To write or not to write...
I don't know where to start. I am not a writer, just somebody who has 256,452 thoughts per day and they are very difficult to manage, to be completely honest. I also thought that blogs are dead, so I considered this the right time for me to start. But apparently, they are not dead, which makes me happy that videos still haven't killed blogs and articles. But I am also scared that somebody will actually read this. I don't know if I want somebody to read my thoughts here, but if there will be few brave people, I hope that it will help them in whatever shape or form. In the past, when I lived abroad, I was attending a meeting and announced that I would like to make people feel less alone in whatever they are going through. We spoke about purpose in life, and I completely forgot about it and remembered it just now, when I am typing those words. Interesting.
I tried to write since I was a teenager. I wrote a short romantic story that I dedicated to my boyfriend at that time. Then I created a blog and wrote about important historical figures. Some years later, I found a website where aspiring writers could share their stories with everybody, so I tried to write a couple. And the last attempt was a couple of years ago when I decided to start a blog on Medium. I wrote a blog post and deleted it the next day. This is my 5th attempt to start writing.
The difference between all the attempts that I actually published and deleted is language and my anxiety disorder. Everything published was written in my native language, and I was young and reckless, and didn't care that much. There was a time when I thought about becoming a writer/copywriter/author. I thought this could be something I would enjoy doing for the rest of my life, something meaningful, and if I earned a living from it, what a dream. Excited as I was to step in the writing waters, I created the Medium article, I wrote it in English, and anxiety got the best of me in the next 24 hours. I have always loved foreign languages, I love to listen to them, use them, speak them, but of course I am not a native speaker. So in those 24 hours, my anxious brain convinced me that I don't have what it takes to be a writer because I need to have a talent for that, and surely I don't have it. My English is too bad, my vocabulary is not sophisticated but rather simple, I make tons of grammar mistakes, and above all, nobody cares what I have to say.
My anxious brain doesn't do it because it hates me, exactly the opposite. It loves me like a toxic friend; it doesn't want me to get hurt by changing something, by getting out of my comfort zone, by trying something I have never done before — it might be too dangerous. And what do we do in toxic friendships? We believe that person for a very long time until we don't. It is a constant daily battle which requires so much energy, but giving up is not an option. It feels like climbing on a ladder three steps up, and then something pulling you back four or five. I have an amazing idea I am so excited about, and then in just a couple of hours the brain gives me all the reasons why it is not going to work, so I change my mind. Unfortunately, it's a cycle.
Yesterday, I was sitting in my kitchen slash living room slash bedroom (I live in a tiny studio) and it just popped up to me: what is the worst thing that can happen if I start to write about my dream journey? I mean, I can write down all 297 reasons that I came up with, but I am thinking about good old Nike advice "Just do it." If I don't start writing, I will never get better at it. I am quite tired of living my life the same way and just dreaming. Maybe I can use this blog as a kind of accountability notes. I gave myself a year to change my life and make one of my dreams come true, so what would happen if I document my journey in this way?