I NEVER KNOW WHICH VERSION OF MYSELF I WILL MEET TOMORROW BUT AM WORKING ON THIS...

Sometimes I wish I could spend just one day inside my own head without having to argue with myself.

I know how that sounds, considering it is where I live every day. But there are mornings when I wake up feeling ready to do something with my life. I make plans, arrange things in my head and convince myself that I am finally getting somewhere. Everything seems possible for a little while.

Then, for reasons I cannot always explain, that feeling disappears.

I could be doing something as ordinary as sitting at my desk, looking at the same things I was looking at an hour earlier, when suddenly I start questioning everything. The plans don't seem as sensible anymore. Things I was excited about begin to feel pointless. I start wondering whether I am wasting my time, whether I am making the wrong decisions, whether I even know what I want.

Nothing outside has changed. It is still the same day, the same room, the same unfinished work. Yet something inside me has shifted.

I have lost count of how many times I have started something with genuine excitement and then spent the next few hours finding reasons to doubt it. Sometimes I don't even need a reason. My mind is very good at finding problems where there were none a few minutes earlier.

The exhausting part is having to live with both sides of myself. There is the person who wants to take chances, see things, make mistakes and find out what life has waiting for him. Then there is the person who would rather stay where he is because at least nothing unexpected can happen there.

They rarely agree.

I sometimes wonder what people would think if they could hear the conversations I have with myself. One moment I am telling myself to stop being afraid and get on with things. A little later, I am questioning why I am even trying. I can be my own biggest encouragement and, without much effort, my own worst critic.

And the next morning, I wake up and do it all over again.

I don't think people always understand how strange it can be to feel disconnected from yourself. You can go through an entire day talking, laughing, answering messages and doing whatever needs to be done, then find yourself alone in the evening feeling as though you haven't really been present for any of it.

I have had moments when I wanted someone to ask me how I was doing, but when somebody actually asked, I said I was fine. Not because I wanted to lie, but because I couldn't find a simple answer that would explain what was happening inside me.

There are things I have carried for a long time without knowing where to put them. Certain disappointments changed the way I look at people. Some experiences made me more careful than I used to be. I notice things now that I probably would have ignored before. I sometimes miss the person who could trust without having to think through every possible way things might go wrong.

But I cannot pretend I am still that person.

What I find difficult is that I don't always recognise the person I am becoming either. My interests change. My opinions change. Things I once thought were important don't always matter to me anymore. Even the future I used to picture for myself looks different depending on the day.

There are mornings when I want to do everything, and evenings when I cannot understand why I was in such a hurry. There are days when being alone feels like the best thing in the world, and other days when the silence becomes so uncomfortable that I wish somebody would simply sit beside me.

I used to think I needed to figure myself out before I could feel comfortable with my life. I would spend hours trying to understand why I reacted a certain way, why I kept changing my mind, why I couldn't hold on to a good feeling for very long. I thought that if I could just find the right explanation, everything would fall into place.

It hasn't happened.

I am beginning to realise that I might never have one fixed answer to the question of who I am. The person I was a few years ago had different fears, different expectations and a completely different idea of what life would look like. I cannot keep measuring myself against him, especially when I know how much has happened since then.

I still want to become someone I can be proud of. I still have things I want to experience and a few dreams I am not ready to abandon. But I am tired of treating every uncertain day as proof that I am failing at life.

Some days I will make progress. Other days I will spend too much time thinking and not enough time doing. I will probably change my mind about a few things along the way. That is already part of being me, whether I like it or not.

Tonight, I don't have a big conclusion to write. I am sitting with the same questions I had yesterday, and I suspect some of them will still be there tomorrow.

I only hope that when I wake up, I can be a little kinder to the person I find waiting for me.