Insomnia

 Music: Pulang by Insomniack

7 years. It's been a while.

I couldn't sleep. Randomly typed the word insomnia in Spotify's search bar. Found this cool band, and their most famous song is Pulang. How apt. I'm back, I guess. 

The last time I posted, I was battling severe depression. Or more accurately, high-functioning depression. It had gone on for 2 years. But I'm more than better now. Looking back, I've done so much since, and at the worst time of my life I thought I'd rather die than go on living, but I guess I managed to snap out of it with the sheer will to get better, I wanted my life back. It's difficult to explain and justify depression if you've never experienced it. Its not sadness. It's way more than that. Something totally different. Nobody outside of those who's had it can understand it, no matter how much they claim to. Empathize maybe. Its not something that you can switch off, "just do happy things, don't be sad". To anyone who knows me, and knows me very well, they actually don't know me at all. I hid it very successfully, from friends and family. I mastered the act of faking, acting like everything is normal. It's not that hard tbh. I lost so much weight but people thought I was just being fit and healthy. My performance at work did not suffer. Hence, "high-functioning". I was embarrassed that I had mental health issues. Me? How? Why? Am I so weak? 

Anyway, long story short, the pandemic happened. 1 year stuck at home. Then I got into volunteering as a Covid frontliner throughout 2021. Quit my job from burnout at the end of it, went on a backpacking trip that lasted 3 years, covered 5 continents, 40 countries (grand total 86 to date, but that's not even 50% of all the countries in the world). In between, I continued with more volunteer work, for Turkiye and Syria (earthquake 2023), and for Gaza (one day I'll talk at length about these experiences, but I summed it up in my linkedin profile) and also worked a short stint for the government on a nuclear power pre-feasibility study (I was head hunted, and the money was too good to decline). 

But today, I am back in the grind (a consultant of all things, not a bad thing, just surprised that anyone would hire me, impostor syndrome and all that jazz), It's been slightly over a year since. The most important thing though, I finally went for Hajj this year. 1447H. It's always something I wanted to do (when you spend so much time and money traveling the world instead of fulfilling your obligation, the guilt is there), but there had been restrictions on age for people with no mahrams to go with, it used to be 45 years old, so that was my target. I have no idea when this rule was lifted, and God really works in mysterious ways. This year I turn 44, but technically still 43 during the actual Hajj, and I think it was the right time for me, mentally, spiritually, physically. Allah knows best. 

I plan to write again, here. There's so much to tell. I want to try document my 3-years worth of backpacking travel stories, as much as I can remember them. I've been using AI so much to write (all for work), I need to find my own words again. 

Other current updates, I just started reading the Dark Materials books. Hope to finish all 3 books in a week. Watching the old Scrubs. Listening to a lot of current Jpop music (its evolved since 20 years ago). And training for the PNB 118 tower race (I feel regret for registering lolz).

On another different note, it's World Cup, I'm all for Morocco and Norway! Lets goooooo. Yallahh!

Happy to be back.