Not all weeks are equally great. Some of them just suck.
It doesn’t matter if you love your job, if you’re surrounded by good people, or if you objectively know you’re in a privileged position. Sometimes everything seems to align against you, and the only real option is acknowledging that this isn’t a great moment, without turning it into a catastrophe. It could be worse. And, most importantly, it’s temporary.
The past few weeks have been like that for me.
I had time off that I was really looking forward to. I needed to unplug, reset, breathe a bit. Instead, my whole family got sick. Two kids, my partner with a high fever for days. Care mode fully on. When it was finally time to go back to work, I got sick too. The flu hit hard. Bedridden for days, no energy, no rhythm.
As soon as I was barely back on my feet, I had to travel to London for an internal event. Alone, exhausted, low energy, constantly worried the fever would spike again.
These weeks were supposed to be easy ones. A buffer. A recharge before diving into the next big project and the challenges that come with it. Instead, they became one of the biggest energy drains of the year. And if I’m honest, at times it felt like too much.
All I wanted was to be healthy, back at my desk, inside my routine, dealing with my tickets. Something familiar. Something predictable.
That didn’t happen.
For weeks I’ve been jumping from one thing to another without a solid structure around me. My mind is tired. My body is still catching up.
A few years ago, this kind of stretch would have completely derailed me. I know how my brain works. I would have spiralled. Everything would have started looking darker, heavier, as if there was some sort of conspiracy against me and no way out. Those slumps used to last weeks, sometimes months. And I wasn’t exactly pleasant to be around.
It took work. A lot of it.
Time. Experience. Therapy. Painful honesty with myself. Admitting vulnerabilities instead of fighting them. I slowly rebuilt the structure around me, making it stronger, more resilient. Not bulletproof — just better. Sometimes I relapsed, and those moments forced me to reassess: what wasn’t working, what support I needed, what I was ignoring.
Years passed. I got older. I took on more responsibilities. I survived a few storms.
What I’ve learned is that panic doesn’t need to be the first response. Not every rough patch requires dramatic action. Some moments in life are simply harder, and that’s normal. They pass, whether you fight them aggressively or not.
The second thing I’ve learned might sound contradictory: after a bit, you still need to do something.
Not on day one. Not while you’re completely drained. But I know myself well enough to know that I can’t let inertia take over indefinitely. My first line of defence is going back to small routines. Small actions. Tiny wins. Enough to create a spark, and let that spark start a domino effect.
I’m still recovering. Still recalibrating. Still figuring out my way through the maze that is the human mind.
But I’m grateful. Grateful I asked for help when I needed it. Grateful for friends and family who showed up. Grateful I’ve done (and keep doing) the work on myself.
Some people say I overthink. That I should let go more. Maybe they’re right. But I know one thing for sure: I don’t function if I’m not trying to get better. That’s how I’m wired.
This isn’t the best period of my life. And that’s fine.
It doesn’t scare me. It doesn’t make me afraid of being vulnerable. I just want to push back, gently but deliberately. Tame my mind. Feel better. Be better.
One step at a time.