A bad fortnight followed by a fine one, in case that is useful

Started 14 June 2026 · 14 replies · 85 hearts · read 993 times

BlueStroud, UK · 14 June 2026

1 month ago

A bad fortnight followed by a fine one, in case that is useful — putting it in its own thread so it does not get lost in the check-in.

I do not know if this belongs in this circle. Move me if not.

I want to write this down while I am still in it, because I have noticed that I rewrite these stages afterwards into something more sensible than they were.

The practical side has settled and the rest of it has not, and I would like to hear how other people at this stage handled the part that is not practical.

Sorry for the length. If anybody has been at this point, I would very much like to hear how it went.

KateBelfast, NI

If you are in the middle of this stretch and everything feels unresolved, that is the correct feeling for the middle of it. Nothing is meant to be resolved yet.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

Thank you all for the care in here. When somebody arrives frightened, what this circle aims to hand back is experience rather than instruction, and that distinction is the whole reason it exists.

IlyaAlmaty, KZ

Gently disagreeing with Esi, or rather adding the other half of it.

Weeks one to twelve for me were: strange, quiet, difficult, difficult, better, fine, fine, tired, tired, fine, good, and then a week where I forgot I was doing it at all.

StefanZurich, CH

I have nothing to add and I did not want to leave it unanswered.

6me too 8

NikoTbilisi, GE

That is a very clear way of putting something I have never been able to put clearly.

MargueriteQuebec City, CA

My most useful early habit was writing down the question the moment it occurred to me, because by the appointment I could never remember what had been worrying me at eleven at night.

Obi OEnugu, NG

Around week nine I stopped noticing it. Not because anything dramatic changed, but because it had become part of the week rather than an event in it.

5me too 4

BramleyBath, UK

Obi O, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

I would gently say that twelve weeks is not long. It felt endless from inside it and looks very short from here, and both of those readings are honest.

OllieCardiff, UK

Bramley has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

My week six was much harder than my week two, which I had not expected at all. I had assumed it got monotonically easier and it does not always go in that direction.

Ozzy GWalsall, UK

#10

Something that helped me through the middle stretch: I stopped judging a week by the last day of it. Fridays were always the worst read on how the week had actually gone.

NualaArmagh, NI

#11

Read, understood, and glad you are here.

OndineLausanne, CH

#12

I reread my own notes from week two recently and I sounded genuinely frightened. I had forgotten that. Twelve weeks does more than I gave it credit for at the time.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#13

I am going to close the loop on this one rather than let it drift. Where the person who opened a thread comes back with an update, that is the post I would least want a later reader to miss.

NellaUtrecht, NL

#14

Something I did not anticipate was how much I would want to talk about it and how little the people around me would want to hear about it. This circle absorbed the difference.