Five questions · Ten quiet minutes
It is late. The shift is over. The apartment is quiet. And the question is still there.
These five questions are the opening of my workbook. There is nothing to download and nothing to read — you write, right here. Your answers stay on your device. No one sees them unless you choose to keep them.
Be honest — more honest than you would be out loud.
— Tom Pham. I asked myself these after a long shift, twelve years into hotel work in Toronto.
One of five · The outside
On the surface, what does your life look like right now?
Write the version other people see. Be fair to yourself — name what is actually good.
Two of five · The inside
And how does it actually feel, from the inside?
The weight on the commute. The question that finds you at night. The part no one else can see. Both pictures are true — most people only ever get shown the first one.
Three of five · The bill
What is this life costing you that you have stopped noticing?
The body — where and when it hurts. The patience and energy you do not have left for the people you come home to. The costs that have just become normal.
Four of five · The unsaid
What do you not say to the people who tell you to be grateful?
They are not wrong, and they love you with the tools they have. But after the conversation ends, the feeling is still there. Write the part of the truth you keep to yourself.
Five of five · One honest word
Name the feeling you carry into most weeks. One word.
Not a sentence. One word. Bored. Tired. Numb. Restless. Trapped. Fine. Whatever is true.
And the word you want to describe your life a year from now?
What you just told yourself
Written by you, in your own words. Nothing here came from me.
If something in there feels missing, know one thing. You are not lazy. You are not ungrateful. There is nothing wrong with you. You are a human being who needs more than a paycheck to feel alive. That is not a flaw. It is the beginning.
What you wrote is the seeing. The next part is the doing.
I wrote a short, honest next step for each of these five questions. I will send them to you, one at a time, along with an occasional note about money, work, and building a life on the side of a job. No spam. Unsubscribe any time.
Sent. Check your inbox — and the spam folder, the first time.
These five questions are the opening of The Alive After Hours Workbook — thirty questions that go from seeing it clearly to actually changing it. And if your honest answer was “I have no time at all,” The Honest Hours will show you the truth about that too.
· Your answers stay saved on this device until you clear them.