The perfect excuse
On staying busy, staying home, and not being ready to start over yet.
I have the perfect excuse for not going anywhere.
I need money. There’s always something to finish: a client to follow up with, a website to build, a listing to update, a post to write. The work is real. The need is real. So staying home feels completely justified.
And it is, in a way.
But if I’m being honest with myself, the work isn’t the only reason I stay.
I wake up most mornings in the same place I fell asleep: laptop nearby, Pepi somewhere close, the day beginning exactly where the last one ended. I shower. I make my bed. I cook. I change clothes. I keep the house clean in a way that would’ve surprised the me of a year ago.
I go to pilates. That’s the one exception. I go even when I don’t want to, even when I’d rather stay horizontal, and I’m genuinely proud of that.
But I don’t go on dates. I don’t make plans to meet people. When someone suggests something social, I have the answer ready before they finish the sentence: I can’t, I’m working.
And everyone accepts it, because I am working. It’s not a lie.
It’s just not the whole truth.
The whole truth is that I don’t want to start over. Not yet.
There’s a part of me that knows that someday the economic excuse will run out. Someday I’ll be okay financially and I won’t have a ready reason to stay home. Someone will ask “are you seeing anyone?” and I won’t be able to say “I’ve just been so busy.” I’ll have to say “no, not really. I’m not ready.”
And I’m not ready.
I went to Mallorca alone and it did something good to me. I walked, I breathed different air, I came back with something I didn’t have before. And then I came home and went straight back inside.
I’m not saying this is bad. I’m saying it’s true.
Rebuilding has a social version and a private version. The social version is the one people want to see: the dates, the going out, the getting back out there. The private version is quieter: sitting with yourself long enough to remember who you are when you’re not defined by someone else.
That takes more time than people think. More than I thought.
Someday I’ll be ready to go back out. I think I’m getting there, slowly, one pilates class at a time.
But today I’m here. With my laptop and my clean house and the work that’s real and the excuse that’s only half the story.
And honestly, for now, that feels like enough.
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Sofi, “the excuse that’s only half the story” gives this essay its clearest honesty. You show how work can be necessary labor and a shelter that keeps the harder truth from needing to be spoken aloud. The clean house, the laptop, Mallorca, and each Pilates class become evidence of a private rebuilding that carries its own movement, even while public life still feels out of reach. Grateful for the permission you give yourself to call this season enough while refusing to turn readiness into another deadline.