I created this drawing right after a meditation on December 29, 2024. For months, I’ve resisted sharing it, half convinced I’d find a better way to make it self-explanatory or artistically bold. At one point, I darkened the smaller corner sketches and enlarged the wheels and ruts for clarity. Then I realized—maybe it doesn’t need more polish. Maybe “you get the idea” is good enough. Because let’s face it: the moment we start trying to explain our own brains, it gets messy. Mine, clearly, is a bit of a hamster circus.

That same week, an image I’d bookmarked online resurfaced in my memory: the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Burren comes from boíreann, meaning “a stony place” in Irish, and when I visited last summer with Val, I was mesmerized by its cracked limestone terrain. The deep crevices, known as grikes, slice through the pavement like scars—and yet, life grows there. Delicate bursts of color bloom in the grikes, their roots somehow thriving in the gaps. I snapped a photo of a particularly vibrant patch, flowers blooming defiantly in the craggy rock. That image stuck with me.

As I revisited my drawing, the Burren returned—not just as memory, but as metaphor. If I were more practiced at drawing, I’d sketch the brain as its own Burren: folds of thought and memory carved with winding grikes, dotted with rogue hamster wheels spinning off in all directions. I pictured myself leaping from wheel to wheel, avoiding the slow crawl across a single rut. Because let’s be honest—sometimes my inner landscape feels less like Zen and more like American Ninja Warrior.

Still, it captured the experience I’ve had countless times: repetitive, ineffective mental analysis. You know the kind. The topic loops endlessly, the ruts deepen with each lap, and before long, the same grooves are firing like bad pop lyrics on repeat. I’m not solving anything—I’m just spinning. Trying to analyze my way out of discomfort, to logic my way toward peace. And spoiler alert: it never works.

What struck me, though, as I looked at the drawing with the Burren in mind, was how neutral it all felt. There was no shame in the spinning, no blame in the ruts. The grikes weren’t flaws; they were terrain. They just were. And in that was a surprising kind of grace. I didn’t need to fix or escape them. I could, instead, learn to walk them with curiosity.

And what if—hear me out—I stopped trying to fill the grikes? What if, instead, I planted something in them? Not metaphorical quick-fixes, but real growth. What if those grooves could become spaces for wildflowers—unexpected pockets of color, compassion, or insight? Maybe the wheels would stop spinning long enough for me to notice the beauty blooming in the cracks.

I’ve often described my thought spirals to friends as “spinning,” and they always nod in instant recognition. We’ve all done it—fixating, analyzing, rehashing. Stuck in a rut? More like stuck in a rut with stadium seating. But when I imagine the Burren, that language feels limiting. I like “grike” better. It feels more alive, more nuanced. And the sections of stone between the grikes? Those are called clints. Isn’t that fantastic? The whole landscape has this living, breathing vocabulary. It makes me want to rename my neural pathways entirely. Clints and grikes, wheels and wildflowers. So much more dynamic than “rumination,” don’t you think?

These grooves aren’t static, after all. They’re shaped by what I’ve lived, what I’ve feared, what I’ve tried (and failed) to fix. They hold history, yes—but also possibility. The very patterns that once held me stuck might also be the ground where something new takes root. And I don’t need to bulldoze the entire field to find freedom. I can start by noticing where I am, right now, and softening toward it.

I don’t always know how to get out of a thought loop, but I’m learning to recognize when I’m in one. That’s progress. Sometimes I pause. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I phone a friend and say, “I’m spinning again,” and we both sigh. That alone shifts the pattern. Not with force, but with acknowledgment. With presence. It’s not about perfection—it’s about practice.

So for now, I’m letting the wheels spin and the grikes deepen, trusting that when the time is right, I’ll know what to do next. Maybe I’ll fill some in. Maybe I’ll plant something. Or maybe I’ll just sit on a clint and rest. There’s no rush. No rescue mission. Just me, my funky little brainscape, and the question: what might bloom here?

That’s the thing about the Burren. From a distance, it looks barren, hostile, even bleak. But if you get close—if you really look— there’s life in the cracks. Not in spite of them, but because of them. Roots reach down into the unseen, drawing sustenance from what the eye can’t detect. It’s not perfect. It’s not symmetrical. But it’s astonishingly alive.

And maybe, just maybe, the same is true for my mind. Maybe the very places I once saw as broken or stuck are simply becoming. Not obstacles to overcome, but landscapes to explore. Ruts as invitations. Grikes as gardens. Wheels as reminders that I’ve been here before and still survived.

So I’ll witness it. I’ll let it be art and evidence. I’ll share the drawing, even if it’s imperfect. I’ll show the photo, even if the light wasn’t ideal. Because those flowers? They were actually blooming in the grike when I stood there. That part isn’t a metaphor. It’s proof. And maybe that’s enough.