The Woman I Misplaced Somewhere in the Chaos (I Didn’t Mean To)
Learning to Be Gentle and Good to Myself
You can be doing everything “right” and still lose the person you once were or you are chasing to be; when you are busy being everything for everyone, and everyone for everything.
Dear Reader,
I know it’s been so long since I last wrote to you. There are seasons when everything accelerates at once — work, ambition, expectations, and even our own inner voice that persistently keeps telling us to be productive, be relevant, and be visible. The past 3–4 months have been exactly that for me.
To be honest, I haven’t read or written anything. I kept telling myself I’d return “after this one sprint,” “after this one deadline,” and sometimes “after this one fire is put out.” And, as always, life had other ideas.
In parallel, my corporate life unfurled into something far more intense than I had planned. This year was a lot! I’ll say that plainly: it felt like ten years folded into one. But it also clarified what matters to me, why it matters, and how I want to show up. Not just in my job, but in my life.
Earlier this month, I completed my Oxford Critical Reading course. Oh gosh! That was a packed course, given I have a full-time corporate job. However, I do think it was worth it; it did reshape how I read, think, and write. It taught me to look at a sentence not as a flow of words, but like a design or an architecture. One thing I learned from the course is that good reading is never a passive act, and good writing, even less so.
Quick update: Many of you have asked for my procedure and framework for coming up with the English Literature Personal Curriculum. I’ll write a blog post on this soon, explaining the research and thought process that went into building it.
Now, I have come to a point where I don’t recognize myself. The very things that make me who I am — the woman who used to read, think, and write deeply — have vanished. So I decided to slow everything down. Making slight changes to recalibrate my own system that has been running too hot for too long, in an endless constant loop.
But really, there is always a strange clarity that comes after a long period of sprinting. You start to recognize what is noise and what is an actual signal. And then decide what deserves your energy and what consumes it. And then again, when you understand that, you realize what aligns with your vision and what distracts you from it.
And, if you know me already, I love the “ber-months”! Mostly because of Christmas, because it makes me pause and hug myself. So this Christmas, I decided to gift myself this —
tidy up, rest, be gentle and good to myself; and for once stop worrying about others, but myself.
Just before I sat down to write this letter to you, I went to my bookshelf and gazed at it for so long. It felt very strange, because I don’t even remember when the last time I did this was. I browsed and finally picked up Middlemarch by George Eliot.
You might be thinking that a sane person might choose something lighter after months away from reading. But hey, here I am, with Middlemarch beside me. I wanted something that would force me to slow my pace and rebuild the attention with some intention. And Middlemarch, so dense and intricate, felt like the right kind. Perhaps this would be my way of returning to myself.
For now, I’ll be reading and keep thinking about three things, which I hope to find answers to from this gem of a book. You will hear a lot about it, in detailed, in my upcoming letters!
Why do intelligent people make disastrous choices?
What kills ambition faster: society, or our own illusions?
Why do we compromise the very dreams we are trying to protect?
I’ll write you another year-end letter soon, something more complete which holds 2025 with both hands. But after such a long absence from this space, I didn’t want to wait until then to speak to you.
I simply wanted to say: I’m back.
If you’re hearing from me for the first time, thank you. ♥️
If you’ve stayed, thank you. ♥️
If you’ve waited, thank you. ♥️
And if you’re reading this at the edge of your own slowdown and return — as always, I hope you find this space to give you that calm and make you choose what matters for you too.
I’ll write again soon. Until next time, take care. Enjoy the holiday season.
And, more importantly, my dear, do what matters to you.
Until then,
Yours in thought,
Yana ♥️