How Riding and Writing Rebuilt My Career and Identity
The Quiet Collapse
I did not realize my career was collapsing while it was happening. There was no single failure, no dramatic ending, no moment I could point to and say, this is where it all went wrong. Instead, it unraveled slowly—missed momentum, fading confidence, days that felt heavier than they should have. I kept moving forward out of habit, not conviction.
From the outside, I looked functional. I was doing the work, meeting expectations, surviving. Inside, I felt disconnected from the person I once believed I would become. I was busy, but not fulfilled. Active but directionless, the worst part was not the struggle itself—it was the growing fear that this emptiness might be permanent.
A Life of Adaptation
My name is MD. Imjamul Hoque Bhuiyan. I am based in Chittagong, Bangladesh, but my story begins much earlier, in Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman, where I was born. From childhood, adaptation became instinct. New environments, new people, new expectations—movement was constant.
I learned how to make friends easily, how to speak, how to blend in. Yet alongside that social ease lived a quiet introversion, a tendency to observe more than I spoke, to reflect deeply even when surrounded by noise. That duality followed me into adulthood: outwardly social, inwardly searching.
When I eventually stepped into professional life, I carried with me an unspoken belief—that success required seriousness, rigidity, and sacrifice. Careers were meant to be linear and respectable. Anything else was indulgence.
The Lie I Believed About Hobbies
For years, I believed hobbies were for losers.
Cycling for joy felt irresponsible. Writing poems no one asked for felt childish. These things did not pay bills. They did not earn titles. They did not impress anyone. In a world that rewarded certainty and structure, passion felt like a liability.
So when my career began to stall—especially after COVID, when I was trying to define myself as both a writer and a delivery man—I did not search for meaning. I searched for pressure. I worked harder at goals I no longer understood. I consumed advice that promised optimization without asking whether the system itself was broken.
I tried to force clarity through discipline alone.
That was the moment everything stopped working.
The Bicycle as Necessity
The bicycle returned to my life not as a dream, but as a necessity.
I became a delivery man because I needed income, movement, and immediacy. The work was simple in theory and demanding in practice. Long hours, relentless traffic, heat, rain, deadlines. No applause, No titles, Just distance and effort.
There was nowhere to hide on the streets of Chittagong.
Yet something unexpected happened. On a bicycle, reality cannot be negotiated. You feel every incline. You earn every kilometer. Fatigue is honest. Progress is visible. Slowly, as my legs grew stronger, my mind grew quieter. The anxiety that once lived permanently in my chest loosened its grip.
The city stopped feeling like an obstacle and began to feel like a conversation.
When the Streets Started Writing Back
That is where the writing returned.
At first, it came in fragments—lines forming at traffic lights, metaphors unfolding during long rides, thoughts surfacing only when my breath found its rhythm. I did not sit at a desk to write. I rode. I observed. I endured.
The streets became pages.
Breath became ink.
Wheels spun, and thoughts flowed.
I wrote not to publish, not to impress, but to understand myself again. I took on a pen name that felt honest: “Wheel Whispers Words.” Because that was exactly what I was doing—turning kilometers into quiet confessions, silent reflections, words that traveled further than I ever could.
I was not escaping my career. I was rebuilding my identity.
Discipline Without Pretension
Delivery riding taught me more about work than any office ever had.
Show up regardless of mood.
Respect recovery.
Move forward even when progress feels invisible.
Those lessons transferred naturally into my writing. Poems became reflections. Reflections became essays. Essays became content with weight—writing shaped by lived experience rather than theory.
This was not a strategic pivot. It was continuity. Poetry did not disappear; it matured. Creativity did not die; it gained structure.
That is how poetry became content writing—not by abandoning art, but by respecting it enough to work at it daily.
Recognition When I Needed It Most
Eventually, people began to notice. Not because I chased attention, but because authenticity carries its own gravity. Readers and clients did not ask about my previous titles. They recognized something else—clarity, restraint, and honesty forged through physical effort and solitude.
During moments of doubt—when I questioned whether I should abandon this path for something “more stable”—BSMe2e became a turning point. Their encouragement, recognition, and belief gave me something I had been missing since the early days of my post-COVID career: validation without pressure to conform.
Being recognized by BSMe2e, culminating in tangible acknowledgment of my work was not just an achievement. It was reassurance. Proof that this unconventional path—cycling, writing, enduring—was not wasted effort. That it mattered.
They reminded me to stay when I felt like leaving.
Two Worlds, One Direction
Today, I balance two worlds that once seemed incompatible: delivery work and writing, physical endurance and intellectual expression. I am still a cyclist. I am still a writer. I am still learning.
And I carry a dream that feels both impossible and inevitable—to ride my bicycle from Bangladesh to Hajj, turning faith, endurance, and intention into one continuous journey.
I no longer believe hobbies are distractions. I believe they are foundations.
Hobbies are where we practice being ourselves without permission. Careers often demand performance. Hobbies demand presence. And presence is where direction is rediscovered.
Riding Toward Purpose
My career did not recover because I found a shortcut. It recovered because I slowed down enough to listen—to my body, my curiosity, my need for meaning because I allowed movement and expression to coexist. Because I accepted that dignity does not come from prestige, but from commitment.
If you feel lost, stalled, or quietly burned out, do not ask what title you should chase next. Ask what activity makes you feel awake. Ask what pulls you into the moment without validation. Ask what you would continue doing even if no one noticed.
That is not weakness.
That is information.
My life is still a work in progress. But now it moves with intention. Wheels spin. Thoughts flow. Streets become pages. And with every ride, with every word, I am no longer running from failure.
I am riding toward purpose.
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