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I’m suffering from another mood crash today. Nothing serious. Just the standard, “I’m a failure.”

I know what’s brought it on. A complete lack of productivity at work. The inability to deliver on my promises. An unfinished job hanging over me.

But it led me to ponder on the career successes of all I knew along the way, who have achieved so much more than I ever could, often despite the humblest of beginnings.

Some days — and weeks — I feel just hopeless, incapable of delivering anything of any worth, my head numb from this persistent fog and inner distraction.

Yet just as this gloom sets in, I manage to obtain some perspective. The fact that much of what I perceive as success could just as easily be merely the appearance of it.

Who’s to know how anyone is really doing, behind the online resumes curated to help secure a promotion? Who’s to know if they’re actually in the exact same boat as me, struggling with the same inner doubts?

For whatever I say about the successes of old acquaintances, I don’t actually know anything about their lives at all, except for any small titbit that leaks out into the public domain.

Might we all just put the best bits out for others to see? Our minor successes. Our good news. Moments of moderate high esteem. A new qualification. A new title.

I was never destined to be in the league of my jet setting peers, but perhaps it’s worth recalling that they’re more the exception than the rule. Could it be that the rest of us are engaged in rather more mundane lives, just making do?

I’m struggling this week, it’s true, but my other half says I should be more forgiving of myself, and try to seek out husn al dhan both from others and myself. To transform my life with a positive mindset.

Perhaps I shall try that, if the Most Merciful wills. An antidote to these perpetual blues.