I’m waking up with nausea. My back is flaring up. A fifteen minute walk is leaving me in agony. I’ve had to cancel on three social events this week.
I’ve regressed to the point that leaving the house seems like a risky endeavour. The nausea leaves my appetite in confusion. I know that I need to eat, but my sense of appetite is totally suppressed.
Such is the world of recovery. One week is good, another three weeks are difficult.
Last year, I stopped going to the gym. I had been going around two to three times a week. I had a personal trainer, who set me different strength exercises and increasing weight goals. On paper, I was doing everything I should have been.
Just before stopping, I got a blood test. Generally my health was good, but my cholesterol was particularly high. Most notably, my HDLs (the ‘good’ cholesterol) was quite a lot lower than they should have been.
If conventional wisdom were to be followed, my health should have gotten worse. I was no longer exercising, I stopped paying too much attention to diet and I returned to a very sedentary lifestyle.
Yesterday, Bangladesh had its national elections. But this was no ordinary elections, it was the first that was broadly fair and free in nearly two decades.
In the West, the idea of a free and fair election is taken for granted. So is the idea of general state stability. Post-colonial South Asian politics has no such luxury. Bangladesh has been mirred with in-fighting, coups and counter-coups throughout its young history. A descent into military rule has very much been on the cards over the last few years.
As such, these elections were historic. Nonetheless, the slight irony is that the results themselves feel somewhat anticlimactic to me. Although broadly peaceful and open elections are to be celebrated, reforms and genuine positive change will take a lot more hard, earnest work.
I went to a tango class this week. For one reason or another, I found myself feeling far more stable and grounded.
On the surface, nothing had particularly changed I had been to a class only a week before, and although I did feel a bit better that day, there was not an obvious reason for such a sudden improvement.
But in the context of my bodily recovery, this shift actually makes quite a lot of sense. For the first time in my life, I am focussing on keeping my body relaxed. I feel like I have reached the tipping point where I am actually guided by my body, rather than constantly pushing it along.
I don’t think I’ve seen as much pessimism at the start of the year than I have in 2026. We’ve got to the point where we openly speak about how tumultuous things are right now.
The political watershed moment of the week came from Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister. Speaking at Davos, he openly talked about the ‘illusion’ of the rules-based international order. He went as far as to say ‘the system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true’.
The problem is that the illusion is slipping. It has been for a while now.
When I hear the word bubble these days, it’s often used in a somewhat pejorative sense. In fact, I’m probably the one using it in a critical manner. I often lament people living too much in their own comfortable bubble, or indeed the Brussels infamous ‘EU bubble’.
Yet this week I reflected that there is some value in having a sense of bubble around us. For me specifically, I’ve started imagining the idea of having a protective bubble whenever I am in social situations. This helps me stay grounded and give a sense of safety, wherever I might be.
For the first time in around two years, I’ve had several days in a row where I’ve woken up without a sense of fatigue or dread.
Around two months ago, I remember having a day where I felt pretty good. I could get up, go out and doing things without any real issue. Is this what it is to live again? It was remarkable how easy everything felt.
But that was not a sustained feeling. The day after I was back in an energy dip. It was quite frustrating. Yet it at least reminded me what life is meant to feel like.
We often use the metaphors of ‘keys’ and ‘doors’ in the world of personal development.
But on Monday, it had a far more literal meaning for me.
When taking the bins out, I shut the door behind me. I didn’t realise I didn’t have my key, effectively locking myself out.
It’s the sort of general mishap that we all face at some point in our lives. But it’s not so much about the event itself, but what we tell ourselves about it.
Each of us has our own ‘personal narrative’. It reflects how we see ourselves, and so also how we see the world. For example, some people speak with a timidness. They talk about how they’re nothing special. To them, they had a ‘boring’ upbringing.
It’s not a surprise that such people aren’t particularly proud about where they’re from. Nor do they tend to be as confident either.
Compare that to someone who has a much more involved story about how they grew up. Their tales of upbringing can sound like a dazzling adventure.
The big irony is that these two stories could be the exact same person. It’s not really the history that matters, but the story crafted from it.
This is something I’ve understood. I’ve worked hard to shift my personal narrative from one that feels quite tragic to one of growth. Yet the last few weeks have also demonstrated a further layer that I never realised. My personal narrative was missing large segments.
One of the big potential traps in modern day society is to lose that spark.
It’s particularly visible in a city like Brussels. So many people come here with big hopes and expectations. The reality of the clunking system can be pretty soul crushing if we’re not careful.
It’s also very visible. When we look people in the eyes, we can see if there is a spark behind it or not. Once someone has lost their spark, it feels like their soul has been tuned down to power-save mode.
Whilst burnout is often assumed to be about overwork, it can just as well be a loss of hope. That was certainly the case for me. Day by day, I had my desires ever increasingly compromised. By the end, I had little will to leave my bed.