In Season
Migration vs Optimization
For a long time, I believed that if I could just find the right daily formula, everything would click.
The perfect rhythm.
The ideal balance between work, motherhood, creativity, depth.
The sequence that would unlock flow.
And then there was my 5 a.m. era.
I read The 5 AM Club — God bless him. I genuinely admire him. I was inspired. So naturally, I committed.
5:00 a.m. alarm.
Up.
Yoga.
Journaling.
Cold discipline.
Bam, bam, bam.
By midday, I was finished.
Some weeks I felt powerful. Focused. Slightly superior to my former, 7 a.m. self.
Other weeks I was just tired. The kind of tired that whispers, “You are not a Navy SEAL,” while you ignore it because champions don’t nap at 11:30 a.m.
But underneath it all was this quiet pride.
Like I was in the army.
Good girl, Mariona.
Disciplined. Serious. Worthy.
Long term? I barely remember that season.
It was an interesting experiment. But it carried an old belief:
The harder it is, the more worthwhile it must be.
And an even older one:
Trust the outer authority over your own rhythm.
There’s still a part of me that thinks:
If I just redesign my days correctly, everything will finally align.
But every time I try to engineer the perfect structure, something inside tightens.
Recently I’ve begun to see it more clearly:
Flow for me is seasonal, not mechanical.
I am a migratory being.
Not a factory system.
There are seasons when I expand publicly — leading, creating, hosting.
And seasons when my deepest work is quieter and almost invisible.
There are weeks when waking early feels sacred.
And weeks when sleep is the real medicine.
Neither is better.
But I often mistake subtle growth for stagnation.
If things feel calm, I assume I should accelerate.
If expansion isn’t obvious, I assume I’m behind.
Maybe it’s not about redesigning my life.
Maybe it’s about refining it.
Going deeper, not wider.
Maybe the friction isn’t misalignment.
Maybe it’s impatience with organic growth.
Trees don’t grow faster because they are anxious.
Seasons don’t hurry because we are restless.
And yet here I am, occasionally trying to spiritually “product-manage” my own evolution.
The truth is, my life has always moved in phases.
I’ve changed countries.
Changed careers.
Lost, rebuilt, softened, strengthened.
Why would my inner rhythm suddenly become industrial?
Maybe meaning doesn’t arrive in dramatic breakthroughs.
Maybe it accumulates quietly —
through repetition,
through devotion,
through daily returns to something deeper than performance.
So lately, I’m experimenting with something gentler.
Small daily anchors.
Less redesign.
More listening.
Trusting that growth does not need to feel like boot camp to be real.
Trusting that subtle does not mean stagnant.
Maybe my life doesn’t need a better system.
Maybe it needs my trust.
Maybe the “upgrade” isn’t a 5 a.m. alarm
or a new color-coded plan.
Maybe it’s simply this:
To stop trying to be impressive
and start being in season.
And to let that be enough.