Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash I’ve often wondered whether I will ever get better again, or whether constant fatigue is my new reality. Logic says that it will. There’s nothing identifiably chronic about my health. Yet logic also dictates that this should have been over by now too. In fact, if everything was dictated by logic, I […]
I’ve lived my life always planning ahead.
My whole generation had the idea of planning drilled into us. We needed to always know what we were doing next. Anything to the contrary was a failure. To be standing still was to be sinking in quicksand.
I actually rather liked planning. I ended up building career experience around it. A few years ago, I ended up crafting a GANTT chart with somewhat made-up dates on how to get a legislative bill through the UK Parliament in record time. It was planning that gave everyone a sense of reassurance despite the whole project being a terrible mess.
Yet here I sit without a plan. It’s the antithesis of what I’ve been taught and know.
I’ve been feeling frustrated with my health. Despite building what is a rather aggressive approach through supplements and powders, it’s hard to see much empirical change.
In the meantime, all I can do is interpret the subtler signs. My energy is a bit better, and I have been doing more exercise. My eating is objectively better, and I’m generally improving in sleep.
But at some point, I have to recognise that there are some things that I can’t really know. And to be honest, even if I did, it would probably not change a whole lot anyway.
‘Do you ever feel like you’re playing whac-a-mole?’
Someone asked me this once. They explained the situation where you try one thing which only partially solves the problem. This then leads to other issues popping up.
It’s a metaphor that has stuck with me, because it describes my experience in many different domains exceptionally well. When I try one thing, a plethora of new moles seem to pop up. I find myself in a perennial battle of reactivity.
It feels like my life is hitting a new equilibrium point. My energy fluctuations feel less chaotic, and basic tasks are no longer feeling like a struggle.
Yesterday, I went to the sea-side on the Belgian coast. I went with a similar group of people to the ones I went with a year ago. It was a nice day, and the ocean waves are always a calming sight.
But what was noticeable was how much calmer I was about life compared to a year ago. Things are certainly not perfect, but I feel like things feel more settled.
Photo by Valentin Bolder on Unsplash I turned 33 today. For some, birthdays are about celebration, and having a moment to feel special. For others, it elicits a sense of worry, confronting us to the inevitable march of time. My somewhat surprising reaction when the clock struck midnight was a sense of lightness. I think […]
I’ve been intentionally looking to walk more. Walking more however can sound a little dumb. After all, most of us walk everyday. It’s become so programmed into our living that the idea of intentionally walking just sounds like adding more needless travel into our day.
Yet for me, I’m finding walking one of the most adapted and well-suited forms of exercise I’ve intentionally done.
I travelled back to the UK this week for the launch of my father’s biography. That, in of itself is a rather momentous moment. But the whiplash of shifting a recent trip to Spain, back to Belgium, to the UK then a Bangladeshi community event was particularly intense.
I don’t feel such sequence of events is particularly rare in my life. If anything, I feel the sense of being caught between worlds becoming ever stronger as time goes by. I oft feel like I am caught between them all. I exist in many, but I’m never fully in one.
I came back to Brussels this week after a few days away on holiday.
Getting away did me more good than I had expected. Not only was the sun was healing for my soul, the break away from routines was surprisingly liberating.
In all honesty, I hadn’t quite realised how entrapped I had recently felt within my own life.
It’s like the movies. I’m in one of those cool, funky hostels in the South of Spain. It’s a Saturday night, and I’m chilling in the trendy living space. A mixture of nationalities, interesting stories and diversity. This is the moment where the magic happens.
But when I look up, I see four people in opposite corners of the room. They are all scrolling on their phones. No acknowledgement or pleasantries. Just some Instagram reels, then they eventually wander off to bed.
I haven’t been to a hostel in some time, but apparently this is the descent of hostel culture. What was once an opportunity to meet random travellers now has turned into refuging into solitude from a life of solitude. What happened?