I often write in my mind. I think about how amazing it would be to share this idea or that experience with my friends on my blog (my blog, not the social media stuff). Especially these kinds of thoughts occur to me when I’m on vacation, when I can detach myself from everyday life and can look at my life from a different perspective. This is the time when my mind can wander and dream.
One vacation, I’m dreaming about starting to play guitar (this time for real!); another time, I’m thinking about starting a course on creative writing (I even google it and save it to my bookmarks), and now again, during our trip to Cairo, I found myself with a desire to create something outside my work.
I often follow up on these thoughts. I come home from vacation and buy a guitar and start music classes. Or I buy a few books on drawing and leave colored pencils on a dining table (so I can easily get them any moment I want). This time, I’m setting up a blog with this first blog post that I’ve been writing mentally for the past few days.
I know how this all ends. The reality of everyday life will punch me in the face. It always does. I know this by selling three pianos, two guitars, one ukulele and donating so many other things, like dance shoes and a tennis racket. This is how it usually goes: I come from vacation all fresh and calm, full of energy and inspiration I start that thing I was thinking about. It goes pretty well for a few weeks until I find myself falling to bed at 9 pm, and my only worry will be that I didn’t finish my homework for the Swedish lesson and I have no energy to read some fiction book to unwind. But I keep trying new things again and again with the hope that this time it will be different. Even if the hope is very weak.
I get inspiration from other people, like Oliver Burkeman (I love how clearly he writes), and I love graphic novels from Shannon Hale or pieces of wisdom from Derek Sivers. These people not only inspire me but also they make me feel less lonely in my human experience. And this gives me hope that maybe there’s something I can also do, or this is the way I can also connect with other people: not by sharing some profound experiences and insights and being a preacher, but sharing everyday experiences with other people.
And, to be honest, this is very intimidating. It is about being vulnerable, caring about what other people think about me, and still finding the courage to do it anyway. Especially when this (in this case, writing) is not my area of expertise. But I have to try it and not take this too seriously. How else am I going to learn something or even learn about myself if I’m not trying and failing? And that’s ok. The joy of the process is enough for now. So let this (one more) experiment begin.