The Hội An Chapter — Four Months In

A solo reflection from Vietnam. What I found, what I built, the routine that helped, the performance trap, and three poems.

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Episode Brief · v2

Viral hook — open with this

Before/after contrast — but complicate the "after"

"A few weeks ago I dug a hole at the beach. Just dug it. Got in. Let the sand bury me.

And I genuinely cannot tell you the last time I felt that free.

This morning I woke up and spent two hours on Instagram. I don't even know what I was looking for."

Pause. Then: "Both of those things are me. And this episode is about the distance between them — and why I think that gap is actually the most honest thing I can share right now."

The journey so far — set the scene

Chapter 1

Sri Lanka

Beautiful but ungrounded. Constantly moving. No kitchen, no stability, no anchor. Showed me what I don't want.

Clarified values

Chapter 2

Bali

Connection, community, movement. Everything I wanted — and then too much. The opportunity for connection became an escape from myself.

Beautiful distraction

Chapter 3 · Now

Hoi An

Came here to reconnect with myself. Struggled at first. Stayed anyway. Built something real — and am still figuring out how to live in it.

Where I found myself

Natural arc for the episode

Part 1 · ~3 min

Where I arrived from

Brief but honest — set up the contrast before Hội An.

Sri Lanka: lovely, chaotic, clarifying. What it showed me I didn't want.
Bali: what I thought I needed — and how it became a mirror for a different problem. Distractions dressed up as connection.
"Without any anchor, I felt restless. Ungrounded. Lost. And I didn't know why."
Arriving in Hội An: I wanted solitude. Within a few days I felt lonely. Big surprise.

Part 2 · ~3 min

The hard first weeks

Don't skip this — the discomfort is the point.

The loneliness that came with choosing to be alone. Feeling lost, overwhelmed, ready to leave.
The tension: I came here for me, but being with me was uncomfortable.
What kept you there. The decision to stay anyway.
"I didn't know it yet, but staying was the whole point."

Part 3 · ~7 min

The routine that helped — and what it revealed

This is the heart of it. But be honest about both sides: it worked, and it's also become fragile again. Don't tell the clean version.

Frame it: "I didn't set out to build a routine. I just started doing one thing. Then another."
Talk about the morning as a ritual — warmup, breathwork, movement by feel, mindful coffee, reading
"Consistency isn't glamorous. It's just showing up for yourself, again and again, until it stops feeling hard."
Then the honest turn: lately the routine has started to feel like a list of shoulds. Breathwork I should do. Yoga I should do. And somewhere in that shift, the aliveness went out of it.
"I built something that helped me — and now I'm learning that even the things that save you can become a cage if you're doing them to perform rather than to feel."

Part 4 · ~6 min

What opened up — and the moment I finally got it

The beautiful part, but with new depth. The contact improv insight is the centrepiece now.

Noticing the world: rice fields on the drive, the mango tree, the cow that wanders in. Slowness made this possible.
The beach hole. Say this slowly. Let them feel it. The childlike joy. The meditative quality.
Contact improv: the concept of the third entity. Being guided by touch, not by thinking. Not performing. Just present.
The moment it clicked: "The moment I stopped worrying about the outcome, it immediately felt like a success. My partner and I parted ways and we both just said — thank you. That was nice. No applause needed."
Then the poem: sat down to write, immediately tried to make it clever and artsy and impressive. The authentic thing got strangled before it could breathe. Recognising this pattern.
"That's what happens when you stop performing presence and actually arrive. And that's also what happens when you start performing again — everything closes up."

Part 5 · ~4 min · New

The performance trap — what's actually underneath

This is the new layer. The insight from this morning. Don't explain it too analytically — just share it like you lived it.

The pattern: everything I love eventually becomes something I have to be good at. The podcast needs listeners. The retreat needs to work. The morning needs to be productive. Even the poems need to be clever.
I left a career full of performance pressure — metrics, compliance, results. And without realising it, rebuilt the same structure around my passions.
The jealousy: unfollowing someone because their reels sting. Wanting to be where they are. Comparing instead of creating.
"I don't think I'm performing for anyone specific. I think I'm performing for a version of myself that doesn't exist yet — the one that has it figured out. And I'm exhausted trying to get there."
This is what the phone in the morning is about. Not laziness. A nervous system that's flooded and reaching for something easy.

Part 6 · ~4 min

Falling in love with this dude — slowly, imperfectly

The most vulnerable part. Don't make it a resolution. Make it a direction.

What it means to be starting to like who you are — mindful, caring, present, curious
Giving yourself credit for doing something genuinely hard: starting over, staying when it was uncomfortable
"A year ago I talked to myself in a way I wouldn't let a stranger speak to me. That's changed."
How you meet challenges now — the visa situation, the rental changing — taken as they come
But it's not fixed. This morning happened. And that's okay too. The goal isn't to be permanently healed. It's to keep coming back to yourself — again and again — even when you drift.
Close: "I don't have it all figured out. But I'm someone I actually want to spend time with. Most days. And that feels like enough for now."

The daily routine — your reference for Part 3

Morning warmup

The signal that the day belongs to you before anything else gets in — when it doesn't become a should

Morning

Breathwork session

Daily. The anchor that makes everything else easier. And also the thing that sometimes feels like a task now — worth being honest about that tension.

Morning

Movement by feel

Yoga, strength, mobility, contact improv — chosen daily based on what the body asks for. The word "feel" is everything here.

Movement

Mindful coffee

Not multi-tasking. Just the coffee. This is underrated and worth saying out loud.

Presence

Reading & journalling

Making sense of what's happening inside — not just logging days, but processing them

Presence

A swim if possible

The words "if possible" matter. This is a practice, not a performance. Say that out loud.

Movement

Home-cooked food & water

The unglamorous stuff. But having a kitchen changed your relationship to stability.

Nourish

Work in a coworking space

Separation of space matters. Not working from bed. A place for focus.

Structure

Enough sleep

Simple. Foundational. And also — last night you didn't. That's real too.

Nourish

Moments worth telling fully

The mango tree & the cow

The moment you noticed you were noticing. Slowness made this possible. Say it gently.

Contact improv — the third entity

Being guided by touch. Not thinking. No performance. The moment your partner and you parted ways and both just said — thank you.

The hole at the beach

Dig into this one. The childlike joy. The sand. Don't explain it too much — just take them there.

★ The poem you couldn't write

You sat down to write and immediately tried to make it clever. The authentic thing got strangled. This is the performance trap alive in real time — and it's worth sharing.

★ This morning — the phone

Woke up. Two hours on Instagram. Felt the weight. This is not failure. This is honesty. And honesty is the whole point of this podcast.

The visa situation

Plans changed. Rental changed. The old version of you would have spiralled. This one took it as it came. That's the proof — even if some mornings feel like regression.

Remember while recording This episode has warmth in it — but also honesty that wasn't in the original brief. You're not reporting on a transformation. You're reflecting on a process that's still happening. The beach hole deserves a smile. The poem story deserves a pause. The "this morning" stuff deserves vulnerability, not shame. You've got ~25 min. Let it breathe. The messy parts are what make it real.

Before the sign-off — listener moment

Invite them in

This episode will resonate with anyone who's ever turned something they love into something they have to be good at. Give them something to sit with.

Ask: "When did you last do something with zero performance pressure? Not for the outcome. Just because it felt good in your body?"
Ask: "What have you turned into a should? And what would it feel like to just... do it because you wanted to?"
Acknowledge: wherever they are in their Q1 — messy, grounded, or somewhere in between — it counts. The gap between the beach hole and the Instagram scroll? That's not failure. That's being human.

From the journey — poems

Witness Me

As I first stepped into the circle,
your eyes felt like a weight I couldn't carry.
I stood on the sideline and judged more than I observed,
for I was afraid I'd be judged in return.
But your joy was infectious and your laughter carried a truth I once knew.
And when you welcomed me in,
I became part of a oneness.
Built in just three days, yet it felt so familiar.
And I say 'Witness Me'
like I once yelled it to my dad as I dove into novelty all these years ago.

3rd Entity

The space between us.
It inspires my movement.
I call to it when I need to feel certain.
I trust it more than myself.
Is it intuition or our subconscious mind?
When we connect, I can sense it.
As our bodies touch, so does our soul.
And I wonder, does it remain even after we parted ways?

One Thing at a Time

Where to start?
I think I already know.
But I don't.

What if it's not even good,
or takes way too long.
Maybe others are better.
And what if no one likes it.

What to do?
Well, one thing at a time.
But I don't.

Your sign-off

"Follow your intuition, do everything with love, and just see where it takes you."

For this episode, this line is still the whole story. But say it knowing that some days you forget it entirely. You followed your gut to Hội An, stayed when it was uncomfortable, loved yourself through the hard part — and some mornings you still wake up and lose two hours to a screen. That's not a contradiction. That's the ongoing practice of being alive.