When I’m happy. When I’m sad. When I’m confused. When life has humbled me. When I’m overthinking. When I need to escape. When I don’t have the words. When I simply want to create.

Painting has become one of the places where I can just be. I don’t always know what I’m trying to say when I start, but somewhere between the colours, the brushstrokes and the process, I usually find it.

Whatever the feeling… I paint. 🎨

When you're naturally someone who helps, listens, gives people the benefit of the doubt and tries to make things easier for those around you, you don't always notice when it starts becoming expected rather than appreciated. You do it because that's just who you are, until one day you realise someone has become far too comfortable receiving from you without ever considering what it costs you.

I think the difficult part is knowing where kindness ends and being taken for granted begins. You can care about people and still say no. You can be generous without constantly giving more than you have. You can understand someone's situation without always making excuses for their behaviour. Sometimes people will call you different when you finally put a boundary in place, simply because they're no longer getting the version of you that always made things convenient for them.

But I don't want someone else's behaviour to change the kind of person I am. I don't want to become less kind because someone once took advantage of my kindness. Maybe the lesson isn't to stop giving, but to become more aware of who I'm giving to and why. I can still be a kind person without making myself endlessly available, and perhaps that's the balance keeping the part of me that cares, while learning that kindness doesn't mean I have to keep giving until there's nothing left for me.

Like this flower, beautiful in its bunch yet still beautiful on its own. That's my current feeling. There is something about seeing a flower amongst others, surrounded by different colours and shapes, that makes you appreciate its place within the bunch. But take that same flower on its own and it is still beautiful.

And for someone who has never seen it amongst the others, they wouldn't know what they were missing. They would simply see the flower as it is and find beauty in that.

That's exactly how l feel today, incomplete yet complete.

Knowing there is still so much more to come, while at the same time being able to appreciate what is already here.

There are days when I've been so caught up in my phone, my thoughts, my plans and everything I think I need to get done that I suddenly realise I've spent far too long indoors. At that point, I don't necessarily need another productivity tip or another thing added to my to-do list. I probably just need to leave the house.

There is something funny about how easily we can become completely absorbed in our own little worlds. We can spend ages scrolling, replying to messages, watching videos, thinking about what we're going to do next or getting lost in our own thoughts, while outside there is an entire world carrying on without us. Sometimes I think the best thing I can do is put my phone away, go for a walk, feel the fresh air and remind myself that not everything needs my immediate attention. I don't need to achieve anything on that walk. I don't need to listen to a podcast, track my steps or turn it into some kind of personal improvement project. I can just go outside and exist for a little while.

Maybe that's what I mean when I say I need to touch some grass. Sometimes I need to get out of my own head. I need to stop thinking about everything I haven't done, everything I want to do and everything I could potentially be doing, and simply notice what's around me. It could be the weather, the trees, people walking past, the sound of traffic or absolutely nothing interesting at all. And somehow, after a little while, I usually come back feeling like I've pressed a very small reset button. Not because I've solved anything, but because sometimes I don't need to solve anything.

Sometimes I just need to remember that life is happening outside my phone too.

They seem to know what they're doing, where they're going and what they want next, while I'm still thinking about what I might want to try, what I might change and whether the idea I had yesterday is still the idea I want today. Then I remind myself that I probably look much more certain from the outside than I actually feel on the inside.

The older I get, the more I realise that life doesn't really come with a point where someone hands you a set of instructions and says, “Right, you've got it now.” We make decisions, see what happens, change our minds, make mistakes, learn something new and then make another decision. Sometimes we feel confident about where we're going, and sometimes we have absolutely no idea. I think I've been expecting there to be a moment when everything suddenly makes sense, but perhaps that moment isn't coming because life is not something we eventually figure out once and for all.

I also think we forget how much we learn simply by doing things. We don't always need to know exactly how something will turn out before we begin. Sometimes we start with a vague idea, make it up as we go along and learn what we actually want somewhere along the way. We might change direction, try something completely different or realise that the thing we thought we wanted isn't actually for us. That doesn't necessarily mean we've failed or wasted our time. It might simply mean we've learnt something about ourselves that we couldn't have known without trying.

And perhaps that's why I find other people's lives so interesting. The people I know are all making different choices, trying different things and working things out in their own ways. Some seem incredibly certain about what they want, while others are still exploring. But even the people who seem completely sure of themselves probably have moments when they wonder whether they're making the right decision. We rarely see those moments, because most of us are much better at showing what we've decided than admitting how long we spent wondering what to decide.

So maybe I don't need to have everything figured out either. Maybe it's okay to be curious, to change my mind, to start something and realise I want something different, or to simply not know what comes next. There are so many things I haven't experienced yet that I can't possibly know exactly who I'll be or what I'll want further down the road. Perhaps figuring it out as I go isn't a sign that I'm behind.

Perhaps it's just what all of us are doing, whether we admit it or not.

No, it’s because I have somehow turned my screenshots into a digital storage unit. Every time I see something I want to remember, I screenshot it. Something funny? Screenshot. Something I might need later? Screenshot. An idea I don't want to forget? Screenshot. Something I want to come back to? Screenshot.

At the time, it all makes perfect sense. I'm being organised. I'm saving it for later. Future me will be grateful.

The problem is that future me never actually goes back to look at any of it. I have no idea how many screenshots are sitting on my phone right now, but I know there are probably hundreds of things in there that I was absolutely convinced I needed to remember. I could probably spend an entire afternoon scrolling through them and wondering why I thought a random screenshot from six months ago was so important. And yet, when my phone tells me I'm running out of storage, I don't immediately think, “Let me delete all those screenshots.” I think, “I might need them.” Need them for what? I couldn't tell you, but apparently deleting them would be far too risky.

So now my phone is quietly suffering because I refuse to let go of screenshots I haven't looked at in months. I keep telling myself that one day I'll go through them properly and clear everything out, but somehow that day never comes. Instead, I'll probably take another screenshot tomorrow of something I want to remember, save it alongside the hundreds of others, and feel completely satisfied that I've solved the problem of forgetting it.

My phone may disagree, but at least I'll have a screenshot of it.

I genuinely believe I am being organised. I am protecting the important item from being lost, damaged or accidentally thrown away, and in that moment I have absolutely no doubt that I will remember exactly where I have put it. Future me will be grateful. Future me will simply walk over to the carefully selected safe place, retrieve the item and carry on with her day. Unfortunately, future me is usually standing in the middle of the room several days later with absolutely no idea where that safe place is.

The problem is that I never put things somewhere random. That would almost be easier to understand. I put them somewhere that makes perfect sense at the time. I have a whole thought process behind it. I might think, “I'll put this here because I'll definitely remember it's here,” and then confidently walk away feeling quite pleased with myself. What I don't consider is that the version of me making that decision is not the same version of me who will be desperately looking for the thing three weeks later. At the time, I know exactly where it is. Three weeks later, I am apparently a completely different person who has never seen the item before in her life

It usually starts quite calmly. I realise I need something, so I go to the place where I am convinced I put it. It's not there, but that's fine because I must have put it somewhere else. Then I start checking the obvious places, followed by the places that are slightly less obvious. Eventually I start opening drawers that I haven't opened in months and looking in bags I haven't used since last year, because at this point I have accepted that my past self cannot be trusted and absolutely anything is possible.

Then comes the moment when I start trying to reconstruct the original thought process. I stand there thinking, “Right, what was I doing when I put it away?” I try to remember what room I was in, what I had been doing, what I was thinking about and why I apparently decided that the safest place for this particular item was somewhere I would never think to look. It becomes less like finding something I misplaced and more like solving a mystery created by a previous version of myself who left absolutely no clues.

And the funniest part is that when I finally find it, it is almost always somewhere completely ridiculous but also somehow logical. I open a drawer and there it is, sitting exactly where I put it. I stare at it for a moment, trying to understand how I could possibly have forgotten. Then I remember the thought I had at the time: “I'll put it here because I'll definitely remember.” And honestly, I have to respect the confidence. The confidence was impressive. The memory, unfortunately, was not.

At this moment in time, I’m promising myself that I will never put anything in a “safe place” again, but I already know that in three weeks’ time, I’ll be right back at it.

My mind is constantly curious, constantly noticing things, constantly wondering, What if I tried that?

The difficult part isn't coming up with ideas. It's accepting that I can't possibly pursue all of them at once. There are so many things I want to learn, create, explore and experience. Sometimes I wish I had several versions of myself so I could follow every little spark of curiosity that comes along.

I think that's the strange thing about being curious. One thing leads to another. You start looking into something because it interests you, and suddenly you've discovered three other things you want to know more about. Before you know it, you've gone down a completely different rabbit hole.

And sometimes that can feel overwhelming. I have ideas sitting in notebooks, ideas in my phone, ideas I've talked about out loud and ideas that have only existed in my head for a few minutes. Some of them I know I'll come back to. Others might never become anything at all.

I've sometimes wondered whether that's a bad thing. Should I be more focused? Should I choose one thing and stick with it? Should I stop starting new things until I've finished everything I've already begun?

But I'm starting to think that maybe curiosity isn't something I need to discipline out of myself.

Maybe some ideas are simply there to make me curious.

Not every idea needs to become a business. Not every interest needs to become a project. Not everything I enjoy has to lead somewhere. Sometimes I can simply explore something because it caught my attention.

I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to turn our interests into something productive. We learn something and immediately think about what we can do with it. We have an idea and immediately wonder whether it could become something bigger. We forget that sometimes it's enough to simply enjoy being interested in something.

The hardest part for me is knowing that I don't have unlimited time. There are books I want to read, things I want to create, places I want to see, skills I want to learn and ideas I want to explore. I could probably fill several lifetimes with everything I'm curious about.

So perhaps the answer isn't trying to find the perfect way to pursue everything.

Perhaps it's accepting that I won't.

I can keep the ideas. I can write them down. I can return to them when I have the time and the energy. I can let some of them go. And I can allow myself to become completely fascinated by something new without feeling guilty about everything else waiting for me.

Maybe having more ideas than I have time isn't a problem to solve.

Maybe it's simply part of being a curious person.

And, honestly, I think I'd rather have a mind that keeps wondering what if? than one that has stopped asking the question.

Does anyone else feel like they have more ideas than they have time?