After a very long blog hiatus, I am back! The real question is- am I better? I’ve been so caught up with the stresses of school, final exams, assignments… but I’m DONE! I am happy to say that I am finally finished my undergraduate degree in Health Studies and English. It has been a long and gruelling four years but I am so excited to be done! I will be writing on my undergraduate experiences and putting out a reflective piece on my last four years later this week. Lately I have been bombarded with one overarching question: what’s next?

I wrote a poem on this in my final English Portfolio on Anxiety and how unsettling it feels. The answer to this question is, I don’t know. The idea of a gap year is something that I hadn’t really contemplated as I have been going to school consistently for the past few chapters of my life. An entire year to just explore- to work- to grow? Without the bounds of an institution to support you? Insane idea to even fathom. While the answer remains as “I don’t know”, I am excited to grow and find out exactly what’s out there. Yuck Halima… you’re starting to sound like a tired cliche, the end of a sappy teenage Netflix original.

To be honest, the worst thing I have ever done is stop writing for this blog. I wish I could convey how debilitating it feels- this type of anxiety overcomes me when I think of writing for this blog on a daily basis. On one hand, some days I am overcome with excitement. I am overcome with ideas for material, for posts, for photos, for content, I am writing and writing and then I start overthinking. What if no one likes it? What if no one reads it?  I do not know if it was the school stress or the lack of motivation but I found myself hiding from my blog. How crazy is that? I think that may sound like the most ridiculous thing ever but I found myself engulfed by a major case of imposter syndrome. Who am I? What makes my work important? Why do people want to read about what I write about? What am I afraid of?

I woke up this morning and thought, Who cares? The work that I cultivate will be a reflection of my own experiences, my own ideals, my own beliefs and as a writer it is quite important to make sure its accessible to a general population so that they are able to then take in your work and empathize and see their own experiences in the work you provide, but that is where it ends. Over the course of having this website, I have found myself at the mercy of many opinions, many people trying to take my work and piece together how it “should be” or “should have been” and that is something that I am striving to shed in the coming days, months, years.

May is Mental Health Awareness month and an excellent time to share my truth and show you all my revamped ‘anxiety series’ by putting forth my own experiences with taking care of your mental health, as well as the many interconnected facets that plague me on an everyday basis.

I hope you stay tuned with my work and I look forward to sharing a lot more of my life with you in the coming days.

XO,

Halima