A few weeks ago I had a realisation that your perception can dictate how good or bad your situation is, so I’m hopeful this is just a blip and tomorrow I’ll look at my stressors with a clear mind. But today I’m finding it tough.

I’ve had a massive migraine all day and I’ve run out of my medication, so I’ve had to travel an hour to an out of hours pharmacy to collect it. At least it’s gotten me out of the house. Fresh air will do me good. Unfortunately it’s a bank holiday weekend, so the streets are busy with people enjoying a night out.

A few years ago I would have been one of those people. Now I only really leave my house out of necessity. Although I must admit, I don’t think my self-initiated isolation is healthy. Shouldn’t everyone go outside, meet friends, touch grass? Am I making an unhealthy lifestyle choice and repackaging it as liking my own space? Am I doing life wrong? I’m seeing groups of friends chatting, laughing, all dressed up, while I’ve got my hoodie on, earphones in, constantly refreshing Google Maps to make sure I arrive before the store closes.

We’re three quarters of the way through the year and it’s gone quickly. Technically it’s the same length as last year, but it doesn’t feel it. Maybe that’s partly the brain injury — I sleep longer than I used to. Maybe it’s because last year had a mental breakdown in it, and breakdowns are time consuming.

So as I enter the last stretch of 2026, I think back on my goals. I don’t have the six pack I envisioned, but I’ve noticed growth in my arms. I wrote a piece not long ago about being kinder to ourselves, and that’s something I’m working on. Something I need to remember to keep doing.

And writing this, I’ve just had an epiphany about how I deal with losing motivation. I just carry on. It’s that simple. I fill up my water bottle and leave it by my bed so I can hydrate first thing in the morning. I walk to the gym regardless of how I feel, because doing something is always better than doing nothing. I create routines and build habits so that when my motivation is gone, my standards carry me.

I am not my thoughts, I am my actions. So motivation or not, I still decide who I am. At the start of the year I said I’d write one Substack a week, and I’ve done it regardless of where I was at the time. A migraine will not stop me this week. Life is difficult right now, but it will get easier, because that’s just how life is. Some seasons are tougher than others. And whilst I acknowledge I am tired, my standards will carry me through.

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Work stress. House stress. Family stress. Health stress. A year ago that combination would have burned me out.

My housing officer phones me. We're terminating your accommodation.

Tinnitus ringing. Air getting thick. The room seemed smaller.

I know what that is now. Deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Grounding myself in the room. What I can see. What I can hear. What I can feel. Reminding myself that I'm safe.

What felt like the start of a panic attack ended quickly.

That's the difference. Not that it didn't come for me. That it didn't stay.

I've been on a journey of self improvement. Mentally. Physically. Spiritually. Trying to take my place in life further.

Taking stock of the different sides that make up who I am, and what I could do with them. The gym. The physio. Accepting what I can't change and improving what's in my power to improve.

We all have power over our lives. Sometimes we convince ourselves we don't. That our lives aren't in our hands.

They are. You just have to be brave enough to make the change.

So I'm managing my anxiety better. Fewer bad habits. More productive ones. I'm doing for myself today what I want for tomorrow.

But not every day is a success, and I need to accept that too. Sometimes I won't have the energy to cook, so I'll order a takeaway. Sometimes I'll be too fatigued to get my steps in, and then I feel worse for having spent the day sitting down.

What I've realised is this. We are the sum of our actions. So we need to make our actions as easy as possible to take.

My gym kit is washed and packed in my bag by my bedroom door, waiting. I've set a daily alarm to remind me to get my steps in. I want it on autopilot. I want the decision made before I get the chance to talk myself out of it.

Because I didn't get everything right this week. Stress came for me and I went back to some old habits. I spent a lot of money on takeaways when I was supposed to be eating better. I know why. It was the easy thing at the end of a hard day, and I let it be easy.

Return to work. Health. Housing. All of it in the same few days.

The old me would have looked at that and decided it was too much.

The new one has noticed what went wrong and asks a different question. What can I do here?

That's the shift. Not the absence of stress. I don't think that's coming. It's the question I ask when it arrives.

Self belief and self assurance. That's what I need if I'm going to take the next step.

What's your version of 'what can I do here?' this week?

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I started writing this a few hours ago and I wasn't in a good place. I could feel it in the sentences — short, sharp, arguing with someone who wasn't in the room. So I stopped. I put my shoes on and I went for a walk.

Which is funny, when I think about where this all started.

When I first went off work, during an interim meeting, someone asked how I was doing and whether I'd been going on walks. Then she laughed. Not cruelly. Just that small laugh people do when they think the answer is obvious and the problem isn't real. Like walks were what you offered someone who wasn't actually unwell.

I came back from my walk today feeling better. She wasn't wrong about the walk. She was wrong about what it meant.

Because that's the thing about stigma — it isn't usually hatred. It's a shortcut. It's a picture someone formed years ago that they've never had reason to update. Mental health isn't real, or it's real but only for people who look a certain way, and I don't look that way, so something must not add up. That's not malice. It's just an old map.

I tried to redraw the map. I told my team leader about what I'd been going through. I explained the intrusive thoughts. I explained the rumination. She asked questions, and I answered them, because I thought she wanted to understand. I said I was open to anything she wanted to ask. I said if she wanted a medical opinion, it would tell her there was nothing to be frightened of.

It didn't land. The questions weren't curiosity, they were groundwork. What I'd given her honestly came back to me as a safeguarding concern, and suddenly the conversation was about whether I should still be living where I was living. A few days earlier I was being told how supported I was. A few days after that, plans were being made.

And for a while I sat in the betrayal of that. I'm not going to pretend I didn't. It felt personal, because it happened to me personally.

But here's what I've come round to. She was doing her job. Incorrectly, I suppose. Without the medical input that should have been there. But she wasn't sitting at her desk trying to work out how to hurt me. She was frightened of something she didn't understand, and she reached for the process she had, because that's the only tool the job gives her. People fear what they don't understand, and fear dressed up in policy language still looks like paperwork.

That doesn't make it okay. It makes it explainable. And explainable is enough for me to put it down.

Because I tried education, and education requires a willing student. You can hand someone the evidence, the expert opinion, the honest account of your own head, and they can still choose the version of you they already had. At some point, trying to be understood stops being communication and becomes performance. You're auditioning for permission to be well.

I'm done auditioning.

This is the part I actually want to say. When you start getting better, some people can't come with you. They still have the old file open. And they will hold you back — not by pushing, but by needing you to keep proving something. Every conversation becomes a re-trial. Every bit of progress needs a witness statement. And you can burn an enormous amount of energy trying to update a picture in someone else's head, energy you needed for the actual recovery.

They may not even know they're doing it. That's the hard bit. There's no villain to point at. Just a person with a limited view of you, doing what limited views do.

And it isn't only work. I've had friends who refused to see the new me. They wanted the Teya from a few years ago, the one who fit the dynamic they were used to, and they didn't like that it had changed. That's theirs to come to terms with. It was never mine to undo.

I should probably tell you where I was actually walking to today.

The takeaway. I was going to buy something indulgent and bad for me, and somewhere along the way it landed that I wasn't craving it — I was just hungry. I've spent this year eating better, getting to the gym more, keeping up with my physio. I could have bought it if I wanted to. I just didn't want it anymore. So I did a thirty minute lap, to the takeaway and back home, and made myself tuna and sweetcorn pasta.

Nobody saw that. That's the point. Progress is mostly the small unwitnessed decisions — the pasta instead of the takeaway, rewriting this essay instead of publishing the angry version of it. There's no meeting where that gets recorded. No one signs it off.

So I've stopped arguing. Not out of bitterness — out of economy. I don't have the reserves to spend on convincing someone who isn't listening, and my healing was never a group project that needed unanimous approval.

Her opinion of me isn't a fact about me. It's a fact about her.

I went for a walk today and I came back better. She'd have laughed at that. Let her.

"We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral."

Sometimes in life I feel like I'm going in circles. Doing similar things over and over, getting similar results. I'm hard on myself, wondering how I ended up back in the same place.

But the path we walk is a spiral. From one angle it looks like a circle. From another, you'd see it's climbing. We're harder on ourselves for repeating mistakes than we ever are on other people. When someone else slips up, we say everybody makes mistakes. We rarely extend that same understanding to ourselves. It's easy to see growth in other people. Looking at ourselves, we don't see the distance covered.

Everyone is on a journey. I am growing, and even when certain points feel repetitive, familiar doesn't mean identical. A point looking familiar doesn't erase the work done to get back to it.

I signed up to the gym three months ago. I tried to go a few days a week. Then I went on holiday for a week, got ill for a few weeks after, and ended up with a month off. When I went back and checked my measurements, they'd dropped. My first instinct was to call that a circle — start gym, stop gym, start gym. I've done that before, more times than I can count. But this was different. As soon as I was well enough, I went back. Yes, I was heavier and weaker than before I stopped. But I was still at a new place on my fitness journey. I fell ill, and I got back up. That's a level of resilience I never showed the other times I stopped going. The cycle is gone. It's a spiral now.

My first job in high school was at a supermarket. I didn't make it past probation. My second job, at university, was also at a supermarket, and I didn't make it past probation there either. On the surface, that looks like a circular movement — same outcome, twice. But looking back, I picked up real skills in between. Interview skills. How differently people can view the same job. What I actually wanted, and didn't want, from a career. I ended up in a similar place, but I'd moved forward a lot to get there. I look at my work life now. A year of health issues has stalled my growth. But this time I don't feed into the cycle of self-criticism. I notice the thought when it shows up, and I let it pass instead of sitting in it for days.

It's a similar feeling after multiple failed relationships. You start questioning yourself. Why do I attract the wrong people? What am I doing wrong? Will the right person ever show up? But if you've learned something from each one — about yourself, your boundaries, what you actually need — then you've gained from the experience. By definition, that's not a circle.

I've learned a lot about myself these past few years. Who I am, who I want to be, what matters to me. I've had a clear vision of where I want to be, dreams I haven't reached yet. I grew up wanting to be an actor. What I actually wanted was to tell stories, and acting was just the first way I knew how. I now realize film was only ever the medium. I love watching stories unfold on the big screen. I love listening to music on the speakers, the lyrics an artist uses to tell a story. I used to wonder why, no matter how much I tried, I kept getting pulled back toward the same place. It's because it's still the same path. I'm walking a spiral, the same path I've been on since I was a kid, only this time I have a better understanding of the direction I'm going.

I often think about the person I am today. I believe every one of us is capable of both good and bad. In thirty years of living, I have done things that have hurt other people. I've hurt friends, flatmates and family for a variety of reasons. Some moments I deeply regret and would change in an instant if I could.

So what does that say about me?

Does doing bad things make me a bad person?

For a long time, I believed it did. And once I'd labelled myself as "bad", my thinking became dangerous. If I was already a bad person, then why bother trying to do the right thing? Every good decision felt meaningless because I'd convinced myself my worst actions had already defined me.

Looking back, I can see that wasn't reality—it was black and white thinking.

Life is far more complicated than simply dividing people into "good" and "bad". Human beings are messy. We make mistakes, we learn, we grow, and sometimes we repeat those mistakes before we finally understand them. I can accept that I've done bad things without accepting that I'm a bad person. I can acknowledge the harm I've caused without believing those moments define me forever.

One of the clearest examples of this thinking came from my relationship with alcohol.

At the time, I had been sober for almost a year when I went to a music event with a friend.

Before we arrived, he told me he wanted to cut down on both drinking and drugs, at least for a while.

Then we discovered the event had an open bar.

I won't pretend I wasn't tempted. Part of me felt frustrated that everyone else could enjoy unlimited free drinks while I sat there with a soft drink. But sobriety had become part of my identity. If I drank, even once, I believed I had completely failed. So I stayed sober.

My friend made a different choice. He decided that because the alcohol was free, he'd drink that night and start his detox tomorrow.

I understood his reasoning.

But two hours later he was texting his dealer, trying to buy drugs.

I asked why.

His response surprised me.

"If I'm drinking, I might as well do drugs too."

It sounded irrational, yet it also felt strangely familiar.

I've thought exactly the same way before.

There have been plenty of times when I never intended to drink, but someone bought me one drink, or a cocktail looked interesting, and after that first drink I'd think, I've already broken the rule, so I may as well keep going.

The same thinking applied to drugs. If I accepted half a pill at a rave after telling myself I wouldn't take anything, my mind wanted to convince me I'd already failed, so why not carry on?

That is all or nothing thinking.

But a slip-up doesn't have to become a downward spiral.

One mistake doesn't erase hundreds of good decisions.

One bad decision doesn't mean every decision afterwards has to become another bad decision.

The more I've reflected on my life, the more I realise how often black and white thinking has caused me unnecessary suffering.

I think about arguments I had at university.

Whose fault was it?

Mine?

Theirs?

Was it the drugs we were taking?

Our mental health?

Immaturity?

Or was the truth somewhere in the middle?

For years I searched for simple answers to complicated situations. I wanted someone to be entirely right and someone else to be entirely wrong. But life rarely works like that.

There is usually context.

There is usually shared responsibility.

There is usually grey.

People will still judge us based on isolated moments. Some people will decide I'm a terrible person because of something I've done. Others might see only the good.

Neither tells the whole story.

I'm never going to be perfect, and perfection shouldn't be the standard I judge myself by. Anything less than 100% isn't automatically a failure.

Black and white thinking limits our ability to learn, forgive and grow.

A few months later, I was at my friend's 30th birthday. I was 510 days sober before I had my first drink.

Was that a failure, or was 510 days still an achievement?

Maybe life isn't black and white after all.

Maybe it's the grey that makes us human.

But life is full of ups and downs so surely this high that I'm on cannot last? Potentially, logically, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't enjoy this moment whilst it lasts. When the weather is sunny you go to the park with your friends, you don't deny yourself because it won't be sunny tomorrow. So I could enjoy the moment I'm in and stop waiting for the balloon to pop.

And what if the balloon popped, what is so bad about that? Can't I get another balloon and pump it up again? Why am I letting a hypothetical hold me down?

Over the last few months I've had friends turn 30, get engaged, move in with partners, celebrate their first child hitting milestones. Maybe being surrounded by all this good energy is part of why I'm feeling up. There never really is a moment where there is so much good happening, and everything I mentioned isn't to do with me, but they are to do with my friends, and maybe I'm getting a contact high.

So what does that look like for me? It's simple really, I'm enjoying these moments. Giving my birthday gifts, seeing the new flat, applauding first steps. I'm there, not front and centre but in that circle, being rejuvenated. Don't question it, don't look for negatives, don't look for reasons not to take advantage of the energy around me right now. Channel it into my creative endeavours, fitness goals and my career.

But it does feel hard to trust. Maybe this balloon is so big it's a matter of time before it pops. It's happened multiple times before, sometimes I barely recovered. Maybe it will pop and if it does, I'll just pump it up again. My mindset is different, I'm in a different phase of my life. Maybe I'll learn how to release some air and keep the balloon size sustainable.

Recently I wrote about wondering if I'm too much or that I didn't belong, these are still thoughts intruding in my mind but right now that's at the back of my mind. At this moment in time I'm determined to capture the zest I'm currently feeling and run with it. I also spoke about being in different seasons and that it was okay whether you were healing, rebuilding, whether your current season didn't seem as productive as what you hoped. I'm still healing, it's a marathon not a sprint. I have blood tests to take, physiotherapy to complete, I'm having meetings with my managers discussing a potential return to work. I don't know where I'll be living in two months time. Evidently I'm carrying a lot, but energetically I feel something brewing, maybe my season is finally changing. Maybe I keep this zest and run.

Have you felt this before — the good thing you're scared to trust? Tell me about your balloon in the comments.

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I was watching a podcast where Grace Beverley talked about effort in relationships. She said if you think you’re too much, that’s fine. She’d had a thing before where her effort level clearly didn’t match the people she went for, and she used to think maybe she should bring hers down. But she realized she had it backwards. She shouldn’t have lowered herself, she should have brought their effort up. Because how great would it be if both people were trying to better each other’s day, each other’s life?

That’s what I’ve been sitting with.

I’m a giver. Acts of service is one of my love languages, but more than that, I see myself as a supportive person. It isn’t hard for me to be considerate, to show up, especially for the people who matter to me. If you’re important to me, I want to be there for you. Even if we aren’t that close, I still want to help. But not everyone shows up the way I do. So what now? Do I stop showing up for people? Do I stop going out of my way because it isn’t being reciprocated?

Some people would say I’m too much. “Too much” — what does that even mean? Too much because I asked a personal question? Too much because I asked a direct question? Too much because I didn’t ask a question at all? Maybe insisting everyone got an Uber home at 2am was a bit pushy. Maybe it wasn’t my place to tell the lady in the group to jump in one of our Ubers when she wanted to walk the twenty minutes home. Is that me overstepping, not respecting her agency? I was just trying to help. But nobody asked me to. I didn’t say out loud why I thought her walking home wasn’t safe, and it wasn’t my responsibility to keep everyone safe either. So maybe I was doing too much.

But I also think we all have a responsibility to the people in our circle. We should be helping each other to the best of our ability. We should all be making a high effort. Maybe surrounded by different people, I wouldn’t be “too much” — I’d be appreciated. Maybe the effort I make would actually be recognized. Travelling 200 miles for a birthday party. Travelling 70 miles to see a friend after a breakup. Helping someone move house. Going on a friend’s birthday trip when I was in a financial pickle. Calling friends I hadn’t spoken to in a while. Organizing group meetups with university mates we hadn’t seen in years. Staying at my friend’s first event till the end and helping clean up after. Maybe all the good I do for the people around me is expected, but when I offer a hand to someone who doesn’t know me as well, it’s suddenly too much, like it screams ulterior motives. I like to think I’m a genuine person, but I do wonder why I don’t get the validation or appreciation I deserve. I’m the person on the team who doesn’t get recognition — my part somehow gets left out. I often wonder, am I supposed to shout out everything I do for people? I don’t do it for praise. I didn’t help organize my friend’s birthday surprise because I wanted praise. But when he was asked to give a compliment to all his friends sitting around the table, I was the only friend he couldn’t think of a compliment for.

I don’t have an answer, but I do know I’m doing for others what they won’t do for me. So should I change? Stop visiting people who don’t visit me? Stop calling people who don’t call me? Stop keeping the peace with people who don’t make me feel at peace?

No. I’m not changing myself because of other people.

But Grace is right. I’m better off surrounding myself with people who want to give me as much energy as I give them. Two people showing up for each other as much as they can, whenever they can, both trying to better each other’s day. That’s the relationship where everyone actually thrives. Romantically, platonically, I think that’s good advice.

I’ve been the one giving more than I got. And when I burned out, I felt like a cigarette bud dropped on the pavement and stepped on. Tired of life, tired of trying, out of energy, nobody to turn to, not knowing how to ask for the same energy I was pouring into everyone else.

Truth is, there were probably people. I just don’t know how to ask. I’m more comfortable helping than being helped. Is that a toxic masculinity thing or a Teya thing? Either way, it’s something I’m working on. I’m breaking down walls. It’s going to take time.

But when I do ask for support, when I ask for my energy to come back to me, I’m not lowering what I give to meet the middle. I’m looking for people who match it. That shouldn’t be too much to ask. Not in every season, because people carry stress you don’t always see. But in general, you should get what you give.

That’s something I realized I deserve. Something we all deserve. And the people in your life should want to give you that.

Still, some nights it creeps back in when I lay in bed. 2am, 3am, 4am, still wondering if I’m too much and the conclusion I’ve come to is, I’m only too much for the wrong people.

I’m still working out who should and shouldn’t be in my life, but by the end, the people that stay will be the people that reciprocate.

Then I caught up with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. I asked how things were going. He told me about work, about him and his partner trying to figure out how to get a pay rise, about their child going through a difficult phase — picking up bad habits, testing their authority. All of a sudden my problems seemed smaller.

Not because my problems are less important than anyone else’s. But because everyone is carrying a series of problems, and unless they tell you about it, you’d never know.

I’ve spent the last few months doing physiotherapy, trying to get back to work, managing my accommodation issues. I’ve spent the last few months focused on my own situation, and rightfully so. But catching up with my friend reminded me I’m not alone in dealing with stressful situations. There are people I can relate to. People I could lean on, if I let myself.

He told me about parenthood, updates on his kids, a friend of his going through a divorce. Now we’re wondering how a relationship gets to that point — where you’ve given up on each other. It doesn’t feel that long ago our peers were having kids and getting engaged. Now we’ve hit the age where our peers are getting divorced.

We were catching up, but at some point I realised I wasn’t that interested in telling him what was going on with me. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to listen. Suddenly I was no longer bothered about the things causing stress in my life. I know the current season I’m going through, it may be tough but it doesn’t have to be all consuming if I decide it won’t be. So I just wanted to hear his perspective on his current season and how he is managing.

Because here’s what I’ve realised: we all move through different seasons. Sometimes happy, sometimes painful. Sometimes you’re burning out, sometimes you’re healing. And it’s okay to be in a season that isn’t optimal. A season full of problems you’re just trying to get through to the other side of.

My last month hasn’t been as productive as I’d like. After a much-needed holiday, I got ill and couldn’t do much. I lost recent gains I’d made in the gym — watched three months of consistency fall away. I had to delay my return to work again. More appointments with doctors. I got frustrated, and I started shrinking into my own bubble, my own problems, forgetting that everyone has stress they’re managing. That’s just part of life.

Now my stress doesn’t feel so overbearing. It doesn’t need to resolve ASAP. I can work on myself whilst dealing with stressful situations. This season does not need to be picture perfect — I can take the time off work I need while I sort out my mental and physical health. The energy I’m spending on the homework in therapy, the home exercises my physio gives me — maybe that’s what this season is for. I’m not going to hit my financial goals right now, and that’s fine.

We’re all in a season. Some of us are in the middle of the storm. Some of us are coming out the other side. None of us are doing it alone, even when it feels that way.

What season are you in right now?

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Socially, I've maintained healthy friendships and visited friends abroad when they were passing through. I left the continent twice, to the Caribbean and North Africa. Personally, I signed up to a leisure centre and made fitness part of my routine. I've been far more consistent with my physiotherapy. My mental health is better than it was this time last year — I've kept on top of my medication and therapy.

But my meditation practice has fallen off. I'm not journalling as much as I wanted. I'm nowhere near my reading goal. I'm still not conversational in a second language. Some goals I'm on track to hit. Some I've already hit. Some I won't be hitting, and that's okay.

I can accept that because, while I may not achieve every individual goal, I am moving in the right direction. There has been enough positive change that I can be proud of what I've done while acknowledging I'm not completely where I want to be. I'm 27 weeks better than the version of me in 2025, and I'll keep improving. A clock and a calendar don't decide whether I've succeeded or failed. That power is in my hands.

In 27 weeks it will be 2027. This year has gone fast — maybe because exactly a year ago, I had been off work due to a physical illness, then a mental one, and that's when a cacophony of work-related issues and pressures began. Issues I still haven't fully resolved.

As a child I underestimated how much your work life and personal life intertwine. It's almost impossible for one not to affect the other. As I struggled more at work, I struggled more at home. My health took the hit. Stress weakened my immune system and made me a sitting duck for whatever illness decided to have its way with me. Then, after enough time on sick leave, the financial problems start. You find yourself deciding which bill to prioritise and which to leave for a late payment.

It's safe to say 2025 burned me out. 2026 is the year I've spent recovering. 2027 should continue the upward trajectory, and 2026 should finish strong — but I don't need to finish everything I planned in the next 27 weeks for that to be true.

I just need to keep moving. That's the whole plan.

What are you 27 weeks better at than last year?

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I was having a migraine for the 5th hour straight, I was freezing cold in the middle of a summer heatwave, and I wasn't able to keep any food down.

I was suffering, looking around wondering how on earth this was my life. A week prior I was quad biking in Djerba on the coast of Tunisia. It's interesting how quickly life can change.

Last week I was eating the best pistachio flavoured desserts I've ever had in my life and this week I haven't eaten in three days because my stomach won't keep anything down.

Last week I was surrounded by friends and this week I've been all alone, too sick to get out of bed. Calling the doctors I was able to get assessed. I caught a travel bug. A week of relaxation turned into a week of turmoil and all I could focus on was how poorly I felt. Suddenly that was all that consumed my mind. That week in the sun surrounded by friends became non-existent, I couldn't get my mind past the horrible feeling in my body due to this travel bug. But as I write this I'm on the mend and for a brief period I felt better, I woke up with less of an ache at that exact moment, I had a realisation, my life is the sum of what I focus on. I couldn't picture a few weeks from now when I would have inevitably recovered and so I spent this entire week sick and depressed because my sickness was all I was focused on. A week earlier I wasn't depressed, when I was swimming in the pool of the villa in 36° heat I wasn't sad. When me and my friend went on a quest to find the perfect surprise birthday cake I wasn't feeling down, questioning how I ended up here.

It is important to stay grounded but it's also important to not get bogged down on your current circumstances because everything can be subject to change. If you focus on the positives, you will find positives. If you focus on the negatives, you'll find negatives. It's a kind of confirmation bias. I spent this entire week holed up in bed focusing on everything bad in my life because I was currently feeling bad when in reality I could have acknowledged I wasn't going to feel great for the next week or so and just looked at the positives or at least tried not to ruminate on the negatives whilst my body recovered.

I've noticed that is something I tend to do, get fixated on what's in front of me, not being malleable and that kind of rigidity doesn't benefit me. Suddenly all the work I've done for the last six months meant nothing because of one bad week. I didn't follow my training regime, should I quit? I didn't hit my protein intake, should I stop trying? I didn't complete the book I wanted to read. Should I bother going back to it? I might not write this week's Substack, did I let myself down? Whatever my metric of success for the week, I failed. But that doesn't mean my attempts were all for nothing. That doesn't make me a failure. Truth is, there will always be ups and downs, and one down period shouldn't be the lens you use for your self worth.

We found a lovely looking cake and it was delicious.

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"I think it's because it's never been addressed. We act like nothing happened but something did happen. How can we move past it if we aren't acknowledging what happened?"

"So what do you want to do about it?" she asks me.

"I think I need to address it. Because if I don't it's just going to keep coming up."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"To be honest, I think it just needs to be done. At least until I've explained it, it's going to keep bothering me. At least I can say my piece and just move on."

"And how do you think they'll take it?"

"I'm worried they'll invalidate my feelings, and I'm not here for it."

"And what if they invalidate your feelings?"

"Honestly, if they do, then it is what it is. I've said my piece, I'm moving on. Maybe we don't align and that's okay."

Difficult conversations are hard to have. I've put off many of them for weeks, months, years. But when you put off a difficult conversation, it doesn't go away. It just gets brushed under the carpet. It starts as a small bump and slowly gets bigger, and every so often you trip over it. In my case I'll be fine for long periods, but something will cause me stress and now I'm thinking about a previous situation, because it hasn't been fully addressed. We haven't honestly put the situation to bed. Until we face the wound and have the conversations we need to have, it's going to be extremely hard — nigh impossible — to move on.

"So when are you going to have this conversation?"

"Ooh, it's someone's birthday in a few weeks. I don't really want to bring this up then. I can hold off a little while longer."

Truth is, there's never a good time for bad news. A relationship breakup, quitting a job, admitting a mistake — there will always be a reason to avoid the talk. But there's no benefit in avoiding it. Your wound stays profound. What's brushed under the carpet only continues to grow, and yes, it may not be visible to the outside world, but you know it's there. You hurt yourself tripping over it every so often, whether you notice it or not.

I planned to wait. The wound didn't.

The conversation came up naturally. I had it with one person and it didn't go exactly how I planned. I didn't rehearse it, because I wasn't expecting to address it then. But it came up, and I thought opening up about that wound and showing empathy would help him see the benefit of pulling his own out from under the carpet and facing it too. He didn't agree with me, but he saw my point of view. He said he didn't understand at the time why it affected me so much, but he does now. A mutual understanding. I can work with that. It's not abnormal for two people to have differing views. I didn't get the apology I think I deserve, but my view wasn't invalidated, and that's what I was worried about the most. That's what would have made me end the friendship, just as the holiday was ending. I think I'm at peace with the situation. I think I have addressed what's under the carpet. I should be able to move on. It may take some time before I can confirm it.

We all have emotional wounds. Friendships, relationships, family, school, work. Wherever your trauma stems from, we can't let it dictate our life. Sometimes you can move forward with it trailing behind you. Sometimes you need to address it to move at the pace you deserve to.

That's what I'm doing.

I have a name given to me by a man I no longer talk to. I live in a city where I'm the person with the foreign accent. I have relationships I'm starting to question. I do not belong.

I'm the sober person dancing at a rave at 5am. I'm the man laughing on the phone outside the therapy room. I'm the person with a walking stick entering the gym. I do not belong.

30 years of living and I'm still wondering where I fit. Trying to force my round peg into square holes instead of going to find the round ones.

I've spent years asking the same questions. Who am I? What is my purpose? Where do I belong? And I've started to think I've had it backwards. That instead of searching for my place in life, I could make one. Lay a foundation and build on it. Plant my own roots and watch what grows.

Some mornings the old doubt creeps in, telling me I can't. But I'm learning to get up anyway. I am who I am, and I can be self-determined if I choose to be.

I think about what I actually want. A marriage that's a true partnership. Friends who appreciate me, flaws included. A job where I get to have interesting discussions and tell unique stories. I want to travel — see the parts of the world I've only read about, sit somewhere I can't pronounce and feel like I earned getting there.

Life is for the living, and I've been stuck a long time. Taking a back seat, waiting for someone else to drive me to a destination I never even chose. How boring. How passive.

Throughout history, life and literature, greatness is said to come in three ways: you are born great, you achieve greatness, or you have greatness thrust upon you. I wasn't born great. I'd argue nobody is — a title or a background you were handed doesn't make you great. And it's been 30 years with no right-place-right-time, no luck falling into my lap, so destiny clearly isn't doing the thrusting. That leaves one option. Achieving it. The people who achieve greatness grind, innovate, and work deliberately to carve out their own success. This is what I should have been doing in my twenties, but I got distracted. I started going wherever the wind took me. I forgot I had a purpose at all — and it's taken me almost ten years to realise the purpose was mine to decide the whole time. I don't have to stay where I don't belong. I don't have to accept a life that isn't in alignment with me. I can dance to my own drum and build the space where I fit.

I won't say the last decade was a waste. It wasn't. Maybe that version of me was what I needed to survive the worst of it — the internal anguish, the breakdowns, the burnouts. Maybe the old Teya coped the only way he knew how. Some of it caused more harm than good, but I thank him, because he survived. He lasted long enough to hand it to me. Now it's on me to get us over the line.

I decide where I belong.

Now you're stuck in a dilemma: be true to this new version of yourself, or do yourself a disservice and stick with what used to be comfortable.

My routine is relatively simple. I wake up, lie in bed, eat something small, go to the gym, swim, sauna, go home, eat a big meal, watch TV. Scroll on social media, meditate, sleep.

Some evenings I'll have a phone call with a friend. On rest days I'll schedule appointments or grocery shop. It's a simple life — not as stimulating as the old version of me. Sex, parties, substances. Chaos, chaos, chaos.

But it's also quite lonely. And there lies the confusion — because when I was partying, drinking, chasing fleeting connections, I also felt lonely. Lonely in a crowded room, trying to fit in. Now I'm just lonely, alone, bettering myself. Now I'm prioritizing myself.

A Harvard Study of Adult Development identifies good social relationships as the single strongest, most consistent predictor of a long, healthy, and happy life. I know how important friends and community are — but there's a caveat. They need to be good friends. People in alignment with who you are.

Having a group of friends that makes you feel isolated or unvalued is not where you should be. You want to be around people who are genuinely glad you're there. Friends who reciprocate the energy you give them. Friends who have your back when you're not in the room. Friends who celebrate your wins — all your wins, even when your wins are bigger than theirs.

For a long time, I didn't have that. It didn't apply to everyone, but it applied to some people — and some was too many. I didn't feel regulated or emotionally safe. I was having anxiety around them. Not invited to group hangs. Invited only after other people declined. An afterthought, always with a justification.

That's why I started spending more time alone. I needed to get comfortable being by myself so I wouldn't accept mistreatment just to avoid loneliness. I needed space to reflect — to figure out whether my reactions were justified, what I actually needed, what was good for my mind, my body, my soul. I knew I could only truly rely on myself. And if that was the case, I needed to start treating myself better.

But everybody needs friends. Isolation is not the answer.

What I've realized recently is that I need to find community in alignment with the person I am now — the values I hold today. A community where I'm valued. Where people are genuinely excited to have me around. Not dynamics that leave me second-guessing myself, feeling lonely inside a group.

So how do you find that? How does anyone make friends as an adult?

You find something you're interested in. You find where that interest exists near you. And you show up. You take in the experience. If someone looks interesting, you start small talk. If it's a recurring event, you eventually become a familiar face — and so do others. You strike up a conversation. You already have a common interest as a starting point. And with enough time, you find people you vibe with. And hopefully, after a little more time, you find your community.

So yes, healing is lonely. Right now you might be in a season of solitude — but there are two kinds of lonely: the loneliness that hollows you out, and the loneliness that's needed to grow. Solitude is always better than the wrong company. Understand what you're building. Understand you are not missing out. Understand you will find the community you deserve.

What kind of lonely are you in right now?

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I used to avoid it.

It felt uncomfortable. Risky.

But vulnerability is often what makes genuine connection and real growth possible.

Can you be vulnerable with yourself?

Can you be vulnerable with your friends?

We're all living life for the first time, and most of us had an experience somewhere along the way that taught us vulnerability wasn't safe.

When I was a child and I was in tears, my older brother used to tell me to fix my face.

A variation of boys don't cry.

I wasn't allowed to be sad, never mind show it. He probably didn't have bad intentions — he was probably told the same thing by an older male family member. But it's confusing to spend your whole childhood being told that vulnerability is weakness, that crying is weakness, that strength means feeling nothing.

So now I'm an adult, navigating a life nobody really prepares you for — and I'm struggling to be vulnerable in the moments it would probably help me most.

I could lie and say I'm stoic. Cold. That nothing gets to me.

It does.

I'm glad I noticed this about myself. I wasn't being honest about how I felt, which in turn made me behave in ways that didn't benefit me. I was self-sabotaging. I was getting in my own way.

I'm trying to unlearn it.

Most worthwhile things are difficult, so I'm determined. Because if I can't accept my own vulnerability, I'm limiting how much I can actually grow.

Not everyone deserves to see the full you. Trust has to be earned.

But your friends, a romantic partner, family — people you genuinely trust — you should be able to let them in. Reach out when you need support.

Yes, it's hard to allow yourself to be fully seen.

Sometimes it takes a leap of faith.

Maybe they open up in return. Maybe they don't.

Maybe you feel heard and validated. Maybe you feel lighter because someone is helping you carry the weight.

Maybe the reaction isn't what you hoped for. That would hurt.

But at least you did it.

Being okay with that uncertainty — that's the work.

For years I built walls. I would keep people at arm's length, get to know them on a personal level, but keep certain parts of me hidden.

I would often be the helper in the relationship but never able to ask for help.

I would get close with people but look for reasons why it could never work.

Now I'm sad when people can't get close.

That's the irony of it.

I want to be truly seen, but I'm not prepared to be seen.

Telling someone I care about you, I need support, I'm afraid, I made a mistake — it makes me uncomfortable. I can't control how they'll respond, so instead I maintain a facade.

But that facade is exactly what's preventing the connections I actually want.

In the last five years, spaces like the Red Pill and the Manosphere have grown significantly. Places where men, allegedly, are taught how to become men.

I watched a few videos in these spaces and it was very superficial.

Get money. Get power. Get women.

But nothing seemed real.

There was no romantic connection. No spiritual purpose.

They looked even more invisible than I felt.

These spaces argue that vulnerability is dangerous — that it reduces your attractiveness, your status, your influence. Men are encouraged to appear emotionally self-sufficient. Stoic. In control at all times.

But humans are social creatures.

Am I never supposed to feel anything negative?

Am I less attractive because some days I feel sad?

That doesn't seem logical to me.

When men feel unable to be vulnerable with anyone, spaces like that are waiting. And they fill the gap with what I can only describe as bad advice.

So not only am I fighting instincts that were conditioned out of me in childhood — I'm also pushing back against years of insecure online propaganda dressed up as strength.

So I'm allowing myself to be vulnerable now.

Not because it's easy.

But because vulnerability isn't weakness.

It takes courage to let yourself be seen.

It takes strength.

And if you have the right people around you, they'll meet you there — just like you'd meet them.

That's the only way anyone gets to truly know who you are.

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That's a lot of anger, I could give you another six reasons. Is my anger justified? Completely. But do I benefit from my anger? No.

I held so many negative feelings towards people that it would consume me. Would I spend every night ruminating over each person and the reason for my resentment? No I didn't. But I still gave it too much time and energy. Time is something I can't get back so why am I purposely giving time and energy away to someone who hurt me. They already cost me my joy, why am I giving them my time?

We all have wounds and if you don't heal, they will continue to bleed. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. He has had a tumultuous relationship with his older sister. In his words, over the last few years she's gotten better but her relationship with all her brothers are non-existent due to her behaviour. She is the only female within the siblings and when I look at her, I can empathize for what trauma she would have had to deal with growing up the same way I empathize for what trauma he had to deal with. I suggested that if he genuinely believes she's trying to change, he mentioned she started doing therapy and she apologised for a lot of things, it might be worth accepting the apology and moving forward. Now he believes too much has been done, and I'm sure there is a lot he hasn't told me but I do think of the mistakes he has made and how I've forgiven him. I've shown him grace he won't show his sister.

I also think about the mistakes my parents made in raising me whilst simultaneously only starting to comprehend how hard it must have been for a poor family to migrate across the world to a new country with a new culture, a new language and work to put food on the table and a roof over our heads.

I came to a realisation not too long ago and since then my perspective has changed on a lot of viewpoints.

Me, you, and everyone else is living for the first time.

This is the first time we are doing what we call life. How many times have you done something for the first time and failed? But we can be so hard on people making mistakes in life? I had a perspective shift, I started looking at people differently, I saw my parents in a new light. All the love I missed out on wasn't because my parents purposely decided to neglect me, it was because we were receiving overdue rent notices and suddenly my dad had to work more hours whilst my older siblings became teenagers which brought through it's own problem. An auntie and a cousin lived with us for a little while, I don't even know why, my parents were still trying to help their remaining siblings with their visa applications. All in a second language. I never really thought how hard it must have been for them. Of course there would be a huge strain on their relationship, of course there would be arguments, of course there will be questions whether moving to the United Kingdom at 30yrs old leaving their parents behind was the smart decision. However they are my parents, they brought me into this world, I never asked to be here therefore the responsibility ultimately falls on them. However I am less angry, there is much less resentment because they were both being parents for the first time, of course they were going to make a plethora of mistakes. I have too.

There were two reasons I chose to forgive my parents, 1) I've shown them grace for the context their actions were in.

2) I realised holding on to this ill feeling was not benefiting me at all. It was like I was drinking poison hoping it hurt someone else.

Same reason I forgave my friends and the other people who hurt me. Not because they deserved to be forgiven but I deserve to forgive. I deserve to live without that negative energy consuming me. I tried to explain that to my friend, that he doesn't seem to be over what occurred with his sister and forgiving her might be what's best for you because ultimately you are the one carrying this pain and it is up to you to let it go.

But he wasn't ready.

Emotional wounds cut deep.

He couldn't see past his resentment, maybe he just needs more time, maybe he needs to look inwards, maybe he'll realise he doesn't want that anger and will show himself grace by showing his sister grace. Just like I've let go of the past, the incidents that truly hurt me, made me feel isolated, unloved, victimised and depressed. I had to forgive everyone, I didn't make a big deal out of it, I didn't call anyone out, let them know how they made me feel. We are all living for the first time. I decided to show others grace I hope people would show me, and I decided to forgive everyone who hurt me. Not because they deserve my forgiveness, but because I deserve to forgive.

Do you love someone else? If you do love someone else, are you rude to them? Do you make them feel small? Do you make them feel like they can't do anything right? Do you encourage them to drink, do drugs or do anything else that negatively impacts their life?

So if you do all that to yourself it's fair to say you don't love yourself.

You often live in a manner you would not want for others. Your friends treat you the way you would never treat them. Your lover speaks to you in a way you would never speak to them. You self-destruct in a manner you would never want your family to.

So why are you worth less than everyone else in your life? I can only conclude that you don't love yourself. That's not me being mean, I'm just looking at the evidence and if I'm wrong, the evidence would suggest something different.

So why don't you love yourself? Is it because the evidence suggests you don't deserve love? Would you love yourself if you didn't accept poor treatment from those around you or would you not accept poor treatment from those around you if you actually did love yourself?

Truth is, it can be difficult to know what came first, but it also doesn't matter. Once you realise there is an unhealthy dynamic, change it immediately. Love yourself immediately. All the evidence that tells you otherwise needs to go. If your lover treats you poorly, end it. If your friends make you feel bad about yourself, stop seeing them. If your habits make it hard to look at yourself in the mirror, quit those habits.

I'm over a year sober, I cut out an unhealthy habit and the truth is, there were many other things in my life causing me problems. Alcohol is just easier to blame.

It's easy to say alcohol and drugs are causing you issues in life and whilst I don't want to make substance indulgence seem like less of an issue, why did you indulge so much in the first place? Why does a part of you feel the need to engage in a lifestyle not good for you?

Why are you having casual sex when your feelings aren't casual? Why are you eating unhealthily when you don't like the shape you're in? Why are you continuing your bad habits when these habits don't make you happy?

Sometimes you spend so much energy on other people, that you forget to spend energy on yourself. Sometimes you don't truly know yourself so you believe what you are told. You struggle to grow because people around you are holding you down.

You accept maltreatment because you don't love yourself the way that you should. Maybe it's not your fault, maybe your parents reminded you that you weren't special, or your partner constantly made you feel small, or your so-called friends dimmed your light. Maybe so much has happened that your inner dialogue struggles to say anything good about yourself.

It is not your fault.

You are deserving of love and if you don't love yourself, you will accept your world and the people in it not showing you love and that is not okay.

But it is up to you to start loving yourself. You have to do the work, you have to make the changes. The aspects of your life you accept because you don't love yourself, have to be cut out and disposed of.

.

Am I doing a thing that makes you feel sad for me?

Trusting people doesn't come easily to me. Neither does sharing. I love for my friends to feel comfortable sharing their pain with me but when it comes to me sharing my pain, I worry it's a tactic to manipulate. Sympathy or more likely empathy to me feels like I'm taking something from someone because for some reason I feel uncomfortable when I'm getting from someone else. Almost as if it's an unfair trade.

So I'm stuck between two thoughts. Wanting people to know what I'm going through, but being convinced that telling them is just engineering their sympathy. So when my friends ask me how I'm doing, I respond "I'm fine." When they ask what I was up to, I say "just chilling." Because I don't want to tell them that I'm sad, stressed or depressed. I'm not trying to share that feeling, I don't want them to feel sad, stressed, depressed or sympathetic for me, not because I'm so prideful I am scared to appear vulnerable, I'm more scared that I'm manipulating them for some sort of gain.

The irony is I'm so worried about manipulating people that the worry itself becomes its own kind of burden I carry alone. The exhaustion of monitoring myself — calculating what to say, what to leave out, what my motive is for either. Is my motive pure or am I a trickster?

Am I sharing my thoughts and feelings or is it a facade? A way to manipulate people around me? After I started to share less about what I was going through, that was the only way I could avoid manipulating people into feeling sympathetic for me because I had just learned I wasn't allowed to be vulnerable with friends.

But that silence is confusing because why can I not be vulnerable with my friends? I'm going through something, why can't I confide in my friends? I don't need them to feel sympathetic, I don't need them to fix my problems, I just need them to hear because it does feel good to vocalise the thoughts disturbing your brain. It does feel good to speak to someone and remind yourself you are not alone.

But I'm alone with my thoughts, the more I keep to myself, the more pain I'm suffering, I feel like I'm drowning, and again someone asks me how I'm doing, I say "I'm fine" as I thrash around trying to keep my head above water. Because to say I'm not fine will be making people feel sorry for me again.

That's something I'm unlearning about myself. The constant self monitoring does me no good and like I realised recently, I can't control other people's thoughts or how I'm perceived. I spoke to my therapist about this. I said I struggle to open up because it feels having people feel sorry for me is manipulating them for my benefit. She told me it's not that she's feeling sorry for me, she's feeling empathy, a perfectly natural human emotion and it's not a bad thing to feel.

I try to remind myself to give myself some grace. Not everything needs to be multilayered. If someone is going to see my vulnerability as deception, then unfortunately we do not align and that's okay. I've come to terms with a lot of ideas the last few months. I'm at peace with a lot of opinions and perceptions. I have the right to be vulnerable and nobody is taking that away from me.

.

Sometimes much harder than we would ever be on someone else.

We show grace to other people.

We forgive their mistakes.

We make space for their context.

We remind them that they are human.

Then we turn around and speak to ourselves in a way we would never speak to a friend.

And for some reason, we decide that is okay.

I have spent a lot of time sitting with my own thoughts, replaying things I have done, things I have said, things people have said about me, and wondering what it all means about who I am as a person.

Am I selfish?

Am I difficult?

Am I misunderstood?

Am I the problem?

Different people can have completely different opinions about your character.

And maybe that makes sense.

We all show up differently in different parts of our lives. Work life, social life, romantic life, family life. Most of us wear different versions of ourselves depending on where we are, who we are with, and what we are trying to survive.

But the danger is when you start letting everyone else's version of you become louder than your own.

Because the only person who lives with you every second of every day is you.

And yet sometimes, your inner critic decides you are the worst possible version of yourself.

For something you would probably forgive someone else for.

When my last round of therapy ended, my therapist said to me:

"Teya, if there is one thing you take from our sessions, it is this: don't listen to your inner critic. You are too hard on yourself. Show yourself some grace."

I can't lie, that has been hard.

But it is something I have been working on.

Any time I notice myself falling back into old habits, I try to pause. I try to catch the thought before it becomes the truth. I try to ask myself whether I am being fair, or whether I am just repeating the same cruel script I have been carrying for years.

And when I notice I am being talked down to, I remove myself from the conversation.

Because I spend 24/7 with myself.

The least I can do is be kind.

And I think making that change has had a bigger impact than I expected.

The energy around me feels different.

More vibrant.

More calming.

More welcoming.

In life, just like throughout the year, we all go through seasons.

Some seasons are tougher than others.

The last season was tough.

It was cold.

Windy.

Rainy.

But time has passed.

I am still here.

And I can see the sun starting to shine through the clouds.

Sometimes it is hard not to focus on everything going wrong.

Work stress.

Relationship troubles.

Health issues.

Money worries.

The same problems appearing again and again until you start wondering whether the common denominator is you.

I was tired of it all.

And I was alone with it all.

Alone with my thoughts, 24/7, suddenly hearing that familiar whisper:

*Look what you've done.

You messed everything up.

Look at all the problems you caused.*

But I did not choose to get sick.

So why was I stressing about my co-workers picking up extra work as if that was some moral failure on my part?

That was not fair to myself.

But the inner critic does not care about fairness.

Maybe when you are often blamed, judged, or held responsible for things that are only partially your fault — or not your fault at all — you start to believe it.

You start assigning blame to yourself automatically.

Your partner is angry?

Must be your fault.

You do not learn the role at work quickly enough?

Must be your fault.

There is tension in the friend group?

Must be your fault.

But why must it be your fault?

That little cretin always at the back of your head, too far to reach, whispering negativity in your ear.

That is your inner critic.

And not every voice in your head deserves authority.

Our identity is not fixed.

We have the ability to grow.

To change.

To soften.

To evolve into the people we want to become.

So I am trying to show myself empathy.

The same empathy I show other people.

The same patience.

The same understanding.

The same grace.

And I encourage you to do the same.

Because maybe if we were all a little kinder to ourselves, if our inner dialogue became more supportive, more forgiving, more human…

Maybe we would be happier.

Maybe we would stop punishing ourselves for surviving.

Maybe we would finally realise we were never as bad as the voice made us believe.

The cost people forget to account for is peace of mind.

Stress is something everyone carries. Sometimes it's earned. Sometimes it sharpens you, moves you forward. But sometimes it just costs you — quietly, gradually — until you realise you've been subsidising other people's chaos with parts of yourself you didn't agree to give away.

I used to absorb other people's stress because I couldn't say no. Because I didn't want to upset anyone. My friends would cause me stress and I'd accept it, silently, out of fear of being pushed aside.

I didn't understand what it was costing me at the time. I just knew I felt worse. I'd look at myself and wonder why I kept letting people take something from me I was never getting back. I think insecurity shows up in ways you don't always recognise. Looking back, maybe I thought if I pushed back, they wouldn't like me. Maybe I was afraid of being alone. So I stayed. And when my cortisol spiked, my energy drained, my self-worth quietly eroded — I bore the full cost. Nobody issued a refund.

I can't control how people behave, but I can control how much access they have to me. If I notice that my peace is being infringed upon, I don't have to argue, plead, or over-explain. I can remove myself. Nobody is owed my peace of mind. Nobody is owed my time. And if I don't like who I become around someone, that is usually enough information.

There's a thing men do where they're cruel to each other and call it banter. I don't know exactly where it comes from. I've been guilty of it myself.

I wonder how much of it is genuine humour and how much is something else. A coping mechanism, maybe. Something inherited and normalised. There was a guy who used to call me stupid and useless — regularly, casually — and after a while I started to wonder if he was right. I'd make an error at work and treat it as evidence. Why did I let that happen? Were these things I'd been told about myself as a child, so when I heard them again as an adult, from someone who was supposed to be a friend, they just... settled in?

And then I'd feel low, and at some point take it out on someone else.

Is that what this is? A circle of disrespect, passed around like it's nothing?

A few weeks ago I called someone stupid because he made a mistake. I thought about it for the rest of the day. I hate being called stupid over an honest error. And there I was, doing the same thing to someone who had simply got something wrong.

So I'm trying to be more careful with the words I use. I don't want to be the reason someone else is quietly paying a price they didn't sign up for — the same way I gave up my peace for so long without realising its worth.

Life is hard enough. I don't need to make it harder by giving away something that belongs to me.

My peace is sacred. It's mine.

Right now, I don’t know where I’ll be living in a month. I don’t know where I’ll be working either. Two major unknowns, both uncomfortably close. That’s not a distant problem — that’s weeks away. That’s real.

And what I’ve started to notice is this: I’ve been giving up a lot of agency in my own life.

For the past few months, I’ve felt like I’m on the outside looking in. Waiting for decisions to be made for me. Not taking initiative. Not pushing for what I actually want.

I’ve been dealing with what is without making the changes I know I need. Telling myself I’ll figure it out later. And to be fair, being sick and tired makes that easier to justify. Migraines, fatigue, waiting for the next doctor’s appointment — there’s always something.

But the truth is, there will always be something. Meanwhile, life keeps moving, with or without you.

So moving forward, I’ve decided to be the driver in my own vehicle. But words don’t mean much without action behind them. Actions are what actually reveal who you are.

Agency, to me, is the ability to influence your life through your actions — even when things aren’t ideal.

Life will always come with constraints. Having agency isn’t about self-blame — it’s about seeing options as well as obstacles. It’s about asking, what can I do? instead of only cataloguing what you can’t. When I get knocked down, I try to get back up. When I feel stuck, I look around and find a way to keep moving — even if it’s slow.

At the start of this year, I wrote down a list of goals. One of them was to publish a Substack every week — so far, I’ve kept that promise. Another was to start a YouTube channel.

But that goal kept moving.

First it was, I’ll start when I have a settled address.

Then, when I buy a new computer.

Then, when my health is better.

In reality, I’ve just been kicking the can down the road — waiting for the perfect moment. But the perfect moment doesn’t arrive. Waiting for it only delays action.

A better question is this:

What can I do with the capacity I have right now?

Not when things are perfect.

Not when everything is stable.

Not when I feel 100%.

Right now.

I’ve also noticed I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos about productivity. And there’s a trap in that. Watching content about being productive feels like progress — but it isn’t. It’s a false dopamine hit. You feel like you’ve moved forward, but you’re still standing still.

So here’s the shift: less researching, less planning, more acting.

Because you don’t act when you’re ready — you become ready after you act.

When it comes to stress, instead of telling myself, I can’t cope with all of this, I’m trying to ask:

What’s the minimum effective thing I can do today?

What’s the next concrete step?

It’s not about pushing yourself beyond your limits, or turning your life into a productivity machine, or ignoring your mental and physical health.

It’s about looking at your life as it is, recognising what’s actually in your control, and choosing to act on it.

Even if the step is small.

Even if it’s imperfect.

Even if it’s just enough to keep things moving.

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