Drifting is not doing nothing
I've been sitting with an essay by Rowena Morrow called 'Drifting as Resistance: Five Counter-Narratives to Hustle Culture'. Not reading it for answers, but noticing how its orientation lingers. It's the way some writing works quietly in the background, asking for attention rather than response.
We live in a culture that treats momentum as a virtue. Movement is equated with progress. Stillness is suspect. If you can't explain where you're going, you're expected to decide quickly and move on.
Against that backdrop, drifting can feel almost illicit.
Not drifting as collapse or avoidance, but drifting as a way of staying in contact when clarity hasn't arrived yet. It's a way of not forcing shape too early.
What stays with me from Morrow's essay isn't a particular argument, but a stance: that you can live inside not-knowing. Uncertainty doesn't need an immediate resolution to be valid.
This shows up often for men in midlife.
What you see more often than indecision is fatigue from being directed – from years of scanning, managing, and holding things together. The pressure to 'make a move' rarely brings clarity. More often, it just adds noise.
In those moments, drifting isn't a failure of will. It's information.
It can look like slowing down more than expected. Like not committing to the next step until the body steadies. Like allowing old frameworks to loosen before rushing to replace them. From the outside, it can look like stagnation. From the inside, it often feels like something reorganising.
Naming drifting as resistance feels accurate. It's resistance to the belief that worth is earned through constant output, and that clarity must be forced into being. It's resistance to the idea that staying with what's unformed is irresponsible.
Drift isn't a destination. It's a phase. It's a way of staying in relationship with life when forward motion no longer feels honest.
Sometimes what you need isn't a plan. Sometimes it's permission to stay with what's underway – unfinished, unlabelled, and not yet ready to be shaped.
In a culture that insists on direction, staying with the drift is a quiet form of care.