I have made myself a promise to write every single day. Granted, I do that every day anyway though only for my very own personal diary, and not officially online. However things have changed since yesterday and I want to celebrate this change. My sole object is to turn this turning of the tides into something I can look back on as the most favourable of events, rather than the one that destroyed me or what I created.
Admittedly, this sounds dramatic. And if I were to buy into my own brain’s game that is selling me existential fear and chronic threats, then I would tell you all about it. Yet, I have made the decision to not even give this situation the big stage. It is my broadway show and I am lifting the red velvet curtain of a baroque theatre to myself. This is a new setting, a new beginning and simultaneously a last call.
Have you ever been told you are good at something but you have never seen it that way, maybe you were even astounded that someone else would think that about you. Because at one point or on multiple occasions in your life that very same compliment has been turned into a failure, into something to be ashamed of. So the sheer audacity to accept someone else’s perception of your skill or talent seems so far off because long ago it has already been established that this is nonsense. Stick to what someone has told you, don’t peek left or right, do not take other opinions into consideration and only let flourish within yourself the deep, festering belief system that you are not good enough.
For some, this example does not only resonate for one specific thing but for their whole being. As a whole, articulated with emphasis on the big word of whole. But because we will meet every single day, for now, it is enough to concentrate on the one very specific thing that I am doing right now: Writing.
THE GREAT WHO AND WHY
A French teacher once told me my sentences would be good, but they are too long. Earlier than that my German teacher said that my texts are unreadable, again, because they are too long. She phrased it cardboard boxed sentences. A sentence within a sentence, within a sentence within sentences of sentences, that are consisting of sentences within sentences. Read that again and I have conveyed successfully what she meant. I hope this is a good example of a cardboard boxed sentence of mine. Anyway, not even there did it really start. I guess it first started when I got infected with the notion that you cannot make a living from writing, and as a side dish have been served a bit of the old ‘and-you-are-not-good-enough-anyway-who-do-you-think-you-are-that-yout-hink-you-could-execute-such-a-dream-job-if-I-could-not-do-it’ cabbage salad.
Unwrapped and pulled out of the cardboard boxing this simply means that the person who uttered this never tried enough. That in fact, the farthest this person came was thinking about it but not putting passion nor effort in it, and I mean blood, sweat and tears. Why doesn’t matter, really. Because all the why’s that are uttered merely serve as a main course of excuses. The who, not the rock band but the person, is not important either. Quite frankly it may not even be a person but just the abstract version of the environment, or society, or the caregivers.
Now that we have established the why and the who, let me reveal the fact why I am still doing it anyway. I have a problem with authorities. I don't like rules. Yet a life lived as long a I have, shows that I have obeyed and suffered my mediocrity, contradicting my supposed inner rebel. All the people that ever told me that my writing is not good enough have disappeared. In their place have appeared all the souls that tell me that I am good enough, more than that, that I have a gift. And the more I have been unravelling the layers of who’s and why’s of the past that have caused me to develop a personality that wasn’t mine to begin with, the more I have discovered that I am irrevocably in love with language. I always was. I just never got the encouragement or the nudge to dig deep and find out why that is and in what sense it could be a good thing. So, I'll nudge myself, finally!
Here we are now, in the present moment. I started this blog as a means to document my journey of travelling. We are nearing the fourth anniversary of this episode in my life. This blog was the basis, the foundation for all of my future creative endeavours that lie now in the past or are still evolving in the present.
If I may disclaim a bit of self marketing here, and why not?!, it is my blog, I can do what I want anyway: Feel free to watch my visual expression of said journey in neat little episodes on my YouTube channel, as well as listen to the newest addition to the creative bulk venture that is my soul - the Onion Cycles Podcast. And while you are at it, I do a lot of photography as well, prominently established on my https://www.instagram.com/wunderfinderorg/https://www.instagram.com/wunderfinderorg/.
Back to the main, reading, show:
My writing though has become a mere thing for myself. And that is how it should be. But if I am dead serious and heart-wrenchingly open - I want to make a living from it. And maybe from what I have to offer to the world. My perception, my deep feelings, my observations, my highs and lows and everything in between. Partly because external validation enables me to some extend to love myself more, believe in myself more, continue to pursue my intentions. Honesty first. Partly because I feel I do not fit into a system or a job that employs me to do certain tasks that do not answer to some higher calling. A calling of higher Good. A calling to evolve. A calling of the soul.
So, there it is. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Purple on white, online. No more hiding. In fact, now that the curtain has opened up on a new scene, with this bold statement right at the beginning, there is no turning back. If I ever look back on my life I still, as I have always said, do not want to have any ‘What if’s’ in it. What if I could have taken a new course with writing, followed a new current within myself to try and make it work, given myself the time in the kingdom of the North to write my heart out?
Well, there is no what if now since I am doing exactly that.
Done with hiding and playing it low and staying insecure and unsure.
All in, all out.
Because I will write my heart out, my soul out and I will give my creativity my priority. Because the shift that has taken place in my professional life means that I have all that I am to give and no one else to answer to or please.
Just me, my past Self and my future Self.
And I want to make my Selfs proud.
Thus, dear reader, beloved soul, I conclude: If you think this is any good, I proceed to humbly ask every single one of you reading to forward my details to any chance encounter that talks about being in need of a writer, content or copy, article or story. Or a publisher, I have anbook in the workings too. And I can do it in German, all of this, as well. There is nothing more important than putting myself out there and trying to be heard, seen, read.
At heart we all are storytellers.
I want to get in line with my ancestors and tell stories.
And this one is the first of a series.
Welcome to The Norway Chronicles, Part 1: Grillefjord
Love and light, my beloved souls
Nadine
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