Today, 22 September 2026, at 05:54 pm, I finally finished reading through my proposal and making all the corrections based on the reviewers’ comments after my post-proposal defence. I presented it on 03 August, and since then this thing has been sitting with me again and again. Reading it, finding something that needs to be changed, going back to another part, reading the same paragraph again, then realising that there is still something else that needs fixing. And now that I have finally reached the end of it, I already know that I am going to have to edit it again. Honestly, I am sick of it. I just want to get this over with.

But after I finally finished today, something happened.

It was not the reading that made me feel nostalgic. It was the feeling of finally reaching the end of it. For the first time in quite a while, I felt as though something had actually been accomplished. Something that I had been carrying for weeks was finally put down, even if only temporarily. There was this strange calm going through me, so steady that I almost did not know what to do with it. I just sat there with the feeling for a while.

Somehow, I also felt that I had learned something.

Not only from the proposal itself, but from the whole process of having it read, questioned, corrected and read again. I started this part of the journey with one version of the work in my head, and now I am looking at it differently. I know more than I did when I presented it on 03 August. I can see things I could not see before. There is still plenty to fix, but at least I know that I have moved somewhere.

And strangely, that feeling brought back something I have not felt for quite some time.

It reminded me of being a teenager. Not because the proposal reminded me of those days, but because of that feeling after finishing something and suddenly having nothing hanging over me for a moment. Being young and free, when finishing something could simply mean finishing it, and the rest of the day could belong to me. There was no need to immediately think about the next thing.

I think I miss that.

For several months now, there has always been something. Work, study, reading, writing, correcting, preparing, finishing one thing only to find another thing waiting behind it. Even when I stop, my mind somehow continues. Today, for once, it became quiet for a little while.

Something is off my shoulder.

Of course, I still have to edit it again. I know that. This is not the end of the proposal, and probably not even the end of the corrections. But tonight feels different. I finished something. I learned something from it. I can feel that little sense of accomplishment sitting quietly somewhere inside me, and there is a kind of peace that comes with knowing I have made it through another part of the journey.

I want to feel this again.

That calm. That little feeling of being young and free. That feeling that, for once, nothing needs to be solved immediately.

Just for tonight.

Labels: motivation, problems