HeyJaredAnastasija’s Substack
Honest reflections on creativity, productivity, and life with chronic illness. Coffee wisdom included. ☕💜
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 26, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 11, 2026
Latest issues
Nobody Saw the Invoice for That One (opens the original)
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I was crying at my desk. Not the graceful, single-tear kind. But the kind where you are not even sure when it started, you just notice at some point that your face is wet and every joint in your hands is on fire and you’ve forgotten a client’s name mid-email and there are three urgent projects due today.Subscribe nowFor a long time after my lupus diagnosis, I kept working the same way. Just harder.More coffee when what I needed was rest. Longer hours to compens
Reading the Room Was Never a Soft Skill (opens the original)
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People treat emotional intelligence like a nice bonus on top of the real skills. In my line of work, it’s not on top of anything. It’s load-bearing.<img alt="blue ceramic cup with saucer on table" class="sizing-normal" height="1025" src="ht
My Cat Has Better Boundaries Than I Do (opens the original)
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“It’s just a cat.”No. Let me introduce you properly, in case you are new here. His name is Toby. Big black domestic cat, a couple of white patches on his chest and belly, thirteen years old. I got him at around two months (no idea of his actual birthday). I love dogs every bit as much, but life circumstances made the decision for me, and I’ve never once regretted it.He’s been with me through lupus flares, fatigue, stress, burnout, all of it, and he has never once judged me for any of it. Just pu
Nobody Handed Me Certainty Before I Quit (opens the original)
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“Good. Don’t apologize. It’ll make you feel lighter.”That’s what my mum said after I stood in my kitchen and cursed about work, loudly, for the first time in longer than I can remember. And I’m not someone who curses much. So, that should have told me something.A few days later, I was walking around my neighborhood. I was going through everything in my head. Work. The exhaustion. The fact that I hadn’t done much besides work and sleep in longer than I wanted to admit.I was trying to figure out w
The Email I Rewrote Fifteen Times (and the reply that took one hour) (opens the original)
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I rewrote it fifteen times. Maybe more. An email that should have taken ten minutes had been sitting in my drafts for three days, and my joints were on fire, and my brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton, and I still couldn’t send it.<source t
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