I said three weeks. Maybe more. The keeper is going to the workshop. The light stays on. The beam keeps turning.

That was three weeks ago. And I was wrong about almost everything.

I thought the break would be empty. That I would tinker aimlessly, start things without finishing them, and eventually climb back upstairs when the guilt got heavy enough. That is how my breaks usually go. Good intentions. No structure. A slow slide into doing nothing and calling it rest.

This time was different. Something grew during the break that I did not plant.

A schedule. Not the kind you write on a whiteboard with colour-coded markers and deadlines. The kind that just appears. One morning I woke up and did things in a certain order. The next morning I did them in the same order. By the third morning it was a routine. By the second week it was a life.

I open my snoopy journal. A small notebook that now runs my day. Tasks. Dates. Objectives. Not because someone told me to. Because the notebook started filling itself and I followed. I have my brew. I have my bite. I work. I stop. I go back to the people who had rights over me before I was even born. My parents. Then to the ones who rented me for life. My wife. No exit clause. Then I play with my tiny toy. The one still small enough to fall asleep on my chest. And the big one. The one who was tiny years ago and now looks straight when he talks to me.

I am still struggling with two things. Closing my mouth. And training. But do not blame me for the second one. It is fifty degrees outside. The air is not air. It is a hairdryer pointed at a country. I will train when Kuwait decides to cool down. Or when I stop making excuses. Whichever comes first. Probably Kuwait.

But everything else is working. The workshop has projects. The blog has posts waiting. The journal has pages filled. The words came back. Not because I chased them. Because I stopped chasing and they sat on my lap like a cat that only comes when you ignore it.

The break was never a break. It was a construction site. I went downstairs and without noticing built the scaffolding for everything that comes next. The routine. The rhythm. The structure. None of it was planned. All of it is now holding weight.

Which is why I have a problem.

I want to go to Mecca. A week. Something I have been postponing the way I postpone everything that matters. Because in a way Mecca trips cleanses you and gives you a new start and makes you value what is present. And build or rebuild it.

And there it is. The dilemma I did not expect. I finally have structure. Real structure. Built over three weeks without trying. And now I want to leave it and I am afraid it will not be here when I come back. That the routine will forget itself. That the journal will feel foreign. That the mornings will lose their order and I will return to the same shapeless days I started with.

So this post is stuck between two titles and I do not know which one it is.

باخذ دوام من الإجازة

Because the structure is working and I showed up today and wrote this.

Or.

باخذ إجازة من الإجازة

Because Mecca is calling and the structure is asking me to stay.

One says keep building. The other says go and trust that what you built will hold.

And the thing I would be going to Mecca to find is the same thing that answers the question. Do you trust what you built? Do you trust that the rhythm is real and not just momentum? Do you trust that the vine you grew on the wall will stay even if you stop watching it for a week?

I do not know yet.

But I know the word for when you do not know and you go anyway.

استخير وتوكّل