12/15/2025
There’s something quietly devastating about the way we’re expected to be reachable at all times. It’s not just inconvenient , it’s rewiring our nervous systems in ways we barely notice.
Every ping, every buzz, every unread message we “should” respond to immediately… it keeps our bodies in a low-grade state of alert. A quiet panic. A constant readiness that never really shuts off. We don’t get to fully drop into rest. Wonder if this is why so many of us are burned out, even though we rest. We don’t get to fully arrive in the moment we’re in. Some part of us is always waiting for the next interruption.
And the worst part? We’ve started to think this is normal.
Being on call for the world 24/7 chips away at our ability to regulate ourselves. Our attention gets frayed. Our emotions get thinner. Our breath gets shallow without us realizing it. We live in a state of hypervigilance …not because we’re unsafe, but because we’re always “available.”
Humans weren’t built for this. We were built for presence, for boundaries, for slowness, for being unreachable sometimes.
So if you find yourself exhausted in ways you can’t explain, irritable for no reason, or feeling like your brain is buzzing even in silence, it might not be a personal flaw. It might just be that your nervous system is begging for a life with fewer entry points.
It’s okay to turn off notifications. It’s okay to not respond right away. It’s okay to reclaim your attention, your peace, your rhythm.
You’re not a machine. You don’t have to be reachable to be valued.
