After writing the first essay on failing in secret, I felt I had said something true about myself. But not the whole truth.

Yes, I was failing in secret. I would begin and not finish, catch fire and then go cold, write beautiful plans and leave them alone in my notebooks.

But over time, I began to see that the word "failure" alone was not enough to describe what was happening inside me. There was something deeper than failure. Something more uncertain.

I was crowded.

And being crowded is a strange kind of lostness. Not a life without goals, not a life without dreams, but a life full of everything, with no idea how to live any of it along a clear line.

My life wasn't empty… it was scattered.

I had goals, and dreams, and good intentions. But they crowded inside me in a way that made me move constantly, without ever feeling I was moving in any direction.

One night, I opened my old notebook.

I found endless lists: a list for the start of the year, a list for the start of the school term, a list for the start of the month, a list after my birthday, a list after every fleeting moment of enthusiasm.

Each list began with almost the same good intentions.

And each list ended in the same place: in the notebook, alone.

That night, for the first time, I admitted something painful to myself:

I was arranging my life on paper… and leaving it to scatter in reality.

I wanted many things. Things that sometimes contradicted each other, and always crowded each other.

I wanted steadiness, not fleeting enthusiasm.

I wanted to be more honest, and feared losing the image people had grown used to seeing in me.

I wanted to live in the present, and to build a future.

I was not someone without desires.

I was someone besieged by how much he wanted.

In moments of clarity, I would resolve to return to what mattered most. To be more honest. To feel lighter inside. Not to live far from meaning.

But the days would pass, and life would arrive with all its noise and pull me along. Comparisons, fears, the wish to appear, endless preoccupations.

I would look up after a while, and find that the clarity had drifted away, and I was running again, as if running itself were the whole of life.

Then I would do nothing but write a new list.

And it doesn't stop with me.

How often was I present in body, absent in mind? How often did I give my phone more attention than I gave the people who truly deserved me? How often was I close in place, and far in spirit?

It isn't that I don't love those around me. That is exactly what makes the pain deeper.

To love, and yet be absent.

To know the worth of closeness, and yet live at a distance.

To have those you love beside you, and not be present enough to truly see them.

And so, I was not living as one person. I felt as if there were several people inside me, each calling from a different direction:

One calling me inward, another pulling me outward.

One wanting steadiness, another drifting with every gust.

One wanting to achieve, another wanting to disappear.

If I gave myself to one thing, I felt I had betrayed another.

If I chose one road, I felt another road blaming me.

If I ran, I feared losing what deserved a pause.

If I paused, I feared the world would run me over.

That was crowdedness in its truest form:

To end your day exhausted, without knowing whether you had come closer to the life you wanted, or drifted further from it.

Over time, these failures no longer felt like scattered incidents. Every postponement, every absence, every small escape, was part of something larger.

There was something general colouring my whole life.

Something that made me begin often, and never settle.

Catch fire often, and never continue.

Want much, and never live what I wanted with enough honesty.

I had no explanation yet. I didn't know why I would begin and not finish, why I would draw close to something and then move away, why I would fill my notebooks with what I wanted, and then let my days live something else entirely.

All I knew was that the word "failure" was no longer enough.

And the word "empty" did not describe what I was living.

There was a word that was truer, harsher, closer to the truth of me:

I was crowded.

Crowded by everything I wanted…

And empty of a single life I was actually living.

The  Journey's Question

What are the things filling you inside, but never turning into a clear life you actually live?

Take a paper and a pen, and write them as they are, without order and without decoration.

Don't search for the answer now.

Just empty the crowdedness from inside you onto the page. Write honestly, even if only one line.

Remember: This isn't my journey alone… it's ours.