Welcome — However You Found Your Way Here
I Felt The Fire Burning
I was driving to work, listening to Indila — “Ainsi Bas La Vida,” “Dernière danse” — and the music lit something I’d been holding under a lid for a long time. As I got closer to the warehouse, an image from Attack on Titan (Eren, season 4) cracked through: “Fight — (you have to) fight back.” I felt the heat move through me like an engine starting.
Only, unlike Eren Yeager, I don’t know who I’m supposed to “fight back” against.
This is what I want to try to name out loud, here on the page: a burning that is almost anger, but not exactly. It shows up faster now than it used to. It presses. It demands.
It’s loud enough to shove me into action sometimes — cleaning, working harder, writing more — and quiet enough that I can’t always point a finger. I’m tired, I’m approaching thirty, and stuck between things: time, debt, a body worn out from labor, a brain tired of pretending everything is fine.
I don’t know who the enemy is. But I know the fight is real.
The Cost of Anger Lashing Out
Anger and spite have been my fuel more times than I want to admit. They’ve pushed me through long shifts, exhausting weeks, and situations that should have broken me. Spite is what got me up when I didn’t want to, what kept me going when I felt invisible. For a while, it worked — I could burn that energy and turn it into movement.
But the truth is, it’s not sustainable. It’s not healthy. And it’s not really helping me anymore. Even after breaks, I don’t feel rested. I work two jobs, give up long hours, and stay up late just to steal back some time for myself. The cost is high: sleep is thinner, my patience shorter, my fuse lit before the match even touches. I haven’t slept well in weeks, and I can feel it — the heat comes faster, the snap is sharper, and it hits harder than it used to.
That’s the part no one talks about when they say “anger fuels you.” Fuel burns out. And when all you’ve got is fire, eventually it scorches the inside just as much as the outside.
And yet, the more I burn, the more I realize the target isn’t always clear. The anger doesn’t just flare at one person or one moment — it spreads, looking for somewhere to land. That’s when I started asking myself if maybe the enemy I’m trying to fight isn’t a single person at all.
Maybe the enemy isn’t a person
When I try to name the foe, it splinters into a dozen pieces:
The job that pays but chews me up — the work that keeps my lights on while stealing my body. The debt that counts every missed hour and turns rest into a risk. The clock — always reminding me I’m “behind,” even when I’m doing my best. The expectation that I should already have “arrived” by now. The system that reshapes our time and energy into labor and coupons for rest we can’t afford. The numbness that wants to swallow the rage and leave only weight.
None of those are as satisfying to fight as a single person. They’re diffuse. They are walls more than enemies. They are traps you push against and, sometimes, they push back.
The fight you’re feeling might be a compass
If the anger is a blunt weapon, consider this: the heat can also be a map.
When you get furious at a commute, the map points at the commute. When you snap at a manager, the map points at the conditions that made snapping feel necessary. When music makes you feel bigger and angrier, the map is telling you where something is alive inside you — something that wants different ground.
You don’t have to find the enemy immediately. You can follow the heat like a trail of breadcrumbs. Each flash of anger is a data point about what matters to you, what hurts, and what you might want to change.
Ways to turn the energy into movement (not punishment)
I’m not providing a list of “fixes,” and I won’t pretend a checklist makes this simpler. Still — here are small, usable options to try when the burning shows up:
- Name it: Give the feeling a label — “cold rage,” “restless fire,” “sharp exhaustion,” whatever fits. One word can make it less shapeless.
- Write it fast: Five minutes of furious, unedited writing. Don’t stop for spelling. Burn the page with the heat so it has somewhere to go.
- Small targeted strikes: Pick one tiny thing that the map points to and act — look for a different shift, call HR about a specific hazard, set one debt payment goal this month. Small actions beat diffuse fury.
- Channel it into work that isn’t punishment: Lift, paint, code, write prompts — use the energy to build rather than to punish yourself.
- Grounding when it spikes: 5–4–3–2–1 grounding (name 5 things you see, 4 sounds, 3 things you can touch, 2 smells, 1 breath). It doesn’t solve the problem, but it buys you space.
- Find one person: A single witness who understands you don’t owe a polished anything. Say the heat out loud to someone who doesn’t gaslight it away.
- Make a cheap boundary: One small refusal (I won’t work extra on Tuesdays, I’ll leave at X time, I won’t answer texts after 9pm) can start to rebuild a sense of agency.
These are not cures, these might not always be helpful enough. Although, they are ways to move the force so it doesn’t only burn you from the inside.
You’re not crazy for needing this energy
There is a voice in me that wants to make this a deficit — you should be calmer, more grateful, less volatile. But we live in a system that will try to pathologize any emotion that refuses its timelines. What you feel is a human response to pressure. Naming it and moving it is survival, not failure.
I know the tiredness that sits under the heat. I know the guilt that says you don’t have the right to be angry because you “have it good.” That’s comparative guilt, and it’s a trick. Your experience is valid even if others have worse things happening. Survival doesn’t need a ranking system.
A small experiment
If you’re carrying this with me now (if your chest is hot, if you feel like you need to fight but can’t point the sword), try this:
Pause and write one sentence:
- “Right now I am angry at ______.” Fill the blank. It can be “my shift,” “debt,” “myself,” “no name.”
- Write one tiny next step you could take in the next 24 hours — something you can do that nudges the system you’re fighting.
- Do it, even if it feels symbolic. Notice the difference.
If you feel brave, leave that one-sentence in the comments — one line, no explanation. If you can’t, that’s fine too. Keep it in your pocket.
If the heat is too much
If you ever feel like the anger is pushing you toward hurting yourself or someone else, please reach out for help right away. If you’re in the U.S., calling or texting 988 will connect you to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you’re elsewhere, please contact your local emergency services or a trusted professional. You don’t have to carry this alone.
Whether you found this in the middle of the afternoon or at 3AM when you couldn’t sleep, I’m glad you’re here. Take a breath. Take what resonates. Leave the rest for another night.
To the fellow archivists reading late
If you’re awake and holding this heat, know this: your fire is not a defect. It’s a signal. It’s a raw, honest engine that can carve a path out of whatever is pressing down on you — not because you have to be violent or perfect, but because you deserve more space to be whole.
If any of this landed, I’d invite you to reflect for a moment: what does the heat point to for you? One sentence in the comments is enough. If you’d rather keep it private, you can reply to my newsletter; sometimes a single witness is the only thing that keeps the furnace from burning you out.
I’ve talked about this anger turning itself on me in my post, Some Days I Don’t Want to Be Here — On Surviving When Everything Else Feels Heavy
You are still here. That is the fight and the proof.
— Stratagem’s Archive
Reflection on Fire
When I first wrote this, I thought anger and spite were enough to keep me going. They did for a while, but they’ve also worn me down in ways I’m only starting to admit. I’m tired. My fuse is shorter. Even on days when I take a break, I feel like I’m still grinding myself into dust. Writing this now, I can see how much of that fire was survival, not healing.
If you’ve carried this kind of heat too — the kind that feels like it both fuels you and eats at you — I want you to know you’re not the only one. This archive is proof of that. We don’t have to carry it alone, even if we don’t always know how to put it down yet.
— Stratagem’s Archive
My Brief Reflections
All of this fire, all of this energy, it needs somewhere to go. However, with no goal, no “enemy” to fight back against, and no direction, of course it’ll attack itself. It’ll burn the host instead.
I think the worst part of this journey is the waiting:
- Waiting to get out of debt (how long it’s been)
- Waiting to hear back from a new career opportunity
- Waiting to finish work that keeps taking and not so much giving equally in return
- Just waiting and seeing nothing change or change has been incredibly slow
That’s what this feels like for and to me—wondering when things will end or change or have something that’s mine that I can be proud of. And, yet, because of all of the waiting that I do, I have to give up something (sleep, eating, taking care of myself) in order to have something I built, that I chose to do, instead of someone telling me to do it.
