anxious

We’re talking: color-coded calendar. Tickets bought in advance. Multiple reminders set. The kind of person who shows up early with snacks.

Which is why the night we forgot we had tickets to a show—actual tickets, actual seats, actual money spent—should have tipped me off that something was up.

Not forgot as in “we were running late.” Not forgot as in “we remembered in the car.”

Forgot as in we were a full hour into the performance before my brain finally chimed in like, “Hey. Quick question. Aren’t we supposed to be somewhere right now?”

This has never happened to me before. Ever. I am not a forget-a-whole-event person.

But apparently, I am a "doing too much without realizing it" person.

Around the same time, my husband made an offhand comment about how I never play games on my phone anymore. Which I brushed off—until I realized he was completely right.

My phone used to be for fun. Games. Reading. Random little dopamine hits.

Now it’s a command center.

Family schedules. Business stuff. Research. Reservations. Notes about things I haven’t even agreed to yet. Plus an alarming number of tabs open “just for later.”

So no—I’m not losing my mind. I’m just running logistics at a volume that leaves zero margin for… literally anything else.

Which is how you end up forgetting a show. Or realizing that the idea of having a single minute to yourself feels strangely luxurious.

Not a break. Not a reset. Not a spa-day fantasy.

Just a minute.

A small, unclaimed pocket of time that doesn’t belong to anyone else. No planning. No managing. No being useful.

That’s the part that’s gone missing.

And once I noticed that, I couldn’t unsee it.

So I started taking one minute back on purpose. Not in a dramatic way. Not as a lifestyle shift. Just… a quiet disappearance.

Which, it turns out, totally works.

So I made a tiny thing around the idea.

It’s called If You Need Me, No You Don’t

It starts with a quick quiz, then gives you a few different one-minute exits—depending on what kind of “absolutely not today” energy you’re working with.

If your days are technically under control but somehow leave nothing left over for you, this is for that.

(And if you’ve ever forgotten something you absolutely never forget, you’re apparently in good company.)