Issue No. 14: A Story of A Reset Week

Comfort food and a home refresh

I’ve written this issue in parts, split over a whole week, similar to the issue I did for my trip to Pakistan back in January. I hope you enjoy it.

This morning, as I came downstairs to make breakfast, I paused at the foot of the stairs for a few moments. The blinds were still drawn, the early morning light was softly spilling in through the windows, the air hung still and cool around the living room. And I stood there for a few seconds, just taking in the quiet of that moment, because I was about to start on a different morning than my usual. I’d taken the whole week off from work and this was the first time in many days that I didn’t have a long to-do list to get through.

I drew back the blinds, opened the windows. The room filled with light, the sounds of the birds got clearer. There’s something about your headspace; things can stay the same but with how you’re feeling, you see them differently. And doing these simple things this morning felt like such a fresh beginning. The start of a reset.

This past month has been incredibly busy for me. I’ve had several deadlines come up together and I’ve been working beyond my capacity for a while now. Early mornings, late nights, not much personal time. Nabeel also started a new job and he’s had his plate full too. And when your schedules start to overflow, your home does too.

The last few weeks, we’ve had laundry lying around in piles, never fully going away. The kitchen needed a deep clean. Books lay unread. Random things started to collect in corners.

And as I stepped into the kitchen and started clearing away the counter, filled with things from the night before, I just kept thinking about how that’s the thing about life; it gets away from all of us. Despite our best intentions & plans, knowing how to say no and set boundaries, sometimes life just gets away. And these past some weeks,