No one tells you the fog doesn’t lift all at once.

There’s no trumpet. No voiceover. No dramatic aha moment where everything suddenly makes sense and a choir starts singing in the background. If anything, you almost miss it. You just realize you’re not squinting anymore.

For months—sometimes years—you tell yourself you’re “thinking things through.” You’re being responsible, patient, and careful. In reality, you’re just walking around in mental mist, bumping into the same questions over and over like furniture you forgot was there on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Then one day, usually at an inconvenient hour, it clears. Not because you solved everything—but because you stopped fighting what you already knew. The noise quiets, and your shoulders relax. The constant low-grade anxiety that’s been tagging along like a bad intern suddenly clocks out without notice.

That’s clarity, and it doesn’t feel exciting. It feels… relieving. Like realizing you’ve been clenching your jaw for years without even knowing it.

As someone who’s juggled relationships, fatherhood, and running a business, I can tell you this: real clarity doesn’t ask you to explain yourself to everyone. It just asks you to move forward and stop pretending you’re still unsure.

When the fog lifts, you don’t feel smarter. You feel lighter. You stop replaying conversations. You stop rewriting history. You stop asking, “What if?” and start asking, “What’s next?” And here’s the part no one warns you about—the fog lifting doesn’t mean the road is easy. It just means you can finally see it. That’s enough. Because once you can see clearly, even a difficult path feels better than standing still, even though you know the haze will somehow do the walking for you.

Clarity doesn’t arrive loudly. It shows up quietly, taps you on the shoulder, and says, “You’re allowed to move now.” And when it does, you don’t celebrate, you exhale.

Then you take the step you should’ve taken a long time ago—with both feet this time.

By Shaun Sima
https://chef-pocket.com/aboutme

Remember those good old days when we used to have a dial-up connection? Ah, the memories! Waiting for a webpage to load was like a mini-marathon for our patience. But hey, we made the most of it! Multitasking became a necessary skill; we would do jumping jacks, make a sandwich, or even fold laundry while waiting for that precious website to appear on our screens. Who needs a fancy gym membership when we had dial-up providing us with the ultimate cardio workout?

Back then, the internet was a different world. Whenever we heard that iconic “You’ve got mail” sound, we knew we were in for an adventure. But along with exciting emails came the challenges of dial-up browsing. We would sit there, staring at the loading icon, praying for a stable connection. It required an immense amount of patience and determination.

But you know what? We conquered those challenges! We became wizards at troubleshooting and fixing connection issues. It was like a secret society; only those who survived the dial-up era truly understood the struggles and triumphs we experienced.

Looking back, waiting for dial-up seems laughable now, but it was a significant part of our lives. It taught us perseverance, patience, and the ability to find entertainment in unexpected places. So, let’s raise a toast to those days when waiting for a webpage to load was our daily cardio routine. The struggle was real.

By Shaun Sima
https://chef-pocket.com/aboutme