the cabin and the reset
It's May. We're five months into the year and I feel like it just began.
Somewhere along the way, the year took hold of me instead of me taking hold of it. The calendar filled itself. The to-do list regenerated faster than I could close it out. Every week was a blur of decisions, emails, meetings, and noise.
So I booked two nights at an Unyoked cabin called Heike. Off-grid. Solar power. Gas stove. No reception. No coverage. Just me, a journal, a pen, and the bush.
##Day one: still in the noise
I drove in on Sunday afternoon. Settled in. Started prepping dinner. And here's the thing — even out there, surrounded by silence, the first few hours my brain was still running its usual script. *What's for dinner. What's the firewood situation. What do I need to do tomorrow.* The to-do list followed me into the bush.
That night was loud in its own way. Not external noise — internal. My own thoughts rattling around with nothing to drown them out. It was uncomfortable. It's confronting to sit with yourself when there's no phone to reach for.
Late that night, sitting by the fire, a tawny frogmouth landed in the grass nearby and stayed a while. Just watching me. I watched back. It felt like a welcome.
I went to bed at 7:30. Slept twelve solid hours. The body was clearly craving something I hadn't been giving it.
##Day two: letting go of the epiphany
I'll be honest. I went up there secretly hoping for some big epiphany about life and work and where I'm headed. Some clean, profound insight I could bring home and act on.
By mid-morning I realised that was the same forcing energy I'd brought up there to escape. I run a lot of my life by forcing outcomes. Forcing direction. Forcing things to happen. It's worked for me in business, but it's also exhausting, and it's not how the good stuff actually arrives. The good stuff comes when you stop pushing.
So I let the epiphany go. I dropped the agenda. The only intention I kept was to reset the nervous system and come back to myself.
That afternoon, I laid on a yoga mat in the sun, in the grass, next to the fire. For three hours. No agenda. No phone. No emails. No calendar. Just stillness.
That is what freedom is. That is what peace looks like to me.
We spend our lives chasing more — more revenue, more growth, more achievement, more stuff. But when you strip it all back, *everything* is the *nothing*. Sitting in the grass. Listening to the birds and the wind. Feeling the sun. The voids we try to fill with noise are uncomfortable to sit with — that's why we fill them. It's far easier to pick up a phone than to actually meet your own thoughts.
## The walk
Earlier that day I'd strapped on the shoes and gone for a walk through the bush. Saw wallabies. A deer. A creek running through mossy boulders, ferns leaning over the water. The next morning a kookaburra perched on the cabin roof.
You forget what nature actually looks like when you've been living inside meetings and screens.
## Day two evening: the fire ceremony
That night I journaled properly. Not the surface-level stuff from the morning before — the deeper things I'd been avoiding.
Then I did a small ceremony. I wrote down the things I'd been carrying for too long. Things from work. Things from life. Things that no longer served me. And I burned them in the fire.
There's something powerful about saying goodbye to weight you didn't realise you were still carrying.
## Day three: walking out
I left Tuesday morning. Hadn't spoken a word out loud in nearly 48 hours. My mind was clearer. My nervous system was settled. The thoughts in my head weren't annoying anymore, they were just thoughts. I was just having internal conversations with myself, and that felt freeing rather than noisy.
## What I'm taking back with me
A few things have stuck:
The good stuff doesn't come from forcing. It comes when you create the space for it to arrive.
We don't actually need most of what we chase. The email won't matter. The tidy house won't matter. The to-do list won't matter. We're here for a short time and the things we build our days around are mostly noise.
Stillness isn't a luxury or a reward you earn after the work is done. It's the work. It's what makes the rest of it possible.
I'm not going to pretend I've got this all figured out. I run a business. I've got four kids. Life will be loud again by next week. But I'm bringing a marker back with me — when the chaos starts to take hold, I'll remind myself: *go back to the cabin*. Bring that mindset into whatever's being called upon.
## A few thank yous
To my wife Sara, for holding the fort at home with our four young kids so I could disappear into the bush for two days. That is no easy feat, and I don't take it for granted.
To my brother Nathan and the team at Safetyline Jalousie, for holding the fort at work and giving me the space to come back as a better leader, husband, and father.
And if you're a business owner, a leader, a parent, or just someone who feels the year is running you instead of the other way around — book the cabin. Every three months, every six months, whatever you can manage. Cut the noise. Strip it back. Go meet yourself again.
The nothing is the everything.