Note to Self — Episode 9

Running hard, just to stand still

Aarish Shah
2 min readFeb 16, 2021

It would be so easy to say this year has been tough. That I have had no agency in its impact on me, my family.

So easy to blame it on covid, on clients, on Brexit, on any manner of external shit that has hit all of us and none of us at the same time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that these things haven’t had devastating impacts on many; but the reality, as of right now, I’d be hard pressed to say that these events have directly affected my reality other than in fairly superficial ways.

Of course I’m at home, I’m on zoom and on lockdown. I miss my family, my friends and travelling. These things are common to us all and they are awful, but they are not what make or break me.

For the most part what’s truly hard in my life right now can be changed with choices I make.

But with that all said, recently I have just been finding things harder than they ordinarily would be, I’ve been pushing myself to do more, achieve more but the reality is, that despite the effort I put in, it doesn’t feel like enough.

There’s always something else, something more, something new. And I keep picking up the pace to catch up, or better, move forward.

But you know what? Lately it feels like I’m running hard just to stand still.

And if I stop, it all stops.

So I just keep running.

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Aarish Shah

Generalist | Thinker | Life Long Learner | Writer | Photographer