2:00 AM.

1) Lost in someone else's dream.

My parents always dreamed of this path for me. A stable job. A guaranteed future. A title that carries respect. Their voices were louder than my own. Their hopes became my script. And so, I followed. Not out of passion, but out of duty.

Now, I move through my days like a character in a book I don’t remember picking up. I sit in class, surrounded by future teachers who seem to belong here. They speak of their love for teaching, their excitement for the classroom, their eagerness to shape young minds. I smile, nod, pretend. But deep inside, I wonder — why don’t I feel the same?

Each assignment feels like an echo of a question I’m too afraid to answer. Do I belong here? Every lesson plan I draft, every microteaching I did, every learning aid I invent— it all feels like I’m watching someone else live my life. Like I am a spectator, not a participant.

The future looms ahead, a government teaching post waiting for me at the finish line. A promise of stability, a mapped-out life. But what if stability isn’t the same as happiness? What if security feels more like a cage than a comfort?

I am tired. Burnt out. Drifting through the motions of a life I never truly chose, trying to convince myself that this will all make sense eventually. That one day, I’ll wake up and feel like I belong.

But I don’t.

And I don’t know how to step off this path without shattering everything.

So I keep walking. Hoping that somewhere along the way, I will either find the “nyala rasa” as a teacher — or the courage to change direction. Hoping that with every doubt, with every quiet whisper of this isn’t for me, I am inching closer to something else. Something real.

2) The art of doing more and achieving less.

There’s a quiet kind of frustration that comes from being surrounded by people who don’t seem to care as much as you do. Not because they’re lazy or because they don’t want to succeed, but because they approach things so differently. While you’re planning ahead, staying up thinking about deadlines, and trying to make the most of every opportunity, they seem to just… go with the flow.

And somehow, it works for them.

Meanwhile, you’re left feeling like you’re doing everything alone, like the only one trying to take things seriously, while everyone else coasts along with half the effort. You tell yourself not to compare. But it’s hard when the results don’t seem to reflect the effort. When you stay up late planning, worrying, overthinking; and they still come out on top.

That mix of anxiety and resentment builds quietly. It’s not that you want anyone to fail. You just want your hard work to mean something. You want it to count.

And beneath all that is something even harder to admit; jealousy. The feeling that maybe they’re naturally better at this. Smarter. More adaptable. That you’re trying so hard just to keep up. So you push yourself more. Start earlier. Plan harder. Try to fill the gap with preparation, hoping it’ll make a difference. But it didn't.

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A snippet of my Medium entries, when life gets really tough.