About the Author

Hi. I’m Marcela.

I’m a psychoanalyst, a journalist, and a former hospital pharmacist. Yes, that’s an unusual combination. No, there wasn’t a master plan behind it.

For years I worked inside hospitals, in the kind of environment where everything is urgent, everything is important, and nobody seems to notice that the pace itself might be the problem. The routine was intense, the expectations were endless, and the idea of slowing down was treated almost like a character flaw.

A few weeks before the pandemic began, I lost my job.

At the time, the plan was simple: find another position and return to the same chaotic world of hospital pharmacy I had just left. Another hospital, another schedule built around constant urgency, another round of the same exhausting routine.

Then the pandemic happened.

What followed was something unexpected: distance. For the first time in years, I had the space to look at the life I had been running through at full speed.

And what I saw was… chaos disguised as productivity.

The endless pressure to do more, be more, optimize everything, wake up earlier, sleep less, and somehow still remain perfectly balanced and fulfilled. The strange cultural belief that exhaustion is a badge of honor and that if you're tired, you're probably just not trying hard enough.

That was the moment when I realized something simple and uncomfortable: a lot of what we call “self-improvement” is just another way of pushing people toward burnout.

Cinder Trail was born from that realization.

This blog isn’t about becoming your “best self,” building a flawless routine, or turning your life into a productivity experiment. The internet already has more than enough of that.

Instead, this space explores a different path — one that is slower, more reflective, and occasionally skeptical of the entire self-help industry.

Here you’ll find essays and reflections about work culture, burnout, mental health, productivity myths, and the strange pressure to constantly optimize every part of life.

Some posts are analytical. Some are personal. Many are mildly irritated by the modern obsession with hustle.

All of them share the same goal: to question the idea that living well means constantly doing more.

Because sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stop running.