You stop yourself from progressing, succeeding and moving forward.

I used to be a multi-tasker. I enjoyed working on many projects at a time because I got bored quickly. It was something that let me breathe, sleep, and live. However, lately, I have been unable to be myself.

I feel sick most of the time. Medicines, sleep and aimless silent gazes have become my closest friends. I used to express my experiences, emotions, and observations regularly in poetry and blogs. They have been choking me since I stopped writing, making me feel sick, exhausted and overwhelmed. My critical faculty feels rusty. Deep cleaning and polishing have been on the list for a long time now. So, I began to motivate, support and encourage others around me, but I felt empty from within. Very empty and silent. My gave-up-on-myself approach doesn’t let me sleep, especially while talking others into believing in themselves. I have been meeting dark, long and quiet sleepless nights regularly. Early mornings aren’t cheerful any longer. I feel overwhelmingly full of emotions, thoughts and easily achievable plans. Lately, I am being chased by my let-us-do-something self all the time.

Finally, my only solace for a longer time is to wake up every day and teach brilliant minds. It is something I love to do, which keeps me going. It requires a lot of sincere preparation, comprehension and learning. But it is what I am great at doing. This reminds me of myself, my old self. A learner who was always ready to take up challenges, grab all the opportunities, and work thoughtlessly—someone who had never had a chance to sit, contemplate, and think through. I was a doer.

But then life happened. Zigzagged phases robbed me of myself and turned me into an absent thinker. Factually, I was just an overthinker who was afraid, yes, terrified, of doing. I began to feel bad about myself, but that turned me into a sadist, a miserable person who always pitied herself. I started believing that my non-productivity was on others consciously. I have just been a poor-sad-thing, a struggler who is fighting hard to breathe. That’s it.

Well, I am a survivor, a self-made person, a traveller of life, a learner, and a doer.

Today, I am finally taking this first decisive step toward getting myself back to being a mindful, curious, conscious, natural learner—a risktaker, a survivor, a traveller, a hardworking being—someone who learns by doing, not the contemplator who only thinks. I am getting a stronghold on the steering of my life.

I can breathe now.