Do you ever feel like your clock is striking thirteen?

In George Orwell's 1984, a clock striking thirteen breaks reality open, signaling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. Many of us feel an existential angst stemming from a feeling we are living in a world out of alignment, stripped of authenticity and privacy, saturated by ceaseless noise and propaganda.

More than a century before, Henry David Thoreau walked deliberately into the woods. Not to escape the world, but rather to return to his core self. To pare life down, to find what was real beneath the noise:

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life… and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

And here we are now, not in a cabin in Concord, Massachusetts, but in a world of algorithms, monetized identities, side hustles, doom scrolling, thirst traps, and AI-generated everything. Privacy is vanishing. Political ideologies crash together like tectonic plates. So we scroll to numb, we hustle to survive, we optimize to the point of erasure.What are we to do when we meet a fork in the road?Perhaps we choose to live deliberately, to slow down, even amid the relentless pace of modern life. The woods may no longer be literal for many of us, but we can all go out there in our own way. So, what does it mean now to “go to the woods”?Maybe it means logging off, or seeking someone who hears the pain beneath your performance. Maybe it means choosing presence over productivity. Healing over hustle. Maybe it's the radical act of simply being, without explanation. Reconnecting with a version of yourself that isn’t optimized for performance but alive with purpose. For me personally, reconnecting with purpose wasn’t just philosophical, it was professional. After years spent in executive coaching, technical analysis at Harvard Medical School, and the nonlinear path of helping others navigate performance and burnout, I felt my own internal clock strike thirteen. Despite a rich and varied career from teaching in classrooms to supporting artists and scientists, from analyzing IT systems to decoding the stories behind our coping mechanisms, I realized I needed to return to something more essential: the human heart of the work.

That’s what led me back to therapy—and to Ever Human Therapy.

At Ever Human Therapy, we walk alongside you as you rediscover what is essential. We offer a space where the noise fades and your own voice can come forward in all the ways: strong, scared, curious, uncertain, brilliant.

Reach out. There’s a clearing in the woods with your name on it.

Post Written by Matt Brothers