Tag: #wellbeing

Writing with little to say

I’m feeling particularly uninspired with my writing. It feels like I’m simply rewriting the same stories every time.

Granted, I probably feel that more than anyone actually reading. One article a week is but a drop in the ocean, considering how much information we are constantly consuming. It’s probably actually a good thing that I repeat myself, else any key message quickly gets lost.

Yet I’m also just fatigued about talking on the same subjects. I seem to either be giving live updates around my health, or talking about the accompanying mental difficulties.

Between discipline and indulgence

I often go through a period of wondering how to use my time more productively. Since I have time and relatively little responsibilities (aside from keeping myself alive), I sometimes get the impulse that I must do more.
Such thoughts are often a trap. The idea that I need to be constantly working on something is in of itself a toxic cycle. I have to remember that my focus is on improving my health right now, not padding my CV.

A Regression to a Younger Age

It’s been a strange August. I think it’s been a bit weird for everyone.
Perhaps I’m a nostalgic millennial, but I miss the simpler days of the school summer holidays. Admittedly, my family rarely went on holidays, but at least it felt like a seasonal pause from school work.
August no longer seems to have that feeling of being a real break. Everything seems to be in constant motion. The chase for productivity is winning out against periodic rest.
My life has seemingly regressed to a similar style of living as I had when I was young. Perhaps it’s my way of searching for creature comforts, even if the comforts weren’t all that comfortable. In my youthful summers, I spent most of my time playing video games feeling pretty isolated from the world. My current situation does feel remarkably similar.

Navigating The World of DIY Diagnosis

I’ve been suffering from constant low-grade nausea. At first, I thought this was a post-heat illness. The recent heatwave hit hard, and I felt an illness coming the day it cooled. But now the symptoms have gone on for numerous days, and I’m starting to doubt my original prognosis.
The result is that it makes my life a misery for several days. I missed several events because I knew my body was not up for it, and managing my eating has been a nightmare. My solution has been to push eating whatever feels easy enough to digest. In that sense, my eating has been replaced to that of a toddler. Fish fingers and oven fries have been the easy, go-to meal.
It’s difficult to have new health issues come up that defy conventional explanation. Going to the doctor seems futile because there is little obvious that can be solved, and within a few weeks it passes anyway. But by that time, some other issue seems to arise.

The lack of logic in recovery

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 […]

Avoiding the trap of overanalysis

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.

Playing the game of whac-a-mole in physical recovery

‘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.

A slow shift into a more peaceful life

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.

Being caught between different worlds

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.