Reset: Too Many Tabs, Not Enough Peace
And how closing them at night saved my sleep (and my sanity)
It started with toothpaste.
An innocent thought while brushing my teeth: “I should add toothpaste to the list.”
Simple enough. Until I asked myself: Which toothpaste?
Fluoride or no fluoride?
Gel or paste?
Mint, extra mint, or “Arctic Thunderstorm Explosion”?
All-natural with baking soda? Charcoal? Crushed diamonds?
Then I remembered some podcast rambling about nano-hydroxyapatite. I’m not even sure it’s a real thing, but my YouTube ads are now aggressively confident that it is.
So now I’m standing in the bathroom, foam building in my mouth, spiraling into a full-blown dental identity crisis.
Just then my four-year-old barges in, pantsless, wielding a Paw Patrol toothbrush like a sword.
And that, my friends, is how the tabs open.
One small question, and suddenly I’m 37 tabs deep into:
– “Best kids toothpaste 2025”
– “Is enamel real or made up by Big Dental?”
– “How to know if your anxiety is toothpaste-related”
Meanwhile, I’ve forgotten why I walked into the kitchen, my coffee’s cold, and I’m half-convinced I need to import tooth powder from a Himalayan monastery.
Eventually, I realized something:
The tabs won’t stop unless I close them.
Not on my phone (but that helps). On my mind.
That’s why I started a new rhythm.
A reset at the end of the day.
Sometimes it’s journaling.
Sometimes it’s actually talking with my wife (instead of mentally narrating our conversation like a stressed-out podcast host).
Sometimes it’s just writing a final to-do list so I don’t dream about forgetting it in my planner.
And slowly, the tabs quieted.
The late-night spirals turned into rest.
And the toothpaste? I picked one. Minty. In a tube. And we’re all still alive.
The Reflection
I used to keep my phone by my bed like it was a lifeline.
Wake up at 2:00 a.m., check a tab, feel “productive,” and crash back to sleep.
Or type out a to-do list in my Notes app so it lived somewhere.
Anywhere besides my brain.
Except I wasn’t managing the worries.
I was feeding them.
Things shifted when I started ending my days with intention instead of exhaustion:
A brain dump of everything waiting for tomorrow.
Going around with the boys naming what we were grateful for today.
A few minutes with my wife, moving in and out of conversation as we process the day and prep for the next.
Leaving my phone out of the bedroom, so my last and first thoughts weren’t borrowed from a screen
Even one of those resets helps quiet my mind.
All four? Sleep usually finds me before the tabs can.
The Scripture
“We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” — 2 Corinthians 10:5
This verse hit differently once I started seeing my thoughts like open tabs.
They don’t need to be solved or spiraled on at 10:37 p.m. They just need to be surrendered.
Because when those thoughts hijack my brain and my nervous system,
I’m not the present dad I want to be.
But when I take those thoughts captive,
I stop letting my browser run me.
I close the tab.
I give it back to God.
And what’s left?
Space. Stillness.
Enough peace to walk back into tomorrow with a little less noise,
and a little more presence for the people who need me most.
Last Thought
The truth is, I don’t need a perfect night routine.
I just need enough peace to
stop the spin,
surrender the tabs,
and be the kind of dad who shows up rested instead of restless.
‘The tabs won’t stop unless I close them. Not on my phone (but that helps). On my mind.’ That line nailed it. Closing the mental tabs feels harder than closing Safari sometimes, but man, the peace it makes room for is worth it.