09.09.2026 Diary IX From work to myself, from myself to work

09.09.2026 Diary Page IX

Closing the door is also a job.

This evening I closed the computer.

The screen went dark, the fan fell silent, the room became a little quieter. And I was still at work.

I got up, went to the kitchen, prepared something. In my head a brand's plan for next month was still turning. I got in the shower. Under the water an idea came to me, I said "I must not forget this tomorrow," and I spent the rest of the shower trying not to forget that idea. I lay down in bed. The ceiling was perfectly white and I was giving the ceiling a presentation.

The computer was closed. I was not.

A job with no door

When I founded my own company I thought it was a freedom. In a certain way it is. I decide what I will do, how I will do it, when I will do it.

But there was something I had not taken into account: work has no exit door.

When I worked in an office there was at least a threshold. You left the building, you went down the stairs, along the way a bit more of the work stayed behind. The body went from one place to another and the mind, even if a little late, followed it.

Now work is everywhere. On the phone, on the computer, in the notebook, in the idea that comes to me in the shower, in the "should I add this" question that falls into my mind at two at night.

Building digital strategy is a strange job in this respect too. I do not produce anything you can touch. I think. I look at data, I make connections, I eliminate one possibility, I weigh another. And thinking has no working hours. A hammer can be put down. A thought cannot.

I have a job that does not stay where I leave it. It follows me.

A two-way difficulty

What I really noticed today was this: this difficulty is not one-way.

I cannot cross from work to myself, yes. But in the mornings I cannot cross from myself to work either.

I wake up in the morning, make my coffee, sit down at the computer. And work does not start. I look at the screen. I open the emails, I close them. I read something, I leave it halfway. I circle around the job I have to start but I cannot get inside.

I, who cannot leave work in the evening, cannot enter work in the morning.

In ADHD this has a very well-known counterpart. Difficulty with transitions. Moving from one task to another, from one situation to another, requires the brain to set its brake and gas right at the same time. In the moment I am very good at one, I cannot manage the other. When I am inside I cannot get out. When I am outside I cannot get in.

Reading this brings relief. Not laziness, not lack of discipline, a mechanism. But the relief goes only as far as the explanation. The explanation does not tell me how to close in the evenings, how to open in the mornings.

Being stuck in between

Maybe the most tiring place is neither work nor home. It is in between.

In the evening hours I am neither fully working nor fully resting. I put on a series but my mind is on the job I left half done. I return to work but this time I am tired, there is no productivity. Then I get angry at myself: either work or rest, swaying between the two and doing neither is the worst.

And two separate kinds of guilt are added to this.

A guilt while resting: there are things that need doing, and you are sitting.

A hurt while working: again you did not make time for yourself, again life stayed behind work.

Both feelings are right in a way. But when I have both at once, I cannot be fully anywhere.

Sometimes a person, trying to be in two places at once, cannot be in any place.

Who am I without work

Today a more uncomfortable question came to my mind too.

Could one reason I find it so hard to cross from work to myself be that I do not quite know who I am outside of work?

For a long time I have been describing myself through the jobs I do. By what I produce, what I finish, what I keep up with. When someone asks "how are you," my answer is often "I'm very busy." As if being busy were an emotional state.

The emptiness that appears when I close the computer is perhaps uncomfortable partly for this reason. In that emptiness I have to remember who I am. And remembering this is harder than preparing a presentation.

In my first diary I wrote that I wanted to drink my coffee before it gets cold. To read a book not because it is useful but because I am curious. All these wishes stand inside that emptiness. But to enter that emptiness I first have to go out through the door of work.

The small thresholds I tried

I do not want to set myself a big rule. Like "I will never work after six in the evening." I have set rules like that a lot, and most did not last a week. (Next to my hobby graveyard I also have a rule graveyard.)

Instead I am thinking of small thresholds. Things that will take the place of the stairs you go down when leaving an office.

Leaving the last thought on paper. At the end of the day writing the last thing turning in my mind on a piece of paper. Where I will start tomorrow. That way the thought does not have to come home with me, it waits on the desk.

Changing clothes. Working from home I stay in the same clothes all day. Changing my top in the evening is small but it gives the body a message: this is a different time.

A short walk. Around the building, even for ten minutes. Taking the body from one place to another seems to help the mind go too.

I do not know whether these will work. But I am trying to turn leaving work from a matter of willpower into a matter of habit.

The morning door

I noticed something for the mornings too.

Not being able to enter work comes most of the time not from the work itself but from the size of the work. When I open the computer a whole day confronts me. All the jobs, all the emails, all the unfinished things. It is hard to get inside something that big.

That last thought I left on paper last evening may become a door in the morning. I do not enter the whole day, I enter a single sentence. "Continue from here." Once I am inside, the rest feels easier.

And there is this too: while crossing from myself to work I want to try not to leave myself at the door. When starting work a person does not have to silence themselves entirely. I can take my curiosity, my slowness, my enjoyment with me too.

A door, not a wall

After thinking all of this today, this is where I arrived:

I do not want to build a wall between work and myself. I love my work. I love thinking, building, designing something from scratch. I do not want to separate these from my life and shut them in a box.

What I want is a door.

A door I can open and close. One I can use in both directions. One I can go out through in the evening and enter again in the morning. And most importantly, a door where I know which side I am on.

Writing these lines tonight, a job is still turning in my head, I confess.

But at least I notice. And noticing is like finding the handle of the door.