Is it just me, or everything feels a little fucked?

On collective exhaustion, the world being simultaneously terrifying and stupid, and what to do when you can't look away but also can't keep watching.

Is it just me or is everyone a little bit over... everything right now?

It’s like a constant dread in the background. A constant what the fuck is happening that doesn’t switch off.

You open your phone and there’s multiple wars, climate crisis, something unhinged someone said, and a grocery receipt that makes you want to lie down on the floor.

And then, at the same time, everything is also incredibly stupid.

Oracle just laid off 30,000 people via a 6am email signed by “Oracle Leadership.”

Not a person. A concept.

Someone raised $4 million to put an AI camera inside your toilet so it can photograph your poop and analyse your “gut intelligence.”

Oranges are up 75% at the supermarket but the wellness industry is selling a $900 mirror that uses AI to tell you how fast you’re ageing.

The world is on fire and also deeply, profoundly ridiculous.

Both at the same time. All the time.

And somehow you’re just supposed to keep going. Make dinner. Answer the email. Look after yourself. Be normal about all of it.

So I’ve been trying to figure out what actually helps.

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The strange luxury of looking away

I'm writing this from Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Three volcanoes, a lake, and absolutely no idea how to work the cable TV box.

Which is honestly a blessing because that means no news in the background, no ticker updates, no panel guests yelling at each other for 55 minutes minus ads.

I still check headlines daily, but I’ve stopped going deep.

And here’s the honest part: it’s been wonderful!

Travelling gives you this strange permission to look away. The distance is a luxury and I know it.

But I’ve also noticed something slightly uncomfortable.

Tuning it all out doesn’t actually make you feel better. It makes you feel guilty. And then weirdly more anxious, because you know it’s all still happening. You’re just choosing not to look.

So you end up in this gap. Too much and you’re overwhelmed. Too little and you’re disconnected.

There’s apparently a sweet spot somewhere in between but I have absolutely not found it.

If you have, genuinely, let me know!

Psychologist Graham Davey found it takes about 14 minutes of negative news to make you start catastrophising about your own life.

Not geopolitics, but the email you haven't sent, the decision you're putting off. And the number of people actively avoiding the news globally is now at a record high.

“Staying informed” has a cost. We just don’t talk about it much.

The scroll vs the street

I’ve been lucky enough to travel to every continent over the years, and we’ve spent the past few months moving through Latin America.

And there’s something I keep noticing that I can’t quite shake.

Are we actually as divided as it feels? Or have we just repeated that story so many times it’s started to feel like fact?

I’m not being naive. The deep divides are real. Ideology, inequality, the gap between who has enough and who doesn’t.

But everywhere I go, people are... lovely. Not in a dramatic way. Just in small, unremarkable, consistent ways.

A woman at a market in El Remate handing us extra tortillas and smiling like it’s nothing.

Our Airbnb host in Belize driving us to the hospital when my husband fractured his arm (he’s ok!).

People are generally so patient with me when I’m obviously practicing my very broken Spanish with them.

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer found that 70% of people globally are unwilling or hesitant to trust someone with different values.

And yet that’s not what it feels like on the ground. The towns and markets and taxi rides don’t feel like that.

Maybe the distrust lives in the scroll, not in the street.

And the thing about collective exhaustion is that it’s also, by definition, collective.

Nobody is going through this alone, even though it absolutely feels that way at 1am when you’re doomscrolling and the world feels like it’s about to end for the 10th time this month.

So, how to not lose your fucking mind?

Stop adding. Start removing

When everything feels like too much, the instinct is to add. A new routine. A better system. A plan to sort your life out. (I have made approximately 400 of these plans from various hotel rooms this year.)

But here’s what’s interesting. There’s a study in Nature where researchers gave people problems to solve, and almost nobody thought to remove things, even when removing was faster and more effective. And when people were already overwhelmed, they were even worse at it.

So I’ve been asking myself a different question: what can I stop?

The news apps I downloaded “to get a different perspective.” The group chat that’s basically just people sending each other terrible headlines. Scrolling the news before bed to see what fresh hell happened while I was making dinner.

None of it was dramatic, but it made everything a little quieter.

Regulate before you try to understand anything

If your nervous system thinks you’re under threat, everything looks worse than it is. And scrolling through crisis after crisis keeps it there.

There’s a breathing technique called cyclic sighing that’s been properly studied at Stanford. 5 minutes. Double inhale through the nose, long exhale through the mouth. It outperformed meditation for mood, and the effect got stronger with each consecutive day.

I do it when everything feels a little too much.

It hasn't transformed my life, but everything feels about 15% more manageable.

Right now, 15% is genuinely all I’m after.

Move. Badly. It still counts

The BMJ’s largest ever analysis of exercise and depression, 218 studies, found that walking, yoga, and strength training reduced symptoms at levels comparable to medication.

You don’t need a plan. You need 20 minutes where you’re not sitting and scrolling.

I do HIIT classes in the living rooms of our Airbnb when we don’t have access to a gym.

I look absolutely ridiculous but I always feel better afterwards.

That’s the entire science.

Find the others

This might be the most important one, and it’s also the simplest.

Researchers at Brigham Young University found that social connection increases your odds of survival by 50%. That’s roughly the same effect as quitting smoking.

But more specifically for this feeling: there’s something about naming it out loud.

Saying is it just me or... and hearing no, it’s not just you.

So technically, this entire newsletter counts as an evidence-based intervention.

You’re welcome.

It doesn’t fix anything.

But it makes the whole thing feel a little less like something I need to solve, and a little more like something we’re all in together.

And right now, that’s enough.

With love from Guatemala,
Noemie x

P.S. If the “make things smaller” idea hit home, that’s the foundation of everything I teach in the MAKE SPACE Method™. Next cohort opens in June. More soon.

P.P.S. I’m curious. What’s the one thing YOU’VE stopped doing that made everything feel a bit quieter? Hit reply. I genuinely want to know!

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