I had meant to clean. Only that: to clear the shelf above my desk, which had accumulated the slow sediment of years — a broken pen cap, a hair tie I don’t recognise, a matchbox with two matches left. I hadn’t planned to stop. But then I pull down a stack of notebooks held together with a rubber band that snaps the moment I touch it, and I sit down on the floor the way you do when something unexpectedly requires your full attention.

Dust lifts and settles. The room smells faintly of old paper. Outside, an autorickshaw horn rises and fades. I sit with the notebooks in my lap and the afternoon holds still around me.

There is also an old phone at the back of the drawer I open next, behind a tangle of charging cables that belong to devices I no longer own. And in the corner of the shelf, half-hidden behind a row of books I keep meaning to read, a doll sits with its back against the wall, looking at nothing in particular.

I had not gone looking for any of this. But here we are.

* * *

The notebooks are bound in that particular shade of green that exists only in government-approved school stationery — a color so specific it could only be called institutional. Class 9, Class 10, Class 11, Class 12: each one labelled in my own handwriting on the cover, though the handwriting changes so visibly across the four that they seem to belong to different people.

The Class 9 notebook is careful. Each letter is formed with a kind of anxious precision, as though the girl writing it believed that neatness itself was a form of virtue. The margins are clean. The dates are underlined in red ink with a ruler. There is a sincerity to it that is almost painful to look at — the sincerity of someone who still believed the rules were worth following exactly.

By Class 11, the handwriting has loosened into something faster and less concerned with appearance. The margins are no longer clean. There are phone numbers written sideways in blue ink, a small cartoon sun in the corner of one page, a line from a song I can no longer identify. Somewhere in the middle of a chapter on electrochemistry, someone — I — has written the word bored in very small letters and then circled it three times.

I open the Class 10 Maths notebook and find a derivation that takes up three full pages, each step numbered, each line of working shown in full because the teacher insisted and because I was too cautious to do otherwise. I remember nothing of deriving it. I remember nothing of whether I understood it. What I remember, or think I remember, is the low-grade fear that lived in those years like background noise — the fear of falling behind, of forgetting something important on a day that mattered, of being the person who didn’t know when everyone else did.

The formula at the end of those three pages is circled in red and starred. As if to say: this. Remember this.

I don’t remember it.

What I find instead, scattered through all four notebooks, are the things that were never meant to be there. A doodle of a window with curtains. A list of names — a class seating arrangement, maybe, or a group project — written and then crossed out and rewritten. On the inside back cover of the Class 12 Chemistry notebook, in ink so faded it is barely legible, a list of things to do after the boards: learn guitar. read the books on my shelf. sleep. sleep. sleep.

That last item written three times, with increasing emphasis, says more about that year than any of the notes.

I sit with the notebooks for a while without reading them. Just holding them. There is a specific quality to the weight of a notebook filled with someone else’s handwriting — and it takes me a moment to understand that the handwriting is mine, that the someone else is also me, that the distance between that girl and this woman sitting on the floor is both enormous and somehow not very far at all.

She wanted things I have since stopped wanting. She feared things I have since forgotten. She wrote down formulae with the certainty that they would be necessary, that the future would require exactly this — this careful record, this proof of effort. She could not have known that the notebooks would end up here, unread for years, in a room that would eventually become unfamiliar to her in ways she couldn’t imagine.

I wonder, sometimes, what she would think of the person who kept them.

* * *

The phone is heavier than I expect. It always surprises me, how much heavier old technology feels — as though the years have added something to it, some additional density that wasn’t there before.

It is a flat black rectangle with a scratched screen and a home button that no longer responds. The case — a floral one, pink and yellow, the kind I chose because I was seventeen and pink felt like a colour that had opinions — has a crack along one corner. I turn it over in my hands the way you turn over a stone you’ve found somewhere interesting, uncertain what you’re looking for.

The phone won’t charge. I know this because I have tried, more than once, in the idle way you try things you know won’t work. I plug it in and wait, and nothing happens, and I unplug it and put it back in the drawer. This has been our entire relationship for the last several years.

But I know what’s inside it.

Or rather, I know the shape of what was inside it, the way you know the layout of a room you grew up in and no longer visit. There were photographs — of school trips and birthday parties, of meals that looked like occasions and ordinary evenings that didn’t, of friends in various states of laughing that caught them mid-breath, mid-sentence, mid-becoming whoever they were going to be. There were messages that felt, at the time, like the most important things that had ever been written. Long conversations about nothing, about everything, about who said what and whether it meant what we thought it meant. Voice notes. A playlist called study vibes that contained approximately one study song and seventeen others.

The contacts tell a particular kind of story, even without access to the phone itself. I remember the names: people who were essential and are now absent, people I fell out with over things I can no longer reconstruct clearly enough to explain, people who simply drifted with the particular inevitability of drifting — no fight, no falling out, just the gradual widening of the space between two people until the space became the relationship. Someone I called every day for a year. Someone whose number I memorised and then forgot and then, one day, realised I had forgotten.

This is the strange grief of the dead phone. It holds an entire relational world that no longer exists in quite the same form anywhere else. The conversations were transferred, or deleted, or archived somewhere I’ve never opened. The photos live on other devices now, cleaned up, curated, the blurry ones removed. But the phone itself retains the texture of that time in a way that the transferred files do not. The crack in the case. The particular weight of it in my palm. The muscle memory of unlocking it — a gesture my thumb still knows even though the screen is dead.

We talk about digital memory as though it is somehow less real than the analogue kind, as though a photograph on a phone is a lesser artefact than a photograph in an album. But I’m not sure that’s right. The phone feels as much like evidence of a life as anything else in this room. More, maybe, because it was carried everywhere — into classrooms and autorickshaws and friends’ houses and long Sunday afternoons — and accumulated contact the way objects do when they are loved without thinking about it.

To throw it away would be, I think, to acknowledge that those years are over in a way I am not quite ready to acknowledge. Which is strange, because I know they are over. I live in the aftermath of them every day. But knowing something is over and accepting the finality of it are different negotiations, and I haven’t finished the second one yet.

* * *

The doll is not what you’d call beautiful, not anymore. One eye has a small crack across it, so that in certain light it seems to be squinting, looking at you sideways with a mild suspicion. Her hair — synthetic, dark, pulled into two pigtails with small elastics I must have replaced a dozen times — has that slightly dull texture that synthetic hair gets when it has been handled for years. Her dress, pink gingham, is clean but faded in the way of things that have been washed many more times than their fabric was designed to survive.

She used to live on the bed, propped against the pillow. Then she lived on the shelf. Then, at some point I cannot precisely identify, she migrated to the back of the shelf, half behind the books, where she lives now — not quite displayed, not quite hidden. Present but unobtrusive. The way certain things in a room achieve a kind of permanent residency without anyone making a formal decision about it.

I remember when she was indispensable. This is the part that is most difficult to explain to someone who did not have a childhood object like this — the sheer indispensability of it. She came on trips. She was present during the particular childhood illnesses when the world contracts to the size of a bed and a television and the familiar weight of something you have always held. She was there the night I was afraid of something I couldn’t name and needed, with urgent animal logic, to hold something that would not leave.

Now she sits in the back of the shelf and I almost never look at her directly.

Almost.

There is a specific moment that I return to sometimes, though I can’t date it precisely. I was in my early teens, and I became aware — the way you become aware of things in adolescence, suddenly and without being able to say exactly when the shift happened — that I was too old for this. The doll, the habit, the comfort of it. I put her in the back of a drawer. I left her there for months. And then one evening, in a fit of feeling something I couldn’t articulate, I got her back out and put her on the shelf, and I felt simultaneously relieved and embarrassed, and I told myself it was temporary, that I would put her away properly soon.

That was many years ago.

She is still on the shelf.

I have thought about this, about why I cannot throw her away when I know, rationally, that I don’t need her — that I haven’t needed her in the way I once needed her for a long time. And I think the answer has something to do with what she represents, which is not childhood exactly, but the self I was in childhood. The self who didn’t know yet how to be afraid of the right things, who held on to objects with the unconscious trust that they would hold back. Throwing her away would not be throwing away an object. It would be something closer to a disavowal, a decision not to keep faith with that version of me, and I find I am not willing to make that decision.

Growing up, I have decided — or perhaps discovered — is not a single event. It is not a moment when you wake up on one side of something and go to sleep on the other. It is a long, accumulating set of small abandonments, most of them involuntary. You stop believing in certain things and the stopping happens quietly, without ceremony, before you’ve had a chance to say goodbye. The doll is one of the few places where I have the option to refuse the abandonment, and I have, apparently, refused it.

I don’t know what that means about me. I suspect it doesn’t mean anything in particular, except that I am a person who finds letting go difficult and doesn’t always think this is a failing.

* * *

There is a question underneath all of this that I keep circling without quite landing on: why do we keep things?

The practical answer — we might need it, it cost money, it seems wasteful to throw away — doesn’t hold for most of what I keep. The notebooks will not help me. The phone does not function. The doll has no practical application in my current life. The case for keeping them is entirely non-practical, which makes them interesting in a way that purely useful objects are not.

I think we keep things because objects have a quality that memory does not: they persist without effort. Memory is active. It requires tending; it shifts and edits and selects, and what we remember of a year is not that year but a curated version of it, shaped by everything that came after. But an object just sits there. The crack in the phone case does not revise itself. The doodle in the margin of the Class 9 notebook does not become more sophisticated with time. These things remain exactly as they were at the moment of their making, which is a kind of faithfulness that nothing else in my life offers me.

To keep an object from a particular period of your life is, in some sense, to keep that period itself legible. To refuse to let it become entirely subject to the revisionism of memory. The notebooks are evidence that the years of studying were real and particular and textured in ways I have largely forgotten. The phone is evidence that the social world of those years was real and urgent and peopled in specific ways. The doll is evidence that the child I was — the one who needed what children need, who understood comfort in the way children understand it — was real, and was me.

I am not sure that keeping these things preserves them exactly. But I think it preserves the possibility of them. The possibility of returning. The possibility of being surprised, as I am surprised today on the floor of my room, by the person I used to be.

* * *

There is a word I keep returning to as I sit here: archive.

Not in any formal sense. Not in the sense of achievement or documentation or the preservation of things deemed important by institutions. I mean something smaller and stranger — the archive of an ordinary life, made up of things that were never intended to be preserved, that were simply not thrown away and therefore survived.

The notebooks are not an archive of what I learned. Most of what I learned has been returned to the silence it came from. They are an archive of how I learned — the crossings-out, the asterisked formulae, the handwriting that grew impatient as the year went on. They are an archive of the weather of those years.

The phone is not an archive of the people in it. Those people are elsewhere, living lives I have partial access to at best. It is an archive of the quality of closeness — of the particular texture of being seventeen and eighteen and having friendships that felt total, that occupied the whole of you in a way that adult friendship, with its careful scheduling and maintained distances, mostly does not.

The doll is not an archive of childhood. It is an archive of the last time I trusted something completely, without self-consciousness, without irony.

What I am keeping, in this corner of my room, is not evidence of achievement or progress or becoming. I am keeping evidence of having been. Of ordinary Tuesdays in a classroom where the fan made a clicking sound on every third rotation. Of conversations that lasted until the phone needed to be plugged in and then continued anyway. Of the feeling of being small and having that be entirely acceptable, even comfortable.

An outsider coming into this room would see a shelf that needs clearing. They would see, as any reasonable person would see, things that have served their purpose. I see a record. Not of my life as I would like it to be remembered, but of my life as it actually happened — patchy and repetitive and ordinary and specific and mine.

Perhaps this is what sentimentality actually is, when you strip away the self-consciousness about it: the belief that ordinary days are worth preserving. That the afternoons that felt like nothing were, in fact, something. That the life made of those afternoons — not the milestones, not the achievements, not the moments worth photographing, but the breathing space between them — deserves a record.

These objects are my record. Not because I planned it that way. Only because I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.

* * *

I don’t clean the shelf today. I don’t organise anything. I sit on the floor until the light through the window shifts into late afternoon, that particular quality of gold that makes everything in a room look briefly like something worth keeping.

Then I put the notebooks back, one by one, in order: Class 9, 10, 11, 12. The rubber band is broken, so I leave them stacked without it, slightly uneven. I put the phone back in the drawer, behind the tangle of cables. I reach up and settle the doll back into her corner, adjust the angle of her slightly — a small refusal of the squinting suspicion, though her cracked eye keeps it anyway.

The room looks the same as it did when I started.

I leave the door slightly open behind me. Through the window, the light is doing what late-afternoon light always does in March: turning everything golden and then, very quickly, going.

In the corner of the shelf, among the things I cannot throw away, the dust is already beginning to settle back.

It’s Monday and I don’t really know why I’m writing right now. Some days I don’t feel like writing at all. Other days, I do. Today is one of those days.

There’s a lot going on in my mind. I’ll probably put this article in the personal section because it doesn’t really belong anywhere else.

Over the past few hours, I’ve seen all kinds of news — protests, stories about Khan Sir, and now the earthquake in the Philippines. The news about the earthquake almost broke me. Not because I’m here to report on it, but because it reminded me how quickly everything can change. Sometimes a single moment is enough to shift your entire mindset.

Maybe that’s why I keep thinking about change. People say change is constant, and somehow it proves itself true every single second.

I also keep having this thought that I’m not a good writer. Not today specifically, just... in general, sometimes. And then there are days like today where the words come out on their own and I think, okay, maybe I’m not terrible. Both feel true somehow. I don’t know how to hold both of those things at once, but apparently I do.

Anyway, I’m not trying to make a point here. I’m just writing whatever comes to mind, so don’t look for a topic. This is random.

I drew a divider above because I mentioned that “sometimes a single moment is enough to shift your entire mindset.” And yes, my mindset changed.

I think about this a lot when I’m coding — I’m always thinking about how to make it better. Before I’ve even finished something, I’m already looking at what’s wrong with it. I never really stop and think, “Wait, I actually did that. That’s kind of cool.” I just move immediately to the next problem. The next thing to fix. The next thing to learn.

It’s exhausting when I actually think about it.

It’s the same with my life.

I don’t spend much time appreciating where I am. My mind immediately jumps to the next thing that needs fixing, learning, or improving.

And maybe that’s part of why I sometimes feel frustrated with life. Not in a dramatic way. More like — life is fine, life is okay, but I never actually sit in it long enough to feel it. There’s always this low hum of “you’re falling behind” running in the background. And when I do try to slow down, there’s that fear, you know? That everyone else kept going and I’m just standing there appreciating a sunset like an idiot while the world moves on without me.

People love to say don’t compare yourself to others. And I get it, I really do. But I genuinely don’t think I can do that completely. Most of what I know I learned by watching other people. Borrowing their approach, copying what worked, adapting it. So comparison kind of comes with the territory. It sneaks in through the back door even when you’re not looking for it.

Anyway, do you have any idea where this article is going?

No?

Same.

I don’t know either.

And the interesting part is that I usually stop thinking when a piece reaches the 3-minute read mark.

I don’t know why. Like there’s some invisible timer, and when it goes off, I convince myself I’ve said enough, or that no one’s reading anymore, or that I’m just rambling.

But this time I want to keep writing.

I don’t want to stop because of read time, engagement, or whatever metric is supposed to matter. I just want to write until it feels done. Whatever that means.

And I think that’s connected to the improvement thing somehow. Everything becomes a number eventually. Views, followers, lines of code, minutes of reading time. Even the things you love start feeling like something to measure and optimize and track. Then you look up one day and you’re not sure if you’re doing the thing or just counting the thing.

Today feels different. I’m not optimizing anything right now. I’m just letting thoughts come in and leave in whatever order they want.

Which is why this has no direction. I know that. And honestly, I think I’m okay with that.

—

Okay, I think that’s enough. Mindset changed again lol.

Bye for now.

Thanks for reading SoulTalk! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Life sometimes changes slowly for years…
and then suddenly, everything changes in just a few days.

For the past two years, I kept thinking that I didn’t feel like I had grown up yet. But in the last few days, something inside me shifted. I can’t fully explain the feeling. It is beautiful, emotional, complicated, and a little painful at the same time. Maybe this is what growing up feels like.

For years, life felt very slow. Nothing major changed. But sometimes life surprises you. As people say, life can change in two days. In my case, family dynamics changed in just ten days.

After my grandfather’s death, our family was disturbed for a long time. Things were never the same. But after six years, something unexpected happened — a family reunion. It happened so suddenly that I could hardly process it.

People say blood attracts blood. I think it’s true.

Maybe it all started with worship. We are theists, and I truly believe God listens in ways we don’t always understand.

When I think about the past, I remember my cousin. I love him like my real brother. Because of family disputes, I hadn’t seen him for six years. When I finally saw him again, I couldn’t stop myself from crying. The last time I saw him, he was still a child. I was there from the day he was born until 2020… and then suddenly, six years passed.

Seeing him now felt like watching time move all at once.

But life also has its balance.

Since 2020, one of my other cousins — the one I love the most — has been here with me. She lives in another district, but for these years she was close. Sometimes God takes something away, but He also gives something in return. And that is beautiful.

Now she will go back to her home. And again, things will feel empty.

In two years, I will also leave the place where I have lived since 2020. Maybe that is how life works. God slowly moves us away from old places and people so we can grow and meet new ones.

So maybe the lesson is this:

Instead of always complaining about life, we should admire it.
Admire the people around us while they are still here.
And always thank God for the moments we are given.

Because sometimes, the most complicated feelings are also the most meaningful ones.

What if I told you that the fact you’re happy today… already makes you a winner?
Because if you’ve ever been deeply sad before—and you’re still standing—you’ve already defeated something huge.

I realised this while going through my Substack drafts last night.
Twenty-two drafts.
Twenty-two beginnings.
Twenty-two attempts to say something… but writing nothing.

So today, I’m writing for you—the reader who shows up, even when I almost gave up on showing up myself.

A Pattern I Noticed in Life

We spend so much of our life being desperate.
Desperate for love.
For validation.
For attention.
For success.
For happiness.
For belonging.
For purpose.

We chase everything so hard… that we forget how to breathe.

And I learned this the hard way.

My Story

For two whole years, I studied data science.
But my grades?
Always disappointing.
Every test felt like proof that maybe I wasn’t smart enough.
Maybe others were simply better.
Maybe something was wrong with me.

I started comparing myself with everyone around me.
Then I began overthinking.
And you know how that spiral ends—
More comparison, more stress, more fear…
and even worse grades.

My confidence didn’t just drop; it dissolved.
I hit one of the lowest points of my life.

All because of the negative script I kept repeating inside my head.

And honestly?
There was a moment when I felt completely hopeless.

But Then Something Shifted

One day, I just… stopped caring.
Not in a careless way, but in a freeing way.

I stopped being desperate for good grades.
I stopped chasing achievement as proof of my worth.

I decided to simply do the work sincerely—
without pressure,
without expectations,
without the need for validation.

And guess what?

I scored 94%.

I stared at the result like it belonged to someone else.
But it was mine.
And in that moment, I understood something:

Life is a game.
A very, very simple game.
You play best when you stop playing desperately.

Be Chill. Do Your Work. Live Lightly.

Whatever you choose to do, do it with sincerity.
Plan your days with intention.
But don’t suffocate your life with pressure.

If you feel like you need to confront someone—go ahead.
If something inside you says “start now”—start now.

Learn something new every day, even if it’s small.
And if you haven’t done any of this until today?
That’s okay.
You can begin now.
You’re allowed to restart.
As many times as you need.

Make memories while you’re at it.
Because someday, when you look back, I hope you can smile and say:

“I was so alive.”

Life is all about balance.
Not too tight, not too loose.

And if you learn to hold it gently—

You’re already a winner.

If this story reminded you of a moment when you won over yourself too,
I’d love to hear it.
Your experiences matter more than you think.

And if you enjoy reading my reflections,
your small support helps me keep writing from the heart.

Buy me a coffee ☕ if you feel called to —
it truly means a lot.

Thank you for being here.
Really. 💛

Happiness

There was once a girl named Leona. She had one big goal in her life. She believed, “When I reach this goal, I’ll finally be happy. I’ll rest. I’ll smile. I’ll allow myself to feel joy.”

So every day, she worked hard. She said no to fun, no to love, no to rest — because she had to reach her goal first.

She told herself:
Not now. Not yet. One day, when I succeed, I will be free. I will feel alive.

The years passed. She got tired sometimes, but she kept going. Her heart hurt, but she didn’t stop. She thought it would all be worth it in the end. And then — one day — she made it.

The goal she had waited for, worked for, dreamed of… it finally became real.

But something was missing.

She looked around. She waited for the happiness to come, like a gift waiting to be opened. But inside her… it was quiet. Too quiet.

She didn’t feel joy.
She didn’t feel free.
She didn’t feel anything at all.

The girl who waited for happiness… realized she had forgotten how to feel it.

She had run so long, she didn’t know how to stop.
She had waited so much, she didn’t know how to receive.
She had been strong for too long, she didn’t know how to be soft.

That night, Leona sat alone with her goal beside her. It didn’t shine like she thought it would.

And slowly, a thought came:
Maybe happiness was never there, at the finish line.
Maybe it was in the small things I kept walking past.

She didn’t cry. She just breathed.
And for the first time in years, she whispered,
“Next time, I won’t wait.”

We often think, “I will be happy when I get this,” or “When that happens, I will feel happiness.” And that’s absolutely natural. It’s human to believe that happiness is somewhere in the future, tied to a particular event, achievement, or possession. But when we keep thinking this way over and over, we trap ourselves in a loop. We wait, hoping happiness will arrive once conditions are met. Then, when we finally get what we wanted, the happiness we expected often isn’t there. It’s like chasing a shadow.

"Happiness is not a condition with ‘if’, ‘elif’, or ‘else’. In fact, it simply is — a feeling that exists beyond conditions or circumstances."

Where do we go wrong? I believe it’s because we do this repeatedly — day after day — without realizing that happiness isn’t something to be earned or held onto like a trophy. Happiness is not a distant destination but a moment-to-moment experience.

Happiness is like a wave. When it comes, let yourself feel it fully. Don’t limit your feelings or act like a robot who must control or schedule emotions. Even if you think you don’t have time for happiness — that’s not true. Feeling happiness doesn’t take hours or days. It only takes a moment, a beautiful, simple moment. It might be a smile, a breath of fresh air, a kind word, or a quiet pause. These small moments are where happiness lives.

Writing this post feels important because when we stop allowing ourselves to feel happiness, it hurts deeply. Losing touch with that feeling can make life feel heavy and empty. That pain reminds us how vital it is to stay connected to our emotions and to nurture joy whenever it comes.

Another important thing to remember is that happiness can’t be measured or defined for others. Everyone experiences happiness in their own unique way. What brings joy to one person might not have the same meaning or intensity for someone else. Trying to set a universal standard or compare our happiness with others’ only leads to confusion or disappointment. Instead, it’s more compassionate and freeing to respect how others feel and support their happiness in whatever form it takes.

Try to be happy in others’ happiness. When we celebrate the joy of others, it often expands our own sense of well-being. Happiness doesn’t have to be a competition or a fixed goal. It can be shared, multiplied, and appreciated in many forms.

P.S. Whenever you feel happiness, just let yourself feel it fully. Don’t rush it or minimize it. That simple act of allowing yourself to feel joy deeply can transform your experience of life.

If my writing ever made you feel understood, you can support me here ☕
Buy me a coffee ☕

Sometimes, I stop in the middle of an ordinary moment and feel like it has already happened before. The same car is parked nearby, the wind blows just the same way, and the light falls on the road exactly as it did the last time. I can’t explain when or how, but I know I’ve stood in that exact moment before. This feeling, which we call déjà vu, some say is just a coincidence or the brain playing tricks. But I don’t believe that anymore.

Not when it happens so often, and not when it feels like someone — or something — is making me feel it on purpose.

I believe someone — or something — is trying to show us something. Like a signal. Like they want us to remember what we’ve forgotten. It’s subtle, but it’s there. And I think only a few of us truly feel it. Only a few people can sense when time bends in small ways, when something invisible is brushing up against this reality.

These moments shake me. They break the ordinary flow of life and invite me to pause, to listen, to pay attention. In those brief flashes, I feel connected to something larger — something beyond what I can see or touch. It’s like a whisper from the universe, a gentle reminder that there’s more to existence than the surface we live on.

I’ve never been great at math or science. I don’t speak in formulas or theories. But I’m spiritual. I’ve always been. And I think that’s why I chose this path — or maybe it chose me. I believe there is a truth waiting to be found, and that I am meant to find it.

Sometimes, I think about how others might see me. Maybe I look like someone lost in thoughts too deep, chasing things that don’t exist. Maybe they think I’m imagining it, or that I’m caught up in fantasies.

But believe me, what I feel, what I keep sensing again and again, is not made up. It’s something beyond logic, beyond what most people are willing to see — or are too scared to say out loud.

I’ve read theories about déjà vu — glitches in the brain, misfires in memory, a momentary overlap between the conscious and subconscious. Maybe some of it is true. But those explanations don’t touch the deep knowing I carry. They don’t explain why I keep feeling this pull, this urge to remember.

I think déjà vu is a signal. A call to awaken. To remember who we really are, beyond the noise of daily life. To reconnect with a truth that has been buried, forgotten, or hidden by time.

And even if I don’t have the full truth right now, I believe I’ll find it. That belief — that pull — is part of me. It guides me, even when the path is unclear. It whispers to me in quiet moments and in flashes of familiarity.

So , I think I’m listening. I think I’m remembering. And if you’ve felt even a fraction of what I’m talking about — the déjà vu, the signals, the unshakable knowing — then maybe you’re remembering too.

Maybe we are all connected by this hidden thread. Maybe the déjà vu is the universe’s way of nudging us awake — to look deeper, to question more, and to open ourselves to the mysteries waiting just beyond the veil.

The journey may be uncertain. The questions may be many. But the call is real.

And I choose to answer it.

If you’ve ever paused mid-moment and felt like time folded in on itself — like the universe whispered “you’ve been here before” — you’re not alone. Maybe we’re not crazy. Maybe we’re just remembering something the world forgot.

If my writing ever made you feel understood, you can support me here ☕
Buy me a coffee ☕

Procrastination means avoiding a task or responsibility — even when we know it's important. It makes our mind feel heavy and stressed. We tell ourselves,

“I’ll do it later…”
But often, that “later” never comes.

What I’ve Felt About Procrastination: From my personal experience, I’ve learned that procrastination isn’t always the same. Sometimes, when I genuinely don’t want to do a task, I leave it and later complete it without guilt. And that’s okay.

But most of the time, procrastination looks like this:

• I don’t believe in myself enough to trust I’ll get it done later.

• I get lost in illusions and overthinking.

• I trade the task for small pleasures — like scrolling, relaxing, or escaping.

• When the task feels too big, critical, or time-consuming, I avoid it.

• When there’s too much pressure, I stop everything and just shut down.

• After procrastinating, I feel guilty — and that makes it worse.

What Helped Me

I found a gentle solution for myself: First, learn to believe in yourself at least 10%. That’s enough to take one small step. And if you procrastinated, it’s okay — don’t make yourself feel 100% guilty.

Instead, give yourself:

• 10% guilt (so you stay aware)

• 90% love and kindness — talk to yourself like a best friend:

“It’s okay. Next time, I’ll try to do better.”

This mindset helps more than beating yourself up.

Procrastination Is Not a New Thing We’re all human. We gave it a name — “procrastination” — and now we act like it’s some huge problem. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you treat procrastination as a heavy burden, it becomes one. But if you treat it as a signal — maybe of stress, fear, pressure, or boredom — then you can listen to it instead of fighting it. Sometimes, procrastination is just your mind saying: “I’m not ready yet. Can we pause and figure this out together?” and If your heart knows it is genuine just do it.

The Bitter Truth

Now here’s the truth — and it might sound harsh, but it’s real:

You will never procrastinate on something if you truly know that not doing it will cost you your money, your dream, or something you deeply love. If the task was to watch your favorite movie, or do something you truly enjoy… You would never procrastinate.

Why?
Because your mind sees it as pleasure, not pressure.

Our mind tricks us. It says: “This task is too hard… too boring… too long.”
And we believe it.

But if you keep thinking like that… if you keep avoiding the hard things…
Then slowly, you don’t just delay your progress —You destroy it.

If you keep procrastinating for too long, it slowly starts affecting your life in ways you may not notice at first. You begin to miss important opportunities just because you waited too long. You also start to lose trust in yourself, because every time you avoid a task, your mind remembers. The pressure keeps building, leading to more stress, guilt, and anxiety. Over time, your confidence drops, and you start feeling stuck. Worst of all, you miss out on personal growth — because the tasks we avoid are often the ones that help us become better. And in the end, you’re left with regret that you didn’t start earlier.

Final Thought:

So don’t fight procrastination with guilt.
Listen to it. Understand it.
Then slowly build belief in yourself — even if it’s just 10%.That’s how real change begins.

Thank you for reading till the end. If this message hit home, take a deep breath — and remember, change starts with small, kind steps toward yourself.

P.S. Reply and tell me — what’s one thing you’ve been avoiding?

If my writing ever made you feel understood, you can support me here ☕
Buy me a coffee ☕