I want to write. I like writing in the mornings, pen on paper, reflecting on my feelings and the world around me. I do these writings in Spanish, for a change, because nowadays I even think in English. It’s like communicating to my true deeper self.
But that’s not the kind of writing I want to do (or maybe it partially is?). I want to write something for the blog. I have been feeling a bit stuck in that sense for a while. There’s a lot of topics I could talk about, but the question is not which topics to choose, but how to go about them.
I don’t want to give you advice, or give you a step-by-step method, or to tell you what to do or how to live your life, because, do I really know better than you? I don’t want to tell you how to be creative, how to do more, how to achieve more (fuck the achieving patriarchal culture anyway). I don’t want to just bring topics and ideas I copied from somewhere else, and I regurgitated in the form of “self-expression”. But then I wonder, what do I really have to say?
I am not a trained artist, and I am not a psychologist or therapist. I’m only a self-taught artist who also happens to be a part time vet (and no, I don’t especially want to write about that either).
I wonder, what do I want to talk about and how? What makes me different? What do I really want? What can I achieve with these posts?
And to be honest, I am not sure about the answers for these questions. But what I have been feeling strongly is that I just want to be authentic and raw. That’s what I like to read, that’s what we need more of in this society.
And then I wonder again, is it even useful to anybody else? But does it even need to be useful to anybody else? What is useful anyway?
Can I just write what I want, express what I want to express without controlling it with my mind. Can I just leave the fear behind and be real?
This has been a big topic for me in the last year. Overcoming my fears, trauma and blocks (warning, you don’t just overcome them, and you’re done with it forever) slowly, like the layers of an onion. I have been discovering slowly who I am. Sometimes the noise stops, and I see it clearly.
And I find, it is difficult to just be yourself. For a lot of reasons.
Do we even know who we are? Did our behaviours and ways of dealing with life come from ourselves? Or did they come from somebody around us while we were growing up (mainly parents! But also, the general society, friends and even teachers). We are so influenced while growing up, we take so many fears that are not ours, we take behavioural patterns from our parents even if we don’t realise. We develop coping mechanisms to be able to survive what’s going around us. So, who are you really? Who am I?
At the same time, without those influences we wouldn’t be who we are right now at all! We are all those things but also something else underlying them. There is something true underneath the fear, the trauma and the coping mechanisms.
What do you really enjoy doing? What makes you feel alive? What makes you smile like an idiot? Can we do more of that stuff? Can that stuff be our job?
And then, even when you know what you like and what you want to do - even if it’s just a whiff of it, as rarely we get a full image of where we’re going - you still need to do it. We still need to get out there and be who we are which is not always that easy. Shyness, what will ‘they’ think, how am I going to make money, etc.
So, I have been wondering these things. I’m still not sure where I’m going with this, although things are getting clearer. I’m not sure I will ever know and I’m starting to be ok with that. I guess I will see it one day when I look back.
If you have followed me up to here, congrats, you have a great attention span!
Did you know that philosophy was my favourite subject at school? Maybe I can just write philosophical posts that I enjoy writing even if I don’t give specific advice. Maybe I can just make you question things and question yourself. Maybe that’s how I can be useful. Or maybe it’s just me having a rant.
I don’t know. But I enjoyed writing this.
See you next time.
Raquel