Finding My Rhythm: The Real Talk About Balancing Work and Studies as an International Student

Last night, the baby woke up four times.

Four times I stumbled out of bed. Four times I walked the hallway, bouncing him gently, humming the same Nepali lullaby my mother hummed to me. Four times I finally laid him down, closed my eyes, and felt sleep pull at me, only to hear him cry again.

This morning, my alarm went off at 5:30. The same alarm that used to mean thirty minutes of quiet Dutch study before the world woke up. I reached for my phone, turned it off, and lay in the dark.

I did not get up.

The sky in Brugge. Some mornings, the silence is for study; other mornings, it is just for surviving.

The book stayed on the table. The notebook stayed empty. The words I had planned to review stayed unread.

And when I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7, exhausted and guilty, I thought: I am failing. I cannot keep this up. I will never learn this language.

That feeling, the weight of missing one day, is heavier than any textbook. It sits on your chest and tells you: you are not consistent enough. You are not disciplined enough. You are not enough.

The Day the Routine Broke

Before the baby came, I had a system. A system that worked. Wake early. Study. Review during breaks. Listen on the bus. Practice in the evening. Every day. Small steps. Progress.

Then the baby arrived.

And the system shattered.

The new rhythm of my life. Beautiful, exhausting, and completely indifferent to my study schedule.

Sleep became a distant memory. The early mornings I had protected so carefully disappeared into feeding and changing and rocking. The bus rides became too blurry to focus. The evenings were a haze of exhaustion and the quiet desperation of wanting just five minutes to myself.

For twelve days, I did not open my Dutch book.

Not once.

Every morning I told myself: today I will do it. Just ten minutes. Every night I fell asleep with the guilt of another day wasted.

I have learned something important since then. Something no one tells you about consistency.

Consistency is not never missing a day. Consistency is coming back after you miss.

The First Day Back

Three days ago, I finally opened the book.

I did not do my full routine. I did not study for thirty minutes. I read one page. One page of a children's story, the same one my five-year-old reads at school.

The words were simple. De zon schijnt. De vogel zingt. The sun shines. The bird sings.

I understood them. And in that small moment, I felt something I had not felt in weeks. Not pride. Not achievement. Just the quiet relief of showing up.

One page. That was enough.

The next morning, I read two pages. The morning after that, I listened to a podcast while feeding the baby. Not trying to understand everything. Just letting the sounds fill the room.

Consistency did not return in a grand way. It returned in tiny pieces, fitting themselves back into the cracks of my new life.

What My Father Taught Me About Showing Up

The fields where my father learned that consistency isn’t a choice - it is just how you live.

My father never studied a language. He never had a textbook or an app or a podcast. But he knew something about consistency that I am only now beginning to understand.

In the village, there were days when he was too tired to work. Days when the monsoon flooded the fields. Days when his body ached. Days when the weight of feeding a family felt impossible.

But he always went back. Not with a plan. Not with motivation. Just with the quiet knowledge that the work needed to be done.

He never called it consistency. He called it living.

I think about him now, in his 75th year, still waking before dawn, still walking to the fields, still doing what needs to be done. Not because it is easy. Because this is what it means to be here.

If he can do that, I can open a book for one page.

The Truth About Busy Days

Here is what I have learned about busy days:

You will miss days. It is not a failure. It is life. A baby who does not sleep. A child who needs you. A job that demands everything. These are not excuses. They are the real texture of a full life.

A small thing done is better than a big thing imagined. I used to think I needed thirty minutes to make progress. Now I know that three minutes is also progress. One word is progress. Opening the book is progress.

Consistency does not mean perfect. It means persistent. You fall down. You get up. You fall again. You get up again. That is consistency. Not the absence of falling. The commitment to rising.

Your brain learns even when you are not "studying." The nights I walked the hallway with my newborn, humming Nepali lullabies, I was not studying Dutch. But I was being a father. I was present. And somehow, that presence made the next morning's page easier to read.

A New Kind of Routine

I have stopped trying to fit my old routine into my new life. It does not fit. So I am building something smaller. Something softer. Something that can bend.

Morning:
One sentence. Before the baby wakes, I open my book and read one sentence. That is all. If the baby wakes early, I skip it. No guilt.

Feeding time:
One word. While the baby nurses, I think of one Dutch word I want to remember. I say it in my head. Licht. Light. Melk. Milk. Zacht. Soft.

With my older son:
One game. We play a game where he teaches me a Dutch word and I teach him a Nepali word. He laughs when I say it wrong. I laugh when he says it wrong. We are both learning. Neither of us feels like we are "studying."

Before sleep:
One breath. I take one breath and ask myself: what did I learn today? Sometimes the answer is nothing. Sometimes it is that I am too tired to learn. Both are honest. Both are enough.

This is not the routine I imagined. But it is the routine that works. It fits into the cracks. It asks for nothing I cannot give. And slowly, so slowly I almost do not notice, I am still moving forward.

One cup. One notebook. One page. This is what progress looks like today.

The Real Enemy

I have realized that the enemy of consistency is not lack of time. It is not exhaustion. It is not even the baby who wakes four times a night.

The real enemy is perfectionism.

Perfectionism tells you that if you cannot do it perfectly, you should not do it at all. Perfectionism tells you that missing one day means you have failed. Perfectionism tells you that a ten-minute study session is not enough, so why bother?

Perfectionism is a liar.

I have learned to ignore it. To show up even when I cannot show up perfectly. To read one page instead of ten. To listen to one podcast instead of a whole lesson. To say one word correctly instead of none.

One page. One word. One breath.

This is how I stay consistent when learning feels impossible.

What You Will Learn

If you are struggling to stay consistent with your own learning, here is what I want you to know:

Start smaller than you think. If thirty minutes feels impossible, try ten. If ten feels impossible, try one. If one feels impossible, just open the book. Opening the book counts.

Forgive the days you miss. Guilt does not help you learn. It only makes you want to hide from the book. Let it go. Start again tomorrow.

Your life is not an obstacle to your learning. Your life is the context. Learning does not happen outside your life. It happens inside it. In the cracks. In the quiet moments. In the exhaustion and the joy and the chaos.

Trust the small steps. They feel like nothing. But they add up. One page becomes ten. Ten pages become a chapter. A chapter becomes understanding. Understanding becomes fluency.

You are not failing. You are adapting. A new baby. A new job. A new country. These are not failures. These are the reasons you are learning in the first place. Be kind to yourself.

A Request for You

I want to hear from you.

What do you do when learning feels impossible? How do you stay consistent on the days when you have nothing left to give? What is your one-page version?

Share in the comments below. Your story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.

Because we are all in this together. All trying to grow. All falling and getting up. All learning that consistency is not perfection. It is showing up. Again and again. In whatever way we can.

Closing

Tonight, the baby will probably wake again. I will walk the hallway, bounce him gently, hum the same lullaby. I will not open my Dutch book.

But tomorrow morning, I will open it. One page. One sentence. One word.

That is consistency. That is enough.

And someday, when my sons are older and ask how I learned this language, I will tell them: I learned it one page at a time. I learned it in the cracks of a busy life. I learned it because I never stopped coming back.

You can do this. I know you can.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

And when you fall, because you will fall, just get up.

One page. One word. One breath.

That is all it takes.

With love,
Bitty

🙏❤️

Now go. Do the smallest thing. It is enough.