I want to say something that might sting a little: the moving around isn't working. I don't mean physically, though maybe that too. I mean the restlessness — the next thing, the fresh start, the belief that a change of scene will do what a change of self hasn't managed yet.
I know that feeling. I've chased it. The new place always has a moment where it seems like it might be the answer, and then you wake up one morning and find you've brought everything with you.
The self you're trying to outrun has better endurance than you do. It knows all your shortcuts.
What actually works is less interesting than we want it to be. It's staying. Letting the eyes unlearn what they've been looking at. Letting the ears adjust to something quieter. Not stirring things up just because stillness is uncomfortable. The old cravings need reminders to survive — they're not as robust as they seem. Stop feeding them the sights and sounds they run on, and they start to thin.
This is also, I think, what's underneath Seneca's point about death. He keeps returning to it not because he's morbid but because the person who has genuinely made peace with the endpoint stops running. There's nowhere you need to be instead of here. No day you're owed that you haven't lived. Whatever time is left is actually yours — not borrowed, not stolen, not racing away.
You don't die early or late. You die on your own day. Which means today is also yours, completely, exactly as it is.
Stay. Do the work where you are. I'll be here.
Yours, not going anywhere —