You make the things that matter a priority.

An absolute priority. A non-negotiable priority.

You get to know yourself enough to know what it is your need, and you love yourself enough to give it to you. You also love yourself enough to forgive yourself for any past mistakes you’ve made, and to move forward with grace.

And it does not matter how irrational, how seemingly impossible; it does not matter if it goes against everything anyone’s ever told you is the “right” thing to do.

It does not matter because “getting your life together” does not require you following a set number of rules, a list of necessary tasks to be checked off - instead, it requires you to let go of the life you believed you should be wanting and living and striving for, in order for you to find the life that is aligned with you and your purpose.

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Make no mistake - this life will not be perfect, nor will the road to get there be easy. It is always challenging to carve out our own path, especially when it goes against the “normal” order of things, and against other people’s expectations (or your own, for that matter).

And yet… what is worth fighting for but those deep-rooted, soul-crushing dreams that yearn to be expressed, to be manifested, to be brought into reality?

What is worth to keep going for but the life that is waiting for you on the other side of those fears?

The life that is not perfect.

The life that is right, however. The life that feels like yours again. The life that will heal you like nothing else would ever be able to. The life that will excite you the way no one else ever could.

The life that you have been searching for all along.

The life that you have been running from all this time.

For within all its beauty, its mystery and its adventures, it will also, most of all, ask you to let go; let go of the comfort; let go of your own limitations; let go of who you’ve been up to this point - for this version of you will not be able to carry you into your future.

And letting go is always hard. No matter how misaligned a truth, it will still be painful to release.

Yet this is what you must do now.

This is the journey you must embark on - not in order to make it to some faraway destination, but in order to return back home to yourself.

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it takes time.

and it takes experience.

it takes adjusting, and adapting; it takes falling and failing, and trying again.

and, at the end of the day, what we will come to understand is that, it does not matter.

all those things that we deemed so important, they do not matter.

everything that we kept chasing and clinging onto so desperately, in pursuit of something they could have never given us in the first place, they do not matter.

all that we thought we wanted, mistakenly believing they’d fill up the aching hole within our chest, they do not matter.

achieving it all, ticking off the boxes of that list we’ve created in our mind in order to validate our own existence, and make up for our self-worth, it does not matter.

what matters is this -

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how could you possibly know that it is all going wrong, when you are subjectively bound to the issue at hand; when you do not even have access to the full picture?

how do you know it is all going wrong, when you are the one living out the movie, rather than writing the script, or sitting in the editing room?

maybe it is all going right.

maybe it is all going right, despite it all appearing to be messed up as hell.

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In case you missed my recent article, I’ll give you a brief summary of the idea - both hers and mine. An “artist date” is a weekly (in my case monthly) day that you take “off” for yourself. On that day, you’ll take yourself on a “date” - e.g. you’ll try out a pottery class you always wanted to go to, you’ll visit a place that’s been on your bucket list for years and years, you’ll find a new spot in the city that you live in that you have never been to.

By removing yourself from your day to day grind and gifting yourself with a fresh, exciting experience, you’ll get yourself out of your rational, productivity-biased brain and into your creativity.

So many of us struggle to be creative these days. I’ve have had this conversation with a lot of people recently - not least of all on this very platform, my fellow writers and creators on Substack.

Creativity is a funny one - it’s not a list of tasks that you can white-knuckle your way through; instead of forcing it to happen, all it often asks for us is to simply… let go. To reach it by releasing. To find the flow by removing itself from its currents.

Which is basically what the idea of an artist date is based on.

Now, I am the first one to hold my hand up and say that this stuff actually works. This is one of the (many) reasons I love travelling so much - because I get creatively so inspired like nowhere else. It can be so incredibly helpful, both in a creative and in a figuring-out-your-life-and-purpose sense to go off grid for a day, a week or even longer; to step out of your daily routine and just live your life for a little; without trying to force yourself to sit down and figure out this massive, seemingly insurmountable issue at hand.

Give yourself some grace, instead, and it will naturally figure itself out, I promise.

My most recent experience with this is what today’s article is all about. As I announced on my last post, I really want to stay away from the idea of turning these, my own, artist dates into some sort of “where to eat and sleep” travel blog. Each and every one of us is so unique, and so are our creative needs, so in my personal opinion it would not make sense at all to send you off to the exact same coffee shop I went to on that day, in order for you to get the same dose of inspiration I got three weeks prior.

Instead, I’d like to share a piece that I wrote in my journal on that day, my first artist date experience that I am sharing on my Substack. I did not plan to journal as early as I did in the day, and yet, this is what ended up happening (just another prove that planning sometimes is just a waste of time).

So - let’s dive straight in!

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A few weeks ago, it was one of those nearly unbearable hot days in London. Instead of melting away in my living room, and strolling to the fridge every half an hour in between writing articles and books and whatnot (not to do anything, but just to open the door and poke my head inside… bliss), I decided I would take myself to the seaside.

Brighton really is the lazy destination for Londoners who just want to take the quickest route possible down to the coast… and on a day with more than thirty degrees, one cannot help but feel lazy. So I hopped on the train, and down south I went.

Naturally, I was already feeling exhausted from my one hour train journey (again: 30 plus degrees, folks!). It was a Monday morning and though I was off work, there seems to be a shared human inner clock of compassionate despair when it comes to Monday mornings, like a collective trauma if you will. So on my way to Brighton beach, I decided to grab myself an iced matcha (yes, there are certain trends that one must follow).

I have a thing for coffee shops. I really do. Though I have seen more of them from the inside than I ever planned to do in this lifetime, part of me still romanticizes them. Is it not everyone’s writers’s dream, to find oneself in a chique coffee shop in the streets of Paris, or in the mountains of Switzerland, or somewhere on the Cote d’Azur, lazily sipping away on your freshly brewed coffee, and jot down a few ideas for your new bestselling novel?

Anyway, you get the idea.

So I got out my journal, and as always, the words that I needed in that moment just wrote themselves out on paper (fuelled by the matcha, no doubt).

This is what I wrote to myself that very morning:

“There is no need to rush for everything.

The only thing that you must do - the only duty you must oblige to - is to savour this present moment, and each and every day as much as you can.

Slow down.

See, there is no rush to run towards anything - not even you, or a “perfect” self that you believe you must strive to be. There is just you, and the love you give to yourself; there is just you and the acceptance that you carry within your own heart.

We so often glorify an ideal of the future that lives within our minds, instead of glorifying those precious beautiful moments of the present. If you simply stopped to keep chasing that shiny triumph on the other side of the hurdles you keep creating within your own thoughts - “first, I must be, achieve and change…” -, then you will come to see and recognize that the life that you keep waiting for is already here; right here, in this present moment; and the person that you so desperately seek to be, to find, to become, is already within you, within this very breath you are taking.

All you have to do is notice; all you have to do is choose her, again and again.

All you have to do is make the most of each and every day that you are given, no matter how mundane or how imperfect they might seem; instead of waiting for those where everything is finally right, finally aligned, finally perfect… when you, at last, feel as though you are good enough.

You have always been, and will always be, good enough to live your own life - by which I mean to live it fully, unapologetically, fiercely. To claim both your dreams and this present moment; to let that joy spark in your heart and the passion of your boldest visions ignite a blazing fire within your soul.

There is no need to hide from your own life - nor from yourself. For that is all that you have been doing, in rushing into building a life that will allow you to leave behind the one that are currently living.

What you are running from, however, will follow you wherever you go. So why not just stay with it - not in order to “deal with it”, but to simply acknowledge, welcome, embrace it?

It’s part of you. Of course, it is.

The mess that we carry is always ours, just as much as our dreams, our longings, and our virtues.

That does not mean that you are somehow wrong, or faulty.

It simply means you’re human.

And it is something that will never be changing - no matter how well figured out you think your future might be, and how well-planned, and how meticulously calculated - for if there is one guarantee that can be found within this lifetime it is that there will never be any guarantees.

So I urge you to not rush into anything.

Stay here.

Stay with the mess.

Stay with yourself.

Learn how to dance wild within the storms of your heart.”

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Remember: If you feel creatively stuck, go out and live your life! Your creativity does not ask you to shrink yourself into a cage of mundane routines and rushed deadlines. All your creativity will ever ask of you is to expand.

Your creativity does not ask you to be self-less.

It asks you to be selfish. To prioritize you, yourself and your dreams.

So with that in mind…

Where will your next artist date take you?

I would love to hear some of your ideas in the comments. xx

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as those masks are now, at last, stripped away, and all you can gaze at is the raw, agonizing truth within your eyes?

how do you continue to show up for yourself, when you have done it all; fallen over and over again, and gotten yourself up more times than you can even recall - and still, you are unable to see the edge of that timeless river that you keep drowning in; that you keep swimming, stroke after stroke - and though somehow there never seems to be an end to its wild current?

how do you continue to show up for yourself when you don’t know what to do?

when you have denied your dreams for so long, you cannot even imagine what it would be like - to reach out your arms to embrace them, pressing them against your heart so intently, until you’d finally be willing to soften enough to let them back in?

how do you continue to show up for yourself when you know what to do; you know it with a painful, excrutiating clarity, and though, even after all this time and all this growth, you simply do not find the courage to just do it?

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that, by letting go, you might receive what it is you let go of (or your attachement thereof)?

by giving out more love, you’ll get more love handed back in return

and by spreading hatred and anger, this is exactly what you shall experience, too

isn’t it amazing that, by losing ourselves, we eventually come to find ourselves on a deeper level

and by acknowledging there is no right path, we are already one step closer to following our own

by making mistakes, we collect triumphs

by opening our hearts, we allow it to get broken, yet strengthen it at the same time… though keep it closed off, and you’ll merely weaken it, letting it wither away like a flower

isn’t it amazing that, by numbing out one emotion, we numb out all of life experience

by living in reality, we can reach our dreams more easily

but when only dwelling in our dreams, we will never be able to manifest them into reality

by sharing our truth and vulnerability, we allow others to do the same

by loving, we love

by loving ourselves, we love others

and by loving others

we learn to love ourselves

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As previously announced, this week’s letter will be the last freebie that I will be sharing.

From next week onwards, the weekly sunday letters will be for paid subscribers only - as a free subscriber you will still get access to my Tuesday articles which are published every other week.

If you would like to continue to receive your weekly dose of inspiration, empowerment and thought-provoking questions, and get the full in-depth Sunday articles please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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As always, thank you so much for your support, I hope to see you next week x

I often wonder what we are waiting for.

The perfect moment. The day when all the worries fall away; when the universe miraculously opens up a doorway, a vast space, for us to sit down and really think about what it is we want to do with this one wild and precious life.

The day when the groceries organise themselves, and the deadlines disappear, so we finally have time to write that book that we’ve been meant to write for the last ten years. When we can let go of our heartaches and heartbreaks, our grievances and frustrations, and place our focus onto our longings. When the scorching heat passes and the first drops of rain fall, so we can concentrate better - not too much rain, though, otherwise we’ll be busy being depressed, wondering when the sunshine will return.

We end up wasting our entire life, waiting for the opportune moment.

We wait for this next thing to go, and then we’ll finally commit to that project, to our ideas, and ourselves. Or that’s what we keep telling ourselves, at least.

In truth, though, we are always just waiting for someone else to give us the permission slip - to follow our dreams, our hearts, and move towards the life that we have always wanted to live.

In truth, though, we are merely waiting for someone to tell us how to do it. How to live our life. How to do it all. How to feel. How to think, and what to think. How to deal with it. How to get out of that mess that we have somehow fallen into.

We all have time.

We do - we just spend it on things that actually don’t matter. We waste it by mindlessly scrolling on our phones. We throw it away by giving too much thought, attention and energy to people that drain us; activities that leave us depleted. And then we beat ourselves up for being lazy, unproductive, and uncreative; for not being good enough to actually stick to our plans - and the vicious cycle continues.

You are not lazy.

You are simply overwhelmed.

In a world that is so full of voices that tell you what to do, what to wear, what to say; how to be, how to live; filled with instagram-gurus and hundreds and thousands of blogs and vlogs telling you what is right and what is wrong - no wonder that it feels wrong somehow, to go against the grain.

Oh, the radical act of listening to yourself.

The rebellious decision to trust yourself.

The powerful realisation that you can actually live your life the way you always wanted it to.

And that you know how to live it.

You know how to make time for it.

All you have to do is to - for perhaps the first time in your life - make yourself a priority.

Doesn’t that sound daring?

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For if we really, really want something, we make space for it. We make time for it. Think of someone having an affair - if you are so passionately devoted to someone else, obsessed with another human being, there is NO way that you would let your work, or your kids (or your wife or husband, for that matter) get in the way of that experience.

Now, perhaps you feel the same way about your art, your project, your book - the problem though is that we often don’t allow ourselves to.

It is so much easier to do something for someone else, to put someone else on a pedastal; to worship them, to risk everything to be with them, to feel alive in their presence… it is a bit harder when that which we ought to become “obsessed” with, is our own creation.

That’s the moment where the self-doubts get in the way. Our fragile human ego returns. The nagging voices of our monkey mind chime in:

We don’t believe this project, or idea, will go anywhere. We feel stupid for even trying; spending time on something so precious that ultimately no one wants to read, to purchase, to look at. After all, we are grown-ups, and we should spend our precious time on this planet opening ISA accounts, figuring out our taxes and paying off our mortgage (and god forbid, we don’t even have one, then clearly we have failed miserably!).

Eeeech - wrong.

See, if that is what lights up your world - taxes, ISA’s and mortgages - then, by all means, go for it and dig deep into your numbers! If that’s the siren song your heart wants to follow, don’t let me spoil the fun!

For most of us, however, it is not.

So let me ask you this simple question:

Why on earth would we waste our time - the most invaluable currency there is or ever will be; our very own life-force energy - on things that we do not really care about?

I know, i know. “Because everyone does”. “That is what we are supposed to do.” “This is simply the world we live in.” “What else am I supposed to do?”

Umm, hello?

You are not SUPPOSED to do anything, except live your damn life!

You are not SUPPOSED to do anything, but follow whatever it is that lights up your soul, sets your heart on fire and sends shivers down your spine.

You are not SUPPOSED to do anything but finally let go of everything that was never meant for you in the first place, and come back to what is. That magnificently beautiful, fragile dream that does neither abide to logic nor reason, but somehow feels exactly right - not because you analyse it to be so, but because you sense it, deep down to your bones.

That is the thing you ought to claim.

That is the thing worth fighting for.

That is the thing worth making time for.

That is the thing to bring back into your life.

Most of all, though, it is likely also the thing that you are meant to do.

The thing that is yearning for you as much as you have been longing for it.

The thing that you are absolutely good enough for - because it is yours, it is already yours.

So instead of tip-toeing around its edges, waiting for the perfect opportunity, to be told that it is the right time, why not make it the right time… how about… now?

Why not just deep-dive into the life that is waiting for you - not to be good enough; not to be different; not to be anyone but your truest self?

The life that is waiting for you to embrace it.

The life that is holding its breath for you to claim it.

The life that is silently pleading for you to make time for it.

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i want you to stop hiding from this world as if you life could only begin once you are absolutely certain that it will be unquestionably perfect.

for i am sorry to tell you that… this is it.

the beautiful, strange, messy masterpiece that has somehow been strung together by your beliefs, past actions and life choices, all meticulously aligning themselves to bring you here… exactly here, where you are meant to be.

this is it, and no matter how desperately you wish to be someone else, to be somewhere other than you are, to have done it differently, to have gotten what you wanted - you cannot make amends on any of it. no amount of crying or complaining, wishing or dreaming will ever be able to alter your reality.

you will never be able to change your past.

it all begins with you, and the steps that you are taking.

right here, right now.

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a great destiny is grounded in selfless acts of service, and hours of devotion to oneself and one’s craft.

a great destiny demands a strong routine of self-care, which is, above all else, the essential foundation to build your dreams upon.

a great destiny necessitates to look at one’s pain and mistakes, take those shadows and those doubts by the hand as you embark on this journey together, so no one and nothing will ever be able to call them out from those dark corners of your consciousness - for you have made friends with them long ago.

a great destiny requires you to release.

to let go of those attachements, the comforts… and, sometimes, the appropriate amount of sleep.

a great destiny challenges you to reconsider your entire life - to not get stuck in the trap of the never-ending hamster wheel; to run for the sake of being in motion; to stay busy for the sake of avoiding.

instead, it will need you to stop, reflect and take stock.

and to never look away, not for one moment.

for you cannot, and will never be able to, run from your own life.

no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to deny yourself, those heart-breaking longings, and those unfathomable, unreachable dreams that you’d rather not even take into consideration, for as unrealistic as they might rationally appear - at the same time, they feel close; so close, it’s almost as if they had come true already.

the raw, true, messy, human, flawed you.

and all it will ever ask of you is to choose this person, over and over again - and to drop everything that is no longer aligned with that truth.

a great destiny requires you to walk through your own fire

in order to reclaim your soul.

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You know the images that pop up on your instagram feed at 5am in the morning as you get yourself ready for your mundane day job, ready to jump into the stuffy tube that will take you into an immensely crowded city centre (love you, London!) - and then you come across pristine white beaches, an elegant lady in a flowery dress, sipping her adaptogenic matcha latte in front of a shiny new laptop, gracefully typing away on her - no doubt - super successful travel blog which allows her to continuously roam around the world and spend her nights in five star hotels, taste-testing exquisite food at the most expensive restaurants and live her life to the utmost fullest?

Yep, you do get sucked in by that stuff.

Which is why I am so excited that I get to have my own version of this now - admittedly, I am sitting on my bedroom floor as I write this (I do have a desk, I am not that weird - I just like to catch a bit of the rare sunshine that is squeezing itself through my window… love you, England!), and I am drinking the cheapest instant coffee I could get my hands on without actually poisoning myself, while typing away on a device for whose longevity I am praying for every single day - but hey, it’s basically the same thing.

Anyway, let’s talk about artist dates.

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As this publication is all about creativity and living your most creative life - if you are anything like me (hopelessly wandering through the isles of independent bookstores, in a plead for some creative guru to offer some guidance of how to actually do this thing), you will have likely come across Julia Cameron’s masterpiece “The artist’s way” - which is essentially a self-help guide to bring you back to your creative genius.

Her two most potent practises are the morning pages (which I am guilty of not having done in months) and her weekly artist dates (which turned out to be more like a monthly practise for me… but, as I’ve already proven, life is never perfect, and we all just do our best).

The fundamental idea is to take yourself out (yes, you heard correctly! No handsome prince charming involved) to a new adventure every week - a place that you have never been to before, an unfamiliar activity, a fresh life experience - in order to get your creative juices flowing.

I am sure you would agree that working the same nine to five job every day, commuting on the same tube/bus/train/walk at the same time every day is not that thrilling for the creative muse that lingers inside of you, which is just longing for a compelling quest to undergo; to explore, to roam, to meander, to taste life in its utmost fullest.

It doesn’t have to be that crazy (you don’t have to go skydiving or swim with sharks - though if that’s what stimulates your creative pulse, then go for it, by all means).

For me, a huge part of it is spending more time in nature, strolling through the travel section of a bookstore (in order to even just mentally take myself to different places and to remind myself how vast and beautiful this world truly is), taking my journal to my favourite coffee shop or simply discovering a new area of the city that I’ve never been to.

London has always been my dream destination to live in after all; and sometimes, all it turns into is ever-increasing rent prices and tube strikes - until we actually forget that there is so much to see; countless places that are just waiting to be visited!

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Now, unlike my instagram lady I alluded to earlier I wouldn’t want to write a travel blog where it’s simply all about where to go and what to eat. Don’t get me wrong, I do love those, too, and I am the first one to look up someone else’s itinery when I go somewhere - I love seeing other people’s recommendations, and I am far too lazy to click myself through hundreds of google pages, or, god forbid, read a whole guide book.

What you’ll find here, however, won’t be your usual “ten places you have to go and see in London”. Instead, I hope to share more of the inspiration that those days gift me with; the thoughts and ideas that’ll naturally begin to form, and that will hopefully inspire you to go crazy yourself and take yourself out on a weekly-ish date!

To clarify the aim and my intention behind this series a bit more, let me tell you a quick story: Once, I watched an interview with legendary author Elizabeth Gilbert, on her world-famous book (that you might have heard of) “Eat, Pray, Love”.

What really stuck out to me in that conversation was when they were speaking about the impact that her book had had on her millions of readers, and how she’d never intended for it to happen - instead, she said, she merely wrote the book that she needed at that moment. She went on to tell the interviewer that some people believed if they’d follow the exact same journey that she had taken, going out to the very same places she’d visited, praying at the same temples, they would get a similiar, or even somewhat identical, transformative, life-changing experience… which, needless to say, did not happen; at least not in the way they had hoped for.

The point of it being that I can follow someone else’s journey step by step, and yet it won’t have the same effect on me. I could go back to any of these places that I once visited now (which I have actually done before) and hope for the same outcome in terms of boosting my creativity, nurturing inspiration or sparking my joy, and yet it won’t do a single thing.

What I hope to offer you, though, is merely ideas - an invitation, an open space, for you to start thinking about the places that you would perhaps like to visit; the places that feel like home to you; the places that make you feel at ease and at peace within yourself.

Deep down, we know ourselves better than we ever give ourselves credit for. We know what we want, of course we do; we know what makes us feel good, of course we do, and yet we so often don’t give ourselves permission to actually make it happen.

Instead, we attempt to cramp ourselves into our day to day routine, in order to constantly be productive; instead, we try to make ourselves want to achieve goals that we’ve never really cared for; instead, we begin defining ourselves by our job titles and the number in our bank account, measuring our worth only by how many things got ticked off our to-do list on that day.

That’s not how creativity works, however.

In fact, this is the best way to stifle your creative process.

Creativity does not run on a schedule. Creativity is not something you can force out of you - yes, there is a discipline to creating. I can sit myself down and start writing, and I will be writing (which is an improvement to not writing), though when I feel drained, depleted and emotionally empty, chances are there won’t be anything good coming out of that pen!

Creativity feeds of life, and our life force energy.

Creativity feeds of our lived experiences, and our emotions. Most of us, though, are so far removed from our internal emotional landscape that we could not even tell how we truly feel on a day to day basis. Sure “we’re fine”, that’s our standard response to anyone asking us.

“Fine” is meaningless, “fine” is hollow, “fine” is baseline.

We came here to create; to live, to experience, to feel.

A creative life is not exclusive for those who call themselves “artists” or those who aspire to create full-time.

Creativity is not only the words that we put onto a page, or a picture we paint; creativity lies within our everyday choices - of how we live our life.

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So let me ask you this:

Do you live your life?

Do you? Do you truly live?

Or are you merely following along to what everyone else is doing?

If I asked you now how you are, what would your answer be? “Fine”?

If I asked you now who you were, would you merely brush me aside with the usual elevator speech - the role in your family, your job title, your career aspiration?

Is that really all there is to you?

We are so much more than what we’ve conditioned to believe.

We are so much more than the reality we currently find ourselves in.

We are so much more than that what our day to day life reflects back to us.

That is what these days are really about.

To take us away from the illusion that we have come to accept as our truth, our wholeness, our identity, in order to find out who we are beneath those layers. Who we’ve always been, though we might have been too afraid to even look at those parts of ourselves that we’ve been neglecting for so long.

The door of that cage has always been open.

All you have to do is muster your courage and step out into the light.

Allow yourself to go out there - to follow your curiosities… wherever they might take you. Maybe to the other side of the world, or maybe just down a road that you’ve never taken before.

No one is going to hand you the life that you want to live.

No one is going to hand you your dreams, your creativity, on a silverplatter.

No one is going to hand you that version of you that you believed was long lost.

You have to go out there and seek for it.

You have to go out there and create it.

You have to go out there and claim it.

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have you forgotten who you are, beyond all those rulebooks, the roles you ought to play, and the pretends you’ve had to mask your divinity with?

have you forgotten who you were, prior to those circumstances that keep holding, keep caging, you at this very moment in time?

have you forgotten that you hold the power to transcend that noise around you by merely gazing into your own soul?

have you forgotten your strengths, and your talents; and that fierce, insane willpower, burning bright as a white flame within your core?

have you forgotten those simple joys of life that you used to so easily laugh at in delight

and all the places you travelled to in order to find your home… whilst you were merely constructing a home within yourself?

have you forgotten the wild freedom of your dreams that once you were able to roam through endlessly, merely bound by the limitations of your own imagination?

tell me, have you forgotten that you have wings?

and you can try to twist yourself into perfection; to adapt to the point of breaking yourself; to attempt and be everyone, everyhing, for those around you; to follow any other voice than your own… and yet no matter how good, how perfect, how polished, you become it will never even come close to who you could have been had you just followed your damn heart.

so have you failed to recall this simple fact…

that, when you stand in your truth, life will come and meet you there.

for how could you ever forget that

you, too, are part of its creation?

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even though you feel as though your body is trembling so hard that it might as well just burst into pieces, shattered by the unforgiving winds of life, defeated by all the pain that has been perpetually stored within its very own roots.

i still think it’s worth it.

even though your whole world is crumbling in around you, and those walls of safety that you have so fervently built, come crashing down with the loud roar of a thunder, piercing the clouds of the mindless haze that you have been clinging onto.

i still think it’s worth it.

even though your heart is aching, still aching from that heartbreak, that loss, that grief, that you so naively believed would be mended within the matter of a few days.

is it not funny how we sometimes harbour our suffering as if it were our very own lover, our most treasured companion, while other times we want to run so far and so fast that we don’t even dare to look back at all those pedals that have started growing beneath the thorns - the hidden blessings, the life lessons we had to learn in order to move forward.

it will be worth it on that day when you finally find the courage to remember, and trace back those steps that you so lightly imprinted into the sands of your soul, and you’ll see how much you have changed, and how much you’ve grown.

it will be worth it on that day when, beneath all that familiar pain, you will feel the strength return back into your body.

it will be worth it on that day when you sense your heart, that has been shut down and closed off for so long, soften and open up agan, ready to receive and to give love.

in that moment, it will all be worth it.

because you are worth it.

It’s almost like admitting that you like one of your children more than the other (and I know, some people will hate me for saying this - “books are not like children”-, and while I do agree, I still think it’s a fairly valid comparison to make).

In any case - before you come to judge me, dear reader, allow me to explain:

It is not that I don’t like my poetry. I do. I like reading it, and if I may be so humble, I think it is written well - I definitely believe it is worth being read.

I liked writing it too - well, sort of (spoiler alert…).

I love reading my fantasy, too. I think it is written well, and I am on a mission to get it into as many hands as possible.

I enjoyed writing it - no “sort of”.

Which is where the massive difference lies:

Writing fantasy is easy (if you are a fellow writer you will know that nothing about writing is ever “easy”, so let me expand on what I mean by this outrageous statement):

Fantasy is, in a way, all about escapism - fantasy is about creating characters that quite often resemble a version of ourselves that we’d like to be.

Of course they do have their faults, their mistakes and their personal mess - which are sometimes similiar to our own, or even an exaggerated version of it -, but the thing is: With fantasy, it is mostly an unconscious process. I never, ever sat down to write a character thinking “Let’s just give her all my flaws, fallacies and doubts, but package it up nicely, under another name and a completely different backstory, so no one will ever know it’s me!”

That’s not how this genre works (at least not in my experience). We simply begin stringing together a character out of curiosity; rarely do we ever contemplate how much they resemble us (yes, even the so called “villains”. I love writing the bad guys, so what does that tell you about me?). - We simply just write.

And I am not ashamed to say that I love examining their mess and their darkness, delving into their grievances and heartaches. I enjoy giving my characters challenges to overcome, and yes, sometimes I do like killing off my characters (I feel you, George RR Martin).

That does not mean that I like war, or death, or loss in the real world… nor pain or heartbreak, for that matter.

Writing fiction allows us to explore those universal themes from a safe distance, in a “fantastical world”, well aware that the scenarios we create will never be able to truly match our real life experience (e.g. it is unlikely that I will ever have to mourn my lover’s death because he got eaten alive by a massive, fire-breathing dragon).

Fantasy is a beautiful gateway to deal with our problems without actually having to deal with them; to work through them unconsciously while spinning stories in a parallel universe; to face them sideways instead of looking them dead-straight in the eye.

I can read my books back in peace, laugh and cry at the fate of my characters, without ever over-analysing why I wrote that particular scene, or why that character turned out this way etc.

Fantasy is all about who we could be, if we were living in a different world, an alternative reality; poetry, on the other hand, takes us right into who we are, and into our own life experiences.

Most of all, it is about the sh** we’d rather sweep under the carpet to never be looked at again.

Poetry requires us to deal with our emotions, and to face them, head-on. Writing poetry feels like a release of some sort. It’s like the emotion, the feeling, viscerally leaves your body; as soon as it’s on the blank page, it ceases to live within you. It’s almost like a creative cleanse.

Then, of course, there comes the moment when you have to read it back - which is a rather necessary task that has to be done, if you want to edit your work and get it published, and there is simply no way around it.

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You know how certain songs carry memories within them, and how we sometimes come to associate these tunes with a certain place, a special occassion - and every time thereafter as you listen to that particular song, it’s as if you are back there, right there, where you’ve heard it for the first time?

Say your were listening to a song for the first time when you were strolling down the sandy white beaches of Bali, as you watched the sun set over the calm azure blue ocean, feeling peaceful and serene… and now every time you listen to that song, part of you will be back on that beach, intrinsically bound to that memory (even though you might be cramped into the stuffy tubes of London, on your way to work)?

Say you would have listened to that same song shortly after a loved one passed away. The impression attached to that song would be distinctly different, and so would your experience listening to it now.

Of course, not all memories are significant enough that we’ll always be able to recollect where we first heard a piece of music.

Poetry, on the other hand, is usually birthed right within those moments.

The moments of utter overwhelm; of pain and joy, of grief and hope. And since it is a piece of work that we actively create rather than something we were merely exposed to at that point in time, the memories tend to come with it more naturally.

When I read back my own work, I am not exaggerating that 90% of the time I can tell you exactly what had just occurred in my life when I wrote that piece; maybe even where I was physically - hell, I could probably even tell you what day of the week it was!

Now, of course I appreciate that this is my personal experience (just a disclaimer).

For instance, I hugely admire the people who can write comedic poetry. I am not an exclusively serious, melancholic writer (just on Mondays); I do like to add a lot of humour into my fantasy books, and it does come quite natural to me, since I like to joke around a lot in my real life (which you would probably never believe me, reading my poems).

When it comes to my poetry though, I can earnestly say that you won’t find a single gag in there.

For me, poetry is all about depth; it is the outlet for me to express all those things that I would never dare to say out loud in real life.

That is the beauty of it though, isn’t it - not just of writing poetry, or releasing the heavy emotions, but also of writing fantasy - or, for that matter, any form of creative writing, even though it might not seem as obvious at first.

And yes, sometimes I even read back my fantasy novels and though it might not be apparent to anyone else, I can tell you straight away that a certain experience that one of my characters is going through was drawn from my own life experience, and then translated into the language of fantasy, morphed into the life of my character.

With poetry, there is no translation.

There is simply truth.

And while, from this perspective, I would rather write fantasy than poetry - because I am human, and as much as anyone I’d prefer to never have to face my internal world to such an extend - I also know that it is a gift to have an outlet in this form.

Sometimes, life hits you so hard that there is no way of escaping it; not even with an imaginary army of fire-breathing dragons.

Sometimes, you simply have to sit yourself down and pour your heart out into the page in the rawest, realest form possible.

Sometimes, you have to capture that truth on the page, and turn it into a memory that can later be revisited; a story retold; a moment in time rewritten.

That’s a process which requires a certain kind of bravery - one that could, strictly seen, probably match that of a young girl slaying a dragon.

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really, think about it.

what if you’d just go for it?

no, please don’t run away just yet.

i know your mind wants to jump to any possible negative conclusion it can find, in order to rationalize its way out of this thought, this feeling.

just keep your eyes closed for a few seconds, and as you take a deep breath, i want you to contemplate this question - and whilst you do so, do your best to set aside the ceaseless chatter of your intellect for a mere moment, and with it all the smart-ass objections and preconceived perspectives attached to it, and drop into your body instead.

and again, i ask you:

what if you’d just go for it?

feel your heart softening, opening, blooming; feel your shoulders relaxing, your breath deepening - as you gradually allow yourself to let go of those false identities that you have been holding onto so tightly; as you finally come back home to yourself, your centre, your truth.

what if you’d just go for it?

and i mean it.

i mean with all that you have.

with all that it takes.

with all that you are.

what if you gave yourself the permission to become truly immersed into this wild roller-coaster of a life experience; to feel it all; to bask in this eternal present moment in time; to open up to the flow of life itself?

what if you’d just go for it?

what if you chose to acknowledge that these dreams, your dreams, are too precious to simply be held within your trembling palms, and that, no matter how hard you try to run, they’ll always be there, whispering their words of wisdom into your ear?

are you willing to finally listen?

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for what if you’d just go for it?

what if it’s not about whether it will work out or not, or whether you will reach that glorified end destination that you have already marked within your mind as a goal to be attained - what if it is really about the journey that takes you there, and the process of becoming the person that you will have to grow into, in order to live up to those dreams; to purely make space for them?

what if told you that your dreams were never put on hold, nor will they ever be; that they were always one with your own heartbeat, in an ever-lasting dance with your soul’s mysteries?

what if you’d just go for it?

not in order to achieve any great goal, nor to hit those milestones; not in order to smash out your to-do list, and please, not for the sake to others.

instead, i want you to delve into the freedom you’d come to experience - that very moment when you decide that it is enough.

that you are enough. right here, right now.

that moment in which you decide to just drop it; to simply release all that you are not, that you have never been, and that - no matter how intently you try to convince yourself otherwise - you will never be.

what if you stopped clinging onto so tightly?

what if you just let go?

you’d immediately come to see what is not meant to stay.

maybe that’s why it is so terrifying.

for everything that we keep holding onto so forcefully was never meant to be in our lives in the first place.

those around you that you are trying to please and appease to, and all these ideas that you are so fervently attempting to fall in love with, but cannot - just let them all go!

why would you ever want to be anyone but your true self?

why are you still running so far and so fast that you can barely feel your own heartbeat, unable to even notice the rhythm of your own breath?

what if you just stopped and laid your head back, gazing up at all those clouds that are floating past the eternal sky, and yet will never be able to touch its infinity?

what if you came to realize that you are just the same?

that every box you cramp yourself into, and every role you mask yourself with, will never be able to touch your infinite consciousness, the root of who you are, your absolute truth?

so what if you’d just go for it?

what if…?

what if it all worked out?

what if it turned out better than you could have ever imagined?

what if you tried?

what if you found all that was meant for you on the other side of that crippling fear?

what if you opened up your heart again, so wide open that the entire universe could fit into the pieces that have been left by all those years of breaking and re-building?

what if it’s all meant to be?

what if it is time?

what if this is the only chance you’ll ever be granted?

what if this next breath was all you ever got?

would you go for it?

would you finally just go for it?

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it is never too late to save yourself - whatever that means, that’s up to you

to say no to what you don’t want - even if, once upon a time, you wanted nothing but.

it is never too late to heal yourself

to let go of your attachements

to learn to trust, believe and surrender

to forgive yourself - and others.

it is never too late to tell them how much you love them.

it is never too late to make a choice that will turn your whole world upside down

to change your mind

and begin anew

to start working on yourself, your mindset, and your beliefs

to get out of your current situation, and begin seeking for a better life.

to go all in on your dreams

and leap into the unknown

to go travelling

and get to know yourself

to apply for your dream job

to move

to explore the world

or to settle down.

it is never too late to find love

to open up your heart again

nor to get it broken

to learn to love yourself

for it is never too late for love.

it is never too late to start living, truly living

to change

to rise

and to fall

to laugh

and to cry - perhaps for the first time in your life.

it is never too late to believe in yourself

to write that book

to paint that picture

to build that business

to finally grant yourself the permission to unleash the freedom of your own imagination, and its unlimited possibilities

it is never too late to find the one

and it is never too late to realize that you are the one.

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see, it is never too late to do what you have always wanted to do

to create the life that you have always wanted to live

and step into the person that you were always meant to be.

it is never too late to come to understand that you are her already.

it is never too late…

as long as you are still breathing

and the earth is spinning

as the sun keeps rising

as long as you have air in your lungs

and a beating heart, filled with passion

and dreams that pull you to the other side

it is never too late.

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Naturally, this has not always been the case.

I grew up writing fantasy novels, and at the beginning of each of those books, half of my days would be spent on random parenting websites, in the search for great exotic names (I kid you not - I was 13, and of course did not feel awkward at all) - needless to say that they were not for my (non-existing) children, but for my characters.

I did not particularly enjoy this process - as anyone who knows me can tell you, I am the most impatient person on the planet, and instead of wasting my time finding names for my characters (such a minute detail, is it not? Could I not just number them through instead of giving them names? Who needs a name anyway?) I was so incredibly eager to just get writing. In those days, I probably spent more time in my own world than in reality, and so I had the entire story mapped out in my head already (and yes, I do envy my younger self for that).

Then, when the manuscript was complete, I had another dreadful slog before me: Finding a name for my book. The online publishing gurus were rather unhelpful: I knew what the book was about, I knew what I wanted to bring across in my work, but how could I possibly contain a 200-300 page manuscript in a few words? How could I possibly think about sales and marketing, when all I wanted was for the whole world to just read my damn book; when I was so certain that it was worthy to be read, not just by “my audience”, but by every single human being on this planet? (Oh, sweet 16).

I did find names for those novels, eventually (though I will not embarrass myself by sharing them here, so let’s move on!).

When the time came to find a name for this publication, it was much easier. Over the years, while working on various other creative projects, I had jotted down so many ideas which, to this day, still align with the themes of my work that I could simply just draw upon.

As soon as the thought “Substack” popped into my head, its publication name basically came along with it.

Then, of course, the skepticism followed. “Whispers of the Wild” - does it sound too pretentious? Too dramatic? Too outdoorsy? Too crazy? Too… much?

To be fair, it probably does. It’s rather a scream than a whisper. A statement, not a question; a statement with a big fat exclamation mark at the end.

Yet I loved it - and in my head, the matter was already settled, so there was no way of going back.

I would love to offer some explanation, however, of how the name came about. If you have read my About page, you will know about my journalling practise (and that I promised to write a post on it. So here you go!)

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I think we can all agree that life can be pretty overwhelming sometimes - especially for a woman, and particularly for a woman in her twenties (disclaimer: I am not past that point yet, and I do want to acknowledge that this might be the case at any stage in your life, though please, if so, I’d rather you not tell me. I want to keep up my foolish hope that all of this might radically shift once I hit 30).

You are navigating so many aspects of yourself - trying to be everything for everyone; doing your best to get rich (or to simply keep a roof over your head), buy a house (because paying rent feels like throwing money away and all your friends are starting to buy houses!), figure out your future, heal from your past, secure a stable relationship (with a preferrably rich and handsome man who has the audacity to actually want a longterm relationship and not just a throwaway affair for the upcoming summer) - all the while you are questioning yourself and your life choices at every single turn, balancing on the fragile edge of who you’ve once been and who you want to become… and of course everyone around you keeps tossing their unsolicited opinion at you at every given chance.

As a result, you are not only exhausted and fed up, but you have also completely lost touch with who you have been in the first place, before the world told you who to be.

Challenging times call for desperate measures.

Which is where this story begins.

In my personal journey, at this point in my life, I had been so many things. I had lived in six different countries, all around the world; I had dabbled in multiple professions, and I had put on so many hats that I did not even remember what it must feel like to just doff them all together.

I have amazing, wise, open-minded friends. I have an incredibly supportive family. And I also have a whole instagram feed filled with self-proclaimed gurus, who tell me how to fix and live my life in a 30 second-reel. (So what could possibly go wrong?)

Naturally, people gave me all sorts of advise: They told me to meditate on it. To breathe through it. To stretch it out. To walk it away.

And I tried. God, I tried. And yet nothing would work. I felt as though my life was a complete and utter mess, and so was I - and the worst part was that I had no idea what was even wrong - or what was right, for that matter -; where was up or down; or what it was that I wanted to improve or let go of.

I just knew that this was not me.

Eventually, after a very frustrating meditation (never drink two cups of black coffee before any meditation) I grabbed my journal and started writing.

It was not really a conscious choice, but more like a purge.

It was what I had to do - or else, my mind would have simply exploded, with all those unanswered questions, the crippling uncertainties, and all that terrible mess in my head.

That morning, I wrote so fast and so furious that I could barely read back my own journal entry afterwards.

But somehow, I felt relieved.

So the next morning, I proceeded to do the same (needless to say I dropped the meditation beforehand… not the coffee, though, I must admit).

And then, the next morning again. And again.

It did not matter what time I had to wake up at. It did not matter whether I had to sprint out of the house in order to make it to work on time (okay, I never really had to sprint - but I would have done). It did not matter how many messages and emails were waiting to be answered. It did not matter what other urgent appointments or seemingly important duties were lined up on my calendar.

My journalling sessions in the morning - those precious few minutes just for myself - became an intrinsic part of my routine, just as valuable and indispensable as brushing my teeth.

If you are a creative, you might be familiar with Julia Cameron’s “Morning pages” which she describes in her famous book “The Artist’s Way”. I had read the book, too, a few months prior - and still I had never gotten around to do them, until that morning.

Journalling became my safe heaven. The blank page turned into my best friend, my trusted companion, my ever-patient listener. I did not need anyone to give me advise. I just needed an outlet to articulate, to express, to release; without anyone telling me what to do or who to be; what was right and what was wrong; what I should or should not be doing, thinking and feeling; without anyone pushing their opinions on me. I just needed a space where I could be who I was… with all the mess that came with it (and let me tell ya, there was a lot).

And, after some time, I learned to trust my own voice again.

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After some time, I began writing back to myself - it was not the same voice that so desperately poured her heart and soul onto the blank page in rage and in fury, but a calm, certain voice.

The voice that knew.

The voice that simply just was.

The voice that I had been looking for in everyone else around me.

The voice that simply gave me the permission to figure it out. To explore. To try. To rise, and to fall. To stumble, and to get back up. To fail, and to despair.

And then to, ultimately, keep on going.

That was the one bargain that we had.

Whatever it was that I was doing, trying or failing at; no matter how frequently I screwed up, fell on my backside, and made the same glorious mistakes all over again; no matter how many times I had to scratch my broken promises and long-forgotten dreams off the floor; no matter how many tears I shed and how many screams I suppressed; no matter how infuriated and enraged, disappointed or let down - I had to keep on going.

It did not matter either that, at this point, I did not even have the slightest idea where I was going. There was no golden compass I could follow, no direction that would lead me anywhere but back to myself, and the hopeless, confusing mess in my head (otherwise known as thoughts).

And still, I had to keep on going.

Back to my own voice.

I stumbled upon it through journalling. I know many people who rediscover it through the practise of meditation - or walking, or breathwork for that matter (not to shame any of these wonderful, incredibly powerful practises).

All you have to do is go deep enough to hear that quiet voice that has been whispering its words of wisdom into your heart all along.

All you have to do is to allow yourself to stop; to pause long enough to finally be able to listen.

All you have to do is be brave enough to let this voice back into your life.

For this, my dear reader, is what I call the “Wild” - or, in other words: Your intuition. Your higher Self. Your Truth.

I think only for this once we can agree that it does not really matter what name we give to it.

For in the end… it is you.

And it is your voice.

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do you remember how much we used to worry about all these small, insignificant matters?

you remember those times in which we took a step forward, so bold it even shattered our own self-doubts into a thousand pieces?

do you remember when we were in love; not with them, but with love itself; immersing our whole hearts and our entire soul into something that was never meant to last?

do you remember?

do you remember how we kept struggling to break the all encompassing silence that had been laid onto this world, unable to voice our truth, to speak from our innermost longings?

and then we’ll say to each other: do you remember when we just gave it all up, and ceased to care about all of this?

do you remember when the whole world turned itself upside down, in order to give us the space to take a breath, and look around to re-evaluate?

there are so many moments like this, we’ll say. small pauses. breaks for us to stop. think. act. choose. change.

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