Recently, I’ve been working on multiple projects simultaneously. And that brought me face-to-face with something I thought I could handle effortlessly.

Before taking on all these projects, I had a rather different understanding of productivity. Working on one project at a time seemed inefficient to me. Whenever I focused on a single task, I couldn’t help thinking about all the other things I could be doing alongside it.

It felt like I was wasting time by not doing more.

So, changing my work routine seemed like the obvious solution. I decided to work on multiple projects together, without giving much thought to how I would manage them.

For the first few days, everything seemed normal. Sure, it was exhausting, but I convinced myself that I’d eventually figure it out.

Except, I didn’t.

Gradually, I began losing my concentration on individual projects. The workload of one project started creeping into the time I had allocated to another. Even when I was working on something specific, my mind kept wandering towards everything else that needed my attention.

I was physically working on one task while mentally worrying about five others.

And slowly, everything started falling apart.

I couldn’t complete even a small portion of a single project. Days passed, and the thought of all the pending work began to feel increasingly overwhelming.

Procrastination entered the picture, almost as if I were unlocking a new level in a game I never intended to play.

And when I finally sat down to evaluate my progress on each project, I realised something rather disappointing: I hadn’t even completed half of what I had planned.

Which was nowhere near what I’d imagined when I first decided to multitask.

I tried rescheduling my routine, rearranging tasks, and figuring out how to squeeze everything into my days. But somehow, each day felt heavier than the one before.

There was an invisible mountain of unfinished work standing in front of me. And I couldn’t figure out how to climb it.

I was left with two choices: keep trying to accomplish everything simultaneously or give each project the attention it deserved.

But the consequences had already started showing up elsewhere.

I had begun abandoning things I genuinely enjoyed, writing being one of them. Something that once felt like an escape had started feeling like another task on my endless to-do list.

I had convinced myself that spending time on something I loved was equivalent to wasting time on something unnecessary.

Think about that for a moment.

In trying to become more productive, I had started neglecting the very things that made my days enjoyable.

And then, one day, I decided to stop.

I left everything unfinished and simply allowed myself to relax. No schedules, no pending-task calculations, no constant reminders of what I should be doing next.

Just a little time away from everything.

And somewhere in that pause, I realised my biggest mistake: I had been trying to do too much at once, mistaking the number of things I was working on for the amount of progress I was making.

Productivity isn’t about doing as much work as possible. It’s about doing meaningful work that actually contributes to completing your goals.

Being occupied throughout the day doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making progress. Sometimes, we spend so much time switching between responsibilities that we end up giving none of them our complete attention.

Multitasking can make us feel like we’re accomplishing more, but constantly dividing our attention comes with a cost. We lose focus, consume more mental energy, and sometimes take much longer to finish what could have been a relatively simple task.

I’ve also realised that not everything we enjoy needs to justify its existence through productivity.

Writing doesn’t have to contribute to a project. Taking a break doesn’t have to make us more efficient afterwards. And spending time doing something simply because we love it isn’t a waste.

Perhaps the answer isn’t always to fit more into our days. Sometimes, it’s to stop treating every available minute as an opportunity to get something done.

I’m still figuring out how to balance my projects, but one thing has become clear: I’d rather make meaningful progress on one thing than remain occupied with ten things and accomplish none.

Because being busy and being productive were never the same thing.

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There is a quiet, suffocating tax that comes with being the “strong one.”

People look at you and see potential. They see someone who gets things done, someone who faces a storm and somehow comes out on the other side holding an umbrella. They celebrate your resilience, praise your independence, and applaud your maturity.

What they don’t tell you is that the moment they slap the label “STRONG” on your forehead, they strip away your right to be human.

Today, I broke. I didn’t just bend — I shattered. And as I sat amidst the pieces of myself, crying out for help, I realized the most heartbreaking truth of my life: Nobody believes you when the strong one says they are dying inside.

“You’ll Handle It. You’re Strong.”

Somewhere along the line, being capable became my curse.

Because I learned how to stand on my own two feet, people assumed I never wanted to be held. Because I solved my own problems, people stopped asking if I needed help. And when I finally reached a point where the weight of the world became too heavy to carry — when I reached out, desperate, bleeding emotionally — the response wasn’t empathy.

It was a reminder of my own reputation: “Why are you worrying? You are so strong. You’ll figure it out.”

Being strong is rarely a choice you make voluntarily. No child wakes up and says, “I want to be so tough that nobody ever feels the need to comfort me.” Life forces strength upon you. Circumstances shape your upbringing to look out for everyone else, to adapt, to push through pain, to be the sensible one.

And then one day, when that same child — now grown — finally raises their hand and says, “I can’t do this anymore. I am drowning,” society acts as if you’ve committed a sin. How dare you have a weakness? How dare you interrupt their perception of you?

The Myth of Sympathy

I used to believe that when a person breaks down, people naturally gather around to help rebuild them. I was wrong.

If you are perceived as weak, people rush to offer you sympathy. They hold your hand. They check in on you. But if you are perceived as strong, your tears are treated like a performance or an overreaction. You could literally tell someone that you don’t want to live anymore, and they will brush it off because “you’re just having a moment; you’re too resilient to break.”

It feels like having your voice stolen. It feels like screaming at the top of your lungs in a glass room while everyone outside just smiles and waves, admiring how well you stand.

They say that in struggle, you are ultimately alone. I never truly understood how cruel that reality was until today. Every time I wept, hoping for a single shoulder to lean on, the world only managed to push me further into the dark. I envied the people who received effortless comfort. I wondered what mistake I made that turned my strength into a wall that keeps everyone out.

A Message to the Ones Who Carry Everything

If you are reading this while sitting alone in a quiet room, wiping away tears that nobody else will ever see — I want to tell you something.

Your strength is not a permission slip for people to neglect you.

It is okay that you broke today. It is okay if you cannot figure out the next step. You do not owe the world an endless supply of optimism, logic, or resilience. You are allowed to be vulnerable. You are allowed to fall apart, and you do not need anyone’s permission or validation to bleed when you are hurt.

To everyone else: Check on your strong friends.

Don’t assume they are fine just because they are quiet. Don’t weaponize their past resilience against their present pain. Sometimes, the person who holds everyone together is just waiting for someone to notice that they are falling apart.

Today, I am broken. I am empty, exhausted, and abandoned by expectations. But for the first time in my life, I am dropping the burden of being “strong.” I am just going to be me — vulnerable, hurting, and real.

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I knew this, apparently, and had made my peace with it. He was rather cute, as crocodiles go, and seemed perfectly content with the arrangement.

The problem was something else.

A strange, luminous red creature had appeared, dangling from the toilet seat by a long, fleshy thread. It had enormous eyes, a thin, prickly body, and the unsettling appearance of something that had arrived without permission.

I had no idea what it was. Or whether it had touched me.

My sister came to investigate. After some consideration, she cut it in half.

It survived.

Later, when I found myself holding it in a pale green cloth, it was whole again.

At some point, I remembered the crocodile.

I offered him the creature, slightly worried that he might refuse. He detached it neatly from the cloth and swallowed it.

Problem solved.

I returned to the kitchen, where the house was full of people, and casually explained what I’d done to someone who looked understandably confused.

Then I woke up.

I lay there for a while this morning, amused by the peculiar logic of dreams. A crocodile in the toilet was apparently an ordinary household arrangement, while the creature sharing its territory had caused considerable alarm.

There are things we take apart repeatedly, only to find them perfectly intact the next time we encounter them.

An old conversation. A friendship that quietly changed shape. A version of ourselves we thought we’d outgrown.

Sometimes it’s an injustice, revisited with the precision of a lawyer preparing a case no court has agreed to hear.

Sometimes it’s a possibility that never became anything, but remains unusually resistant to becoming nothing.

The mind can be wonderfully industrious when given unfinished business. A passing remark can reopen an investigation we’ve already closed several times, each time convinced we’d reached a verdict.

Not all of these returns are deliberate. A familiar smell, a particular expression, an unexpected encounter, and suddenly something we thought we’d dealt with is back, intact, as if it had only stepped out for a moment.

Memory rarely bothers to knock.

But there are also the occasions when we willingly open the door. We revisit an old argument, rehearsing what we might have said.

Even resentment can become an unlikely form of companionship. We know the story, the characters, the evidence. We know exactly where everything belongs. There is comfort in familiarity, even when the familiar is unpleasant.

And sometimes what draws us back isn’t unpleasant at all: a beautiful memory, an unfinished possibility, a time when we understood ourselves differently.

We tell ourselves we’re merely curious. And perhaps we are.

But curiosity also offers a respectable reason to return somewhere.

We can spend an afternoon examining a decision made ten years ago and, for a little while, find ourselves in the company of the person we were before making it. We can revisit a conversation to understand what someone meant, and hear their voice again in the process.

The investigation may be genuine. So might the pleasure of conducting it.

How often do the two quietly accommodate each other?

And would we pursue the investigation with quite the same enthusiasm if understanding them meant never having reason to return?

I think again of the creature in my dream.

My sister had cut it in half, but by the time I carried it to the crocodile, it was whole again. All that examination, and we were back where we’d started.

The crocodile, meanwhile, had been there all along. I still don’t know why he hadn’t eaten the creature when it first appeared. They were sharing the same toilet, after all.

Perhaps he simply wasn’t hungry.
Or perhaps he’d been waiting for me to offer it.

I wonder how long they had been living together before I noticed.

R.R
6 November, 2026

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