With school starting we can consider this as the end of the summer. Strangely, after this summer without a job it feels as if I had no summer at all. Looking back it seems like one long rainy day.

But it is not true. It was not a bad summer, it had many beautiful moments and even ideal days, but I wouldn’t remember it as such, if I hadn’t kept my gratitude lists, journal writing and continued with Substack posts. Art exhibitions, including a slow watching tour, walks in nature, boat rides on rivers, swimming in the sea, meeting with wonderful people, writing retreats, a poetry festival, a concert, a sound healing journey, a theatre performance and lots of good books fit into the summer and if I hadn’t written it down, a massive cloud of sadness and fear of the future would have covered up all of the goodness.

I didn’t allow myself to fully rest this summer nor was able to enjoy the slow sunny days because I had clouds of my own making darkening the world. It’s as if subconsciously I decided that having a summer vacation when you are not officially employed and lack a clear vision of the future is not deserved.

The body kept count. Waking up at the wee hours of the day, discovering my hands rolled into fists, whirling thoughts, and inability to fall back asleep were signs of stress. Night after night I unfurled my fingers and tried concentrating on my breath, but the anxious thoughts snuck in between the breaths and gnawed at my mind, keeping me awake.

The loss of a job created blackness in my life and when you’re in the middle of the blackness, there is no way to see the direction towards the exit. The mind does not have blinking exit signs clearly visible.

The world may be on fire and falling apart and compared to this a loss of a job is nothing, but this comparison of scale matters little, because for the one experiencing the darkness the outside world is too far to think about. This kind of period in life is by nature self-centered.

Even if you know what loss and grief can do, are aware of how our own mind can play tricks on us tilting us towards negativity, obscuring the reality, none of it is of any use because in the middle of the darkness the cognitive brain is overpowered by emotions.

You simply can’t reason yourself out of the situation without dealing with the emotions and letting them run their due course without rushing and pushing. Well, you could rush and push, or you could pack away the emotions, but then some of the unprocessed emotions will remain in your cells and show up at other times in other forms. Avoiding my emotions for a month created a superficial sense of calm. Only when I allowed the sadness surface, even at random times, I created space within me to let light in.

Other people didn’t see the darkness. From their point of view I was lucky to have so much freedom. Also, when you met me, I smiled. I spoke of my situation as a matter of fact, without revealing the depth of my hurt, reacted politely to the congratulations for the awesome growth opportunity or to the job suggestions trying to direct me quickly back to work, even when the roles were meant for the past version of me. Even to the people closest to me I didn’t reveal what I thought or felt for I didn’t want to burden them or show them this snotty, ugly, falling apart side of me. The side that I don’t like even myself.

I put some of the heaviness into my writing. Though maybe more melancholy in nature, I still tried to find the light, the lesson, something that would be of help to me and to others. My writing constantly reminded me of the need for self-compassion and self-care, of acceptance of the situation and the need to hold on to hope.

It has taken me three months to climb out of the darkness of my own doom thinking and only now that the summer is over I am noticing the little patches of sunshine around me and within me. Looking back, I’m rather certain that without gratitude practice and writing the darkness would have been heavier and lasted longer. People and their stories, and sometimes just small ideas shared, have supported the climb also.

The future is still unclear and I might not be fully ready to plunge into work mode for I think I need to allow myself some peace first but I’m starting to slowly stretch and move.

Last week, I mentioned laughing during poetry reading. This week it was a moment of surprise that indicated a change. I ordered a pot of tea, and when a teapot arrived, with a box-shaped body and in the colors and semi-patterns of a tablecloth, as if camouflaged, it made me say “I’ve never seen a teapot like this before.” What a delight to see the teapot and feel the surprise.

On Monday I met with my childhood friend. She suggested trying a beetroot latte. The two words don’t seem to belong together in any universe, and yet a cup of vegetable and dairy combination arrived on a table. To my surprise I liked it. While I sipped the soft sweet drink with a tiny hint of turmeric, my friend went wild suggesting all sorts of things I could do, roles I could apply for, life I could create. This was a moment confirming that I might be over the worst because her suggestions didn’t hurt and when some were clearly utopian, they poked holes into the pitch dark “I have no future” and tore the fabric of “I’m too old, can’t do anything, nobody needs me” misery.

While searching who I could become, I know that I have lost the opportunity to become a prima ballerina, a world famous poet, a Great British Bake Off judge, or a cathedral carpenter. But I’m not starting from a blank page. I’m so much more than my job, role and title. What I’m looking for is how to combine the educator, leader, coach-supervisor and writing me into one whole, so all my sides are visible to the world. And besides that I’m a woman who can bake Madeline from scratch, who can put together a thousand piece Moomin puzzle, listens to poetry in the morning and pours her mind and heart on a page for self-compassion and self-care. And on some days opens her writing for others to help them perhaps climb out of whatever hole they have let their thoughts dig.

Thank you for keeping me company. I’ll seize this opportunity to offer you one little piece of advice? Don’t wait for the dark times to start a gratitude practice. Start when things are good and build it into a habit.

Words are for all of us to use. At all times. Whenever we need them. They surround us here, there, everywhere. We have dictionaries full of words to choose from. Say one word or two, or create complex sentences and talk for hours. The words roll off our tongues, flow onto papers, fill our heads from within and from outside sources. I have used sixty-one words in the previous sentences. Some repeatedly.

Seems that using words and language should come easily. Learning to talk is a natural part of development. Yet at some point, even with all the same words at our disposal, the way we use them and the ease with which we use them diverges. It gets even more complicated when you try to speak in a different language and you simply don’t have access to all the words you need to express the wealth of what you wish to explain. Sometimes you lack the words in your home language too. Add to this that what one says may differ from what the other person understands and words have suddenly become tricky as illusions.

Last Saturday I sat in a seaside village’s small beach bar in absolute awe listening to eight different poets sharing their work. From a tiny corner stage with flickering lights the words spilled into the room stirring thoughts, painting images, touching a nerve, evoking emotions. Fingersnapping indicated that these words bonded connections. I laughed out loud. Something I haven’t done in months. These writers skillfully strung words together and the result impressed the audience, leaving them somewhat puzzled as to how it is possible to get so masterful with word wizardness.

I, on the other hand, tend to rely on the basic words only. The other day I tried to think of things that are yellow. It was mind boggling for me that I could not recall yellow things as if that part of my word bank was empty. How is it possible not to recall a banana, a dandelion, or butter? And the hues of yellow have not been deposited in the word bank at all. Lemon, canary, mustard, sunflower, amber, saffron, honey, corn, marigold, to mention some of the hues. Like with emotions (sad, mad, happy) my colors have a limited list. Roses are red, violets are blue. You get the picture.

The poets leave room for interpretation and the audience may arrive at different understandings, sometimes focusing on the experience rather than on the exact meaning of a particular word. At other times, like in coaching, education and relationships, it is worth taking the time to ask “What does … mean to you?” or ‘When we speak about …, what do we speak about?” or ‘Help me understand what you mean by…?” to clarify and build shared meaning. What is it that we speak about when we speak about identity, roles, sense of self?

Words can change the way we see situations. When I speak of my situation I could use words like redundant, unemployed, workfree, being in a fertile void, on a forced pause, between jobs, on a change journey, creating my future, freelancer, self-employed, entrepreneur. Each one lands differently, carries some connotation and even triggers some bodily reactions. ‘Redundant’ and ‘unemployed’ sound harsh, metallic, poking into the ribs. ‘Fertile void’ has some promise. ‘Freelancer’ induces a playful flare. ‘Entrepreneur’ builds a wall of resistance. I haven’t found the words, yet, that would dismantle the wall, allow me to climb over it or dig a hole through it. With the choice of words I can alter and share my current reality. And whether you interpret my story with different colors is up to you and does not change how I see it now. The words I use to tell my story and the shade of it will probably change as the time passes.

With my coach colleagues we spoke about words and their impact. Our words certainly have an impact on others. It may be ignored. It may be small and easily brushed off. It may be significant, much more than we anticipated or intended. Sometimes it is exactly what another person needs at a time. Like poetry on Saturday afternoon can be a balm to the soul. Sometimes what we intend and what another person receives may be miles apart. Misunderstandings happen.

Some of the responsibility of navigating the impact of words lies within the power of the listener or the reader. When we listen and read we should assume positive intent and try to listen and read the words through the lens of love and curiosity rather than judgement, and try to avoid inferring meaning that might not be there. When the words are deliberately malicious and hurtful, we may turn off the input, hide in our protective bubble and remind ourselves that the words and actions of others speak more of them than us.

We may use words to change situations. In fact, when we desire change, it is our responsibility to express ourselves. Yet there are times when we choose to withhold the words. They lodge in the throat, flood the arteries, weave nests between the brian cells, and seek for a way out, sometimes escaping with tears, sometimes in silent screams. At times the words that can’t be spoken find their release while spilling on a paper, between the safe covers of a journal.

Sometimes, pictures may represent better what we think and only once we have chosen an image can we articulate the feeling, hunch or idea inside us. When I first saw the image of a yellow ball bending pink lines my first thought went to the impact the words create, and then I turned the card around and remembered another discussion I had with my fellow coaches. When we choose our words and choose to speak, we should try to use the opportunity to lift others rather than pull them down. I hope that this is what I do with my writing.

Sometimes when words aren’t enough, a hug can speak volumes.

I am curious to hear what’s your relationship with words is. When do they come easy? When do they seem to hide?

My timing for arriving on a slow art tour was spot on. At exactly four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon I took the last step of the stairs and joined two other women in an art gallery for the viewing of Lisette Lepik’s Lahustumine/ Flow State exhibition.

The windows of the gallery were covered with black blinds. With the setup of the walls only three paintings illuminated by artificial light were visible at first and the sound of club music echoed through the space. I felt the beat vibrating through my body.

I knew the tour guide, and it turned out that the other woman was Lisette Lepik, the artist whose paintings hung on the wall.

With the presence of the artist and the music and me being the only visitor I knew the viewing already had a start different than I expected. I loved that I was reminded that even when you think you know what to expect, each experience is different.

When the tour guide explained that the exhibition was inspired by dance and the sequence of the paintings depicts a dancer in her flow state of immersion with music almost dissolving into abstract shapes, my curiosity increased. The artist said her intention was to explore how a painting as a timeless static medium captured motion and related to music unfolding in time.

We started with a mindfulness exercise focusing on the sensation the music created in our bodies, then let the music lead our movement before moving to view the paintings, looking from far, getting closer, imagining being part of one painting.

On the first paintings you could see the silhouette of a person layered and shifted and on the last paintings the dancer had turned into abstract colour patches.

If I hadn’t known what the exhibition was about I would not have connected the images to dancing. What I saw was myself with my current fragmented identity seeking unity and finally letting go and dissolving into the surrounding.

Maybe trying to put all the different layers of identity neatly together is a futile endeavour. We are in constant motion. At times different parts show up in stronger colors. At all times we are part of a bigger picture. In a strange way the idea of identity fragmentation in the transition life period became more acceptable.

I closed my eyes, and instead of looking at the art I let the music release all my thoughts. I was a woman attending a slow art tour and it felt good.

I am glad you are here. I am glad I had my journal with me on Wednesday. I wonder how you arrange, merge, or shift the various parts of your identity.

My favourite painting form the series:

I sit on my lopsided sofa, still in my PJs, teeth brushed, face washed, skipped the morning exercise and haven’t eaten breakfast yet. Outside the trees stand still, the clouds have formed one large gray canvas in the sky, but no-one is there to paint it. The rain comes and goes. I’ve been listening to a writing course video and have written in my journal, and I realize that my body has tightened, shaped like a curved comma, and my bottom is numb.

The familiarity of my living room blocks me from seeing what’s truly there. Instead of warmth and comfort I see an empty teacup, an empty tissue pack, and an almost empty pen all representing the emptiness inside me. I look at the “Magic is something you make” and a curious, tilted-headed owl picture on the shelf and feel that for once they seem to mock rather than inspire. My body aches. My heart aches even more.

“What awaits on the other side of the ache?” is a question the writing invitation provides. I don’t yet fully understand my ache. I cry at random times. The tears stream down my cheeks while walking in nature, sitting in the car, on a massage table, before falling asleep, and most of all in the psychologist’s office. There’s sadness beyond the loss of a job. I’ve lost touch with myself.

For a long time I’ve been “hold it together”, “this too shall pass”,”find joy in little things”, “stay in the moment”, “silver lining”, “put on a smile and keep going” kind of a gal, strong and resilient. I feel unraveling and falling apart and I‘m not sure I want to see what’s left of me when this happens.

At the same time the guilt for “How dare you complain when the world is a mess, with people having real challenges, with pain beyond imagination, matter of life and death situations!” rides together with the shame “Can you not see how lucky you are to have a whole summer as endless Saturday morning, slow and no duties, do whatever you want while others have to work blood out of their nose?”.

I do so little and so little brings me joy. It puzzles me that a cup of fresh peppermint tea and a cozy bookshop story book don’t make the magic they are supposed to. I feel I have wasted a whole month. I could have, I should have, read more, written more, walked more, exercised more, gone to places more, met people more, cleaned and organised the home more.

I feel lonely. In general I feel comfortable with solitude. I even cherish it and some of my happiest moments have been in my own company. Yet now, the feeling of loneliness seeps through my skin into my body and in an unexplainable way prevents me from reaching out to others. I don’t want to burden them with my feeble worries.

In my family we don’t talk about problems or what we think or feel. We talk about what’s in the fridge, what’s on the grocery list, whether it’s going to rain, what was on the news, how fast the weeds grow, and when it’s time to heat the sauna. I am sure everybody cares about everyone else. We show it by mowing the lawn, cooking the dinner, doing the dishes, hoping this is enough. A cup of tea, a slice of cake, and a walk constitute our love language. We wait until whatever emotional storms one goes through will pass. The unspoken words collect in the throat, gather dust and make me cough. I don’t cry in front of them.

What am I worth when I don’t have a clear role and a job, nobody needs me, when I let the time pass uselessly, I don’t do anything during the day, don’t produce anything, don’t create value for others? Sitting idle is laziness. So deeply imbued with the belief that one’s worth comes from being useful, my current lack of usefulness hammers the worthlessness label into my front lobe.

I have called myself a seeker of colour and light. During the past, when life has been challenging, finding light and colour has helped me. But now, with seeming peace and freedom, the lushness of nature all around, I snap photos of flowers and the sea, and the colors and light seem to slip through my fingers. Darkness swirls within me and doesn’t want to recede. I wish to shout “I do what I want or I do nothing if I don’t want to do anything, and this does not define who I am.” The wish remains a wish.

An imaginary whip comes out and scolds me for my inability to take advantage and enjoy the summer, and lashes “Snap out of it, stop wallowing, put your big girl’s pants on, do something, clean the home, write your stories, read the books, contact people, share how you feel, plan for the future.”

My head lists all I know about grief and loss, questioning my own thoughts, not listening to the unhelpful stories, examining limiting beliefs, ways to manage emotions, take care of my body, all the strategies to find the spark, to untangle whatever knots I have created in my head, look for the other side of the current truth, ask for evidence of the opposite.

My head speaks loudly, trying to be sensible and solution oriented. If I know things but don’t follow my own advice, that makes me a failure, right?

My heart says, “But this is how you feel now. Let it be.”

I understand that in the big universe we are the tiniest of the tiny, insignificant and invisible, and our sorrows mound to nothingness. In the personal universe within us, much larger than the body containing it, our stories and sorrows are worthy of our attention and care, and we are allowed to feel what we feel.

My psychologist reminded me, “You are worthy and valuable just because you are. You don’t have to prove anything. You don’t have to achieve anything. You don’t have to do anything.”

My journal sits quietly on my lap, ready to accept anything that spills from my fingertips. The journal doesn’t mind what I write, how much I write, how I write. Free of expectations it doesn’t judge, evaluate, compare nor give any suggestions. A trusted companion for the time of personal crisis. Writing is my self-care for now.

Don’t worry about me. Darkness comes before light. I’ll get up and move on. The spark will return. Here’s one photo I snapped to gather light and colour. You can find more photos on my Instagram.

I have long stopped being surprised by what algorithms feed me. Not entirely true. Sometimes the choices make no sense. This week, however, the ad for a sound healing journey seemed to match my state of mind. Proactive to taking any opportunities to manage my current internal struggles, I seriously considered the offer.

The advert promised that the experience would help to free from fears and negative emotions, questions and worries would dissolve, the immune system would amplify and creativity increase, inner vibrations would organise and balance, I’d find solutions, peace, bliss, and inspiration. Just what I needed. I bought a ticket.

In preparation, I packed a yoga mat and an oversized fleece blanket, and took several packets of tissues with me because I was certain I’d cry. I’ve cried a lot lately, at random times and without being able to pinpoint the specific outside triggers. It seems that visiting a psychologist didn’t release only the tears for grieving the loss of a dream job but opened some gates for other long held sadness.

After an hour-long drive I arrived at the destination. I was surprised by the crowds waiting. I had expected about twenty people, but it was fifty people at least. Different ages, both women and men. My first temptation was to turn around and go back home. I stayed.

The old unrenovated manor house hall had a temporary carpeted floor with large gongs in the middle of the room. People set up their mats like sunshine rays around it. Live candles stood on the windowsill and a star making machine projected little green flickers into the ceiling. Only four people were there for the first time. Others were experienced sound journey participants. They had brought pillows and sheepskin for more comfort.

The healer explained that the five large gongs hanging from metal frames were each tuned to the vibration of a certain celestial body: sun, moon, Venus, plus a dwarf planet and an asteroid, the names of which I can’t recall. She had other instruments also and said that the whole evening would be an improvisation depending what she felt like using and what she thought we might need.

At first my experience was like my head and body were separated. I had no sensation in the body as if it was air. The healer alternated the gongs with a rain maker, wind maker, two types of shakers, wind chimes, Tibetan bowls, shaman drum and xylophone. Some of what she carried around in the room and played above the bodies and heads of people, who on their backs, wrapped up in blankets, looked like alien cocoons. She also played the piano and sang.

I expected the sound waves wash over me and through me, to vibrate away at sorrows and open me for creative energy. Oh how I wished for some philosophical revelation and a major “A-ha, I know what I want to do with my life now” moment. I could not understand the experience, couldn’t connect to the vibes of the universe and the celestial waves didn’t induce any mind travels or deep introspection.

While waiting for tears to start streaming, instead I felt a laughter bubbling. Several people slept and snored. This kind of honest tiredness was in contradiction with the slightly mystical atmosphere of deep gong sounds. Part of me wondered whether the healer in her fairy-like dress poked the snorers with her toes while doing her rounds. I wanted to place a bet that what this woman was doing was in no way a code of a role or a job in an unemployment office work register. I didn’t scold myself for these thoughts.

After an hour my body reminded me of its existence, the thighs itched, the hips and back ached, toes were restless, and bottom numb. I listened to my body. For a while I observed it and made minor adjustments, and eventually I moved myself more, stretched under the blanket, took a child’s pose and eventually sat up. Whether I broke some sort of proper behaviour, I don’t know. I remained as quiet as possible so as not to disturb others.

Maybe I was too eager trying to do it right, to get it, instead of simply experiencing it. I have experienced other interesting set ups that have worked for me in some sort of healing or calming way. I have loved dance journeys and tea ceremonies. Even a massage after a decade worked in some sort of stress release way. Going to art exhibitions tends to bring a shift in my mood.

Then again, perhaps the waves and vibrations did their magic without me noticing. I went with an open mind and curiosity and came to realise that if you’re curious to observe what is going on, you can’t feel sadness. Now I am even more curious to go again, to see whether the second time, when I already have an idea of what to expect, I might be able to surrender better.

You have been kind reading this post. I won’t offer you with a lesson to learn or a call to action. You take what speaks to you and make what you want of it. All is good.

Art by Johanna Mudist":

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With the current status of my life, my dream job ending and the future unclear, my head and heart are crammed with thoughts and emotions and I haven’t been able to put them aside to fully enjoy the sudden freedom, even though I have ample of unscheduled and due date free time at hand. Of all the choices possible, I suddenly felt it was a perfect time to take out a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle and start assembling it. The focus it requires doesn’t give a chance for whatever troubles me to approach me. At least for a while.

Somehow it has happened that I don’t have a large table at home, not even in a kitchen. I have one desk in my daughter’s room and three coffee tables in the living room. What I also have is an empty floor space in the corner of my living room where there’s enough light from the windows making it a potential area for putting a jigsaw puzzle together.

Having seen how my daughters have put together two thousand piece puzzles with few colors and some thousand piece puzzles where everything is the same color and details, my thousand pieces picture with Moomin characters in nature seems doable enough at first. With the time at hand, my previous experience, patience and interest I have high motivation to complete the self-set task.

I have a method. First sort out the corner and side pieces and put them together to form the frame. Seemingly an easy task because you can see the sides that are straight. Seemingly is a key word because when you start sorting, you’ll do it more than once. It is possible to miss something so obvious. It took me three sortings to get most of the frame pieces and one piece was still missing. A fair assumption was that it might have gone missing the last time the puzzle was put together. It hadn’t. What a surprise to discover it when I had some of the sections of the puzzle together already.

The second step is to sort by color and detail, creating clusters of pieces. It feels exciting to find eyes here, noses there, shoes and buttons, all the grays of a cat, pink flowers, and fruits in a bowl. The excitement is followed by realization that there are three places that have something blue, five different shades of green, way too many blossoms and several pieces that are all white. I sort what is easy to sort at first and leave the other pieces for later.

What a joy of success when the first characters start taking shape. There’s satisfaction in picking up a piece and knowing exactly where it fits. At times I want to clap and cheer for finding the particular piece I had been looking for. At times I discover that the piece I was looking for was right under my nose. A little internal victory jiggle is in order when knobs and holes click together.

And then comes the time where assembling the picture seems mission impossible. The pieces look all the same, nothing fits, you go through the piles about twenty times, and you doubt you’ll ever finish. There’s a temptation to force the pieces together or trim them all into squares. You walk away ready to give up. But you can’t. The next day you return again.

One evening before falling asleep I had a thought that a jigsaw puzzle might be a good metaphor for what I am going through in my life right now, trying to put the different pieces of me together to create a picture of what my future could be. I have the pieces of teaching, leading, coaching, adult educator, and writing. There are things I see clearly, probably pieces I miss, and it takes patience and focus to sort and build.

Rather happy with this thought I think back to how jigsaws came to my life.

Growing up in soviet times jigsaws were not part of my childhood. With the times changing, I had a chance to be part of a student group that visited the USA for a month during my senior year of high school. Stepping into a different world there were many things that surprised or had a wow effect. Living in a lovely family they made me feel welcome and shared their everyday life with me. That’s when I first tasted banana bread and saw a half assembled jigsaw on a table. These are the two gifts I brought home for my family. My daughters grew up eating banana bread and putting together jigsaws from an early age. They still do.

Thinking of the first student visit and then the whole year as an exchange student in the USA, about becoming a teacher at the international school, the unexpected career change three years ago and the unwanted end of a dream, I realized that the jigsaw metaphor does not apply at all.

There is no picture ready to work towards like the image on the puzzle box cover. The size, color and shape of the life pieces shift constantly, pieces are added and taken away, the frame expands as you grow. There is no moment when the picture is together and you can say “done” and then disassemble the whole thing.

Maybe life is a kaleidoscope or a collage, I start looking for a new metaphor, but being too tired I give up and fall asleep.

In the morning I understood that once again I had fallen into the trap of trying too hard to make sense, to sort, to control, to figure out what my life is and who I am. I don’t need the answers now. I need permission from myself to just be for a while.

I grant myself permission to not do any soul searching or productive activities today. I give permission to spend time doing what I want without guilt and need for justification.

My jigsaw waits for me.

Do you like jigsaws? Metaphors? Do you have any metaphors that have been helpful for you at different times of your life? Please, share.

With a big brush and without scientific reference to include I dare to claim that no matter how much we like to believe in the intellectual power of people, we, humans, are irrational emotion driven creatures, genetically wired towards fear and caution, masterful storytellers, creating the most negative scenarios possible, listing all of that could happen and go wrong.

Losing my dream job plummeted me into a place where I wasn’t even able to imagine that new positive possibilities might exist. I was stuck in between wishing to get back what was lost and looking at the future that for me seemed as a large black canvas. Dreaming of a bright future was a mission impossible.

In the times of crisis people revert to the ways that they believe help them the best. In the battle of the knowledge of what they should do and the daily habits that lead the actions, the latter tends to win.

At first, I clung to the practice of mindfulness and gratitude. I’m a firm believer in the power of both and most of the time they have proven to be useful. But now, living moment by moment, day by day, listing all that was good: all the cups of tea, the scent of lilacs and rosebushes, the sweetness of cakes shared with friends, the lunches and laughter with family, I ignored the negative feelings. All emotions neatly packed away, I walked with a brave face through the days. At the wee hours of the morning, when the stress in the body woke me, the dark thoughts sucked me in with a centrifugal force.

Reframing, usually as a good tool, became somewhat limiting in this situation too. Calling myself a freelancer or describing the new period as a fertile void created a gentle lie. Saying that the situation was interesting lessened the heaviness of reality. The way out would have been admitting that the situation sucked and I felt lost and broken. Somehow doing this seemed to contradict my identity of a joyfully spirited, educated, independent, resilient woman.

Who knows what havoc the unhelpful patterns would have created if I hadn’t sought the help of a psychologist. She helped me to start unraveling the knots inside me, allowing me to begin releasing the grief and disappointment. Letting some light in. Creating a little opening for forward looking what ifs.

You’d think that with a new state of heart and mind I’d be ready to move on. Yet, instead of moving forward, I turned to another unhelpful path. In my case it means buying books. My belief that I can read and learn myself into solutions stems from the identity of being a learner. No surprise that I now have six different books exploring the themes of changing identity and life transitions. In addition I have a big book of inspirational stories of women who have made a significant shift in their lives.

While seemingly a step further from being stuck in the past and in the doom painting mode, with the purchase of the books I have fallen into a common trap of spending time preparing rather than acting. It’s almost as if I don’t trust myself, my wisdom and my years of experience. It’s almost as if I expect there to be one right solution that would lead to one perfect version of me.

It seemed that my inner team was having challenging times too. They were all so quiet, except for the one who likes to paint the dark scenarios, tells the stories of the end of a good life and how it’s all downhill from here. Occasionally the ‘Oh, poor me” victim wrapped in self-pity arrived and stretched out on the sofa. These two kept telling unhelpful stories. What’s the use of picturing a sad lonely day ahead and feeling sorry for yourself when you think you might miss a gathering of friends, when in reality the friends find a way to change a location to make sure you are included?

Listening to these unhelpful stories and relying on unhelpful habits, may create blindfolds that hinder seeing different perspectives and noticing details that tell a different story.

The other day I missed a train and with plenty of time to wait for the next one, I went for a walk down a street that leads to a seaside. I had barely begun the walk when I saw an old acquaintance walking towards me. We smiled, stopped and chatted. Later, when I sat on the train, it clicked that during the past month several random meetings like this had happened, and also some planned invitations for a tea, including one networking opportunity in an art gallery-cafe.

Each of these meetings had provided a glimpse of what life could be like and a seed of advice of how I could move forward. So focused on sharing my sad story, I hadn’t been open to fully acknowledge and accept the gifts.

Thinking of the meetings, I got myself a new journal to record actions, meetings, thoughts, feelings, plans, advice, quotes, poems, possibilities and reflections as the change unfolds.

I intend to move on with an open mind and curiosity, question the stories I tell myself, explore and experiment, and show self-compassion when needed.

Thank you for reading. I wonder what thoughts and feelings surfaced for you, what life lessons you’d be ready to share.

Painting by Kristi Kongi. Open Heart.

Generally speaking, this description could apply to me most of the time. This is how I see myself. This is how others have described me.

With years of mindfulness and gratitude practice I have built my resilience, and have kept going even at the most stressful times. My ability to stay in the now gives strength and peacefulness. I don’t get easily upset.

Ideally the same joyfully-spirited woman would have a great contact with her body and emotions, a wholesome embodied presence, listening to her needs and having a wide range of healthy practices to manage her internal and outer imbalances.

This is something I continue to learn. Maybe forever. In my head I may have a clear picture of what I should or shouldn’t do. This may not manifest itself in reality.

Since I found out about my redundancy, I have known that this kind of change brings a whole range of emotions and I should acknowledge, accept and manage them. What I have done instead is to pack them neatly, suck the air out of them, label them with “later”, and stick them out of sight. I knew I should have cried, but I didn’t.

Instead I have sought out experiences filled with beautiful people, places and activities that create connection and joy, that give meaning and allow me to grow the daily lists in the gratitude journal. Like last week I spent five days with the extended family in the countryside, walked by the seaside, ate ice-cream, read for hours, played Code Names, helped out with cooking and washing the dishes, sweated in the sauna, and admired the beauty of the sky on the longest day of the year.

Until this Thursday, when I sat on a sofa in a psychologist’s office. It was the first time I was able to share what it’s like to be in this situation without a response that tries to diminish or push aside the hurt or helpfully move me forward. So far people have either shrugged their shoulders because job changes are a natural part of work life, have cheered with joy for the opportunity for growth because of a crisis, or have sent me job offer notices that they think would be perfect for me.

Finally I was able to cry, fully, with tears rolling down my cheeks, nose getting snotty, chest heaving and shoulders shaking.

I was grieving.

People understand and expect grief when someone dies.

It’s little less understood that other forms of loss may cause grief too. In my case the loss of a dream job.

The psychologist understood me, allowed me to sit with my runny nose and puffy eyes, witnessing my grief, without ridiculing, lessening or reframing it, without pushing me towards next goals and action steps.

It was easy for me to cry in the psychologist’s office. I feel comfortable writing about it here. I haven’t been able to share this with family or friends or acquaintances because in some ways it seems trivial and I feel the expectation to accept and move on, like other people do in these cases. In particular because there are so many job offers I could qualify for. Especially because I am a joyfully spirited woman.

But crying is important. Necessary. Healthy. Especially when you grieve something. Without crying the pain, the stress, the unfelt emotions would be like carrying hidden weights that don’t let you move forward. It doesn’t matter what your intellectual mind or people around you say about the situation, if tears need to come, they should be allowed to. And if you already have managed to suppress them, it is absolutely ok, advisable even, to seek help.

A joyfully-spirited woman can cry on a sunny summer day in order to heal.

A photo from Kristi Kongi’s exhibition Chromatic drift. Installation The Colors of Healing. Lemon, Forget-me-nots, Bleeding Hearts, Straws, Clouds, and Mountains.

A few nights ago I was reading a book (I can’t recall which one) and thought of writing down a quote (what it was is beside the point here). Since the journal was not nearby I figured a post-it note would suffice. One thought led to another. As strange and annoying it felt at the time, closing and opening the eyes, resting the head on a pillow and then again sitting semi upright, I ended up filling fifteen post-it notes.

Reading what I scribbled on the small papers, I understand that I keep returning to the question “Who am I?” and look for ways to define and redefine myself.

It’s natural to return to the themes that are relevant to the period of life one is in. The same ideas surface in different forms. The repetition contributes to making sense and forming answers. Even if these are temporary, for a while it helps.

What I write is not scientific research. Instead I construct my own understanding based on personal experience, combining emotional, cognitive and sensory knowledge, all dependent on my current life and filtered through my perceptions and beliefs, projected from the interactions with others.

I often write what I need to hear. I share what I write thinking someone else might need to hear it too.

Our identity roams around the thoughtscape and heartspace and the physical body. What a mission impossible to pinpoint where exactly the “I” is formed. What a challenge it is to balance and align the three to strengthen the identity.

Our identity is so much more than any label, picture, description or definition could capture. I suspect that any label we use limits us, narrows our lens to match the label. We might not realize that we always lie to some extent, withhold some aspects of ourselves, often knowingly and sometimes unknowingly, because there are always sides of us that we like to hide and sides we are not even aware of.

Our identity is undefinable in one conclusive answer because there is no one fixed state. Sometimes we may change in a flicker of time, sometimes the change is a long process. Sometimes the change is minimal, sometimes huge. Sometimes it’s clearly visible, sometimes we might miss noticing it. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it feels like flourishing. There’s no rewind button and turning back, only forward.

Our identity is shaped by the groups we belong to. These give us a container, a frame, a reference point. When you lose a valuable group and feel that you don’t belong anymore, it’s like a glass broke and as water you lose shape. You have to remember that this might be a trick of your mind, because you always have an internal structure that creates your core.

Our identity consists of multiple me-s. In the company of my friends, coaches and supervisors, the conversation about the multiple me-s in the inner team is such a natural thing. By paying attention to whose voice is the loudest and who we should perhaps listen more to we might make more reasonable decisions, find strength to take action and soothe ourselves. Sharing this publicly makes it sound like we’re crazy, listening to those voices inside us.

Reading my own text brings up resistance.

Maybe one shouldn’t try so hard.

The speculations and going too deep with discoveries are not necessary, may be even harmful, for it’s a hopeless pursuit. We might instead be happy and content with whatever identity we choose to reveal at the moment to the degree we are able to do it.

“I’m a joyfully spirited woman” is as true and good as “I’m the CEO of my life”.

“I am a chocolate eater” is as true and good as “I am an educational coach.”

“I am a person who likes to smell roses. A person who loves light and color. A person who enjoys pauses to admire the beauty of nature.” is as true and good as “I am midnight post-it writer.”

Maybe less thinking and more action. Eating cake with friends and dancing on a beach at sunset are excellent options. I wrote a short story and sent it to my friends. (This too was partially born from late night notes). I am assembling my CV.

The midnight writing is of little help in finding a job. I doubt that post-it writing qualifies as a useful skill.

Maybe less action and more being.

See here too, I keep repeating myself, returning to the same idea over and over. So human, imperfect, losing ground, losing myself, searching for meaning, slowing down, staying in the present, looking for ways of being. Writing it down. Creating myself through writing.

After Kirsti Kongi’s exhibition “Chromatic Drift” I bought a book and three pencils:

Open heart

Notes from the air

Uncertainty is kind

Recently, I have read and heard about radical responsibility. The idea that we should take full responsibility for what is happening with us and our lives, for our circumstances and well-being. We shouldn’t fall into a victim mode blaming others or the world or bad luck. We shouldn’t blame ourselves either. The responsibility would be to accept the world as it is and take the various situations as an opportunity to learn.

I agree that wallowing in a victim mode is unhelpful. I also agree that blaming in any form, including self-blame, that we haven’t thought the right thoughts, believed strongly enough or believed in the right things, or dedicated enough time envisioning, planning and executing, haven’t made the right choices, haven’t tried hard enough, is unproductive.

I’d like to believe in the idea that life is of our own making. At the same time the term “radical responsibility” triggers resistance.

There are lots of things that happen that are not under our control, that one can’t take responsibility for, nor even influence.

Receiving a redundancy notice is a life event that may happen to people who are responsible and hard-working, dedicated, and love their jobs. It’s something that is not under their control.

While there are many people who see this life event as an opportunity, doors closing and opening, I think it’s absolutely fine for some time to feel the sadness and feel a bit like a victim because you have lost something that was good and dear to you.

It’s also fine to feel anger, be the prosecutor that the economic situation of the company or in the country or the whole world sucks, and therefore you suddenly became a financial burden, a cost to be eliminated.

Worrying about the future is an adequate reaction to the situation. Also confusion about the identity.

As I understand responsibility, it means that we make decisions and choices and we’re willing to accept the consequences of those decisions and choices.

In this case, the responsibility lies within being aware and acknowledging the emotions and managing them the best way you can and making sure you don’t stay in the spiral of negativity for too long.

I admit that I have not yet dealt with my emotions after receiving my redundancy notice. I am aware that feeling are within me and I have planned to sit with them, feeling them fully. Soon.

My choices have been more focused on how I see the current phase of my life. Since redundancy and unemployment sound harsh, I have chosen to call myself a freelancer entering a fertile void. I don’t see this as sugarcoating a bad situation because this reframing gives me strength, and I have some work agreements for the fall waiting for me.

I have also chosen self-care as my priority.

The first thing I did was to buy a large purple flower pot and several summer flowers (dahlias, snapdragons, daisies, and others I don’t know names of) to plant in it so when I wake up in the morning and look through the balcony door, flowers are the first thing I see.

Since beauty can be a powerful healer, I went to an art exhibition on my first day of unemployment when I didn’t have anything on my to-do list.

Kristi Kongi’s Chromatic Drift exhibition has been described as an explosion of colors. For me it was so much more. Besides the colored walls of the room, installations, a video interview, the large paintings and the smaller paintings, she has included words as titles, as collected thoughts scribbled behind the larger displays, and all of it together created a whole body experience for me. I walked around the room, stood with some paintings longer, returned to them, looked at them, felt them.

I also went to a bookstore and used birthday gift cards from March to buy four new books. This wasn’t a consolation purchase but an intentional action of creating more joy in my life. For some time, I’m going to read for pleasure without a trace of guilt for not being productive.

Last weekend I spent at a writing retreat that I had booked months ago. I finished a short story that I sent to my friends to read. Without daily work I have time to write at home too. I believe in writing as healing and as self-creation.

Nature, art, reading, and writing are helpful in navigating times of uncertainty. I might not be ready to dream big nor make complex plans but I can take responsibility for taking care of myself. Small steps are enough.

I first encountered the phrase ‘fertile void’ in ’s Substack’s name “Fertile Void Cafe”. I considered the name as a fascinating choice of words and contributed the result to his creative literary thinking, and didn’t think of it any further.

When a friend mentioned reading a book “Fertile Void” and explained what it meant in terms of coaching, I realised that the seemingly witty word combination carries deeper meaning. My curiosity nudged me to do a Google search and its eager AI assistant offered a whole shebang of explanation, organised in categories, some parts in bold.

“The fertile void is a psychological and philosophical concept describing a transitional state of emptiness that is actually teeming with potential. It refers to the uncomfortable, in-between pause after one phase of life has ended and before the next begins—a space where you are temporarily directionless, yet incubating new growth, self-discovery, and authentic transformation.”

As I understood from the rest of the text, the idea of a fertile void comes from an ancient Taoist philosophy and is used in Gestalt therapy. The period holds often a mixture of emotions, including grief, confusion, and a sense of lostness. The idea is not to escape but to stay comfortably in the uncertainty. It’s a potential-filled pause. Staying quietly with the current reality allows reflection and internal shift necessary for personal growth.

The AI kindly offered “If you share a bit of your situation, I can help you explore what seeds of potential might be resting in this space for you.” I didn’t need this. It was the phrase itself that was already helpful. Being able to put a name to the situation makes it easier to understand and manage.

I breathed in relief, “Ah, this is the phase of life I’m entering now.” The phrase sounds much more promising, almost welcoming, than the fear-inducing phrase “uncertain future”. Without any need to rush forward, to escape the fog, I can take time to curiously explore my emotions, to observe how my thoughts swirl, interpret what the body signals, start listening to what rises within and notice what flickers of future speak to me.

Fertile void is also associated with writing. It makes sense when you think of it. The “I don’t know what to write” situations or the uncomfortable uncertainty when you don’t see where a writing project might take you or sitting between projects all can fall under the description of a fertile void, full of potential and require the writer to trust the process.

This weekend I’m out on my third weekend writing retreat this school year. The first one was in November and the second in February. Quiet times with cold weather and limited light. Warmth, birdsong and lilac scent are the key words for the start of the summer retreat.

I sit with my writing and life uncertainty on a double bed in a small house by the seaside. I have spread two books, three journals, one draft of a short story, an animal card deck and two pens on one half of the bed. On the other side of the bed I lean against the pillows behind my back and the laptop rests on my legs. No table in this room. I am comfortable with the possibility that the writing may not happen.

The past retreat experiences taught me that the best approach is to let go of writing expectations and accept that even with the best intentions the writing may not happen in terms of producing volumes of texts. There’s no need to be upset about it or force words out on paper. You could of course do some brain dump writing, some prompt writing, some reading, some walking, some mindfulness exercises, some yoga, some dancing, some doodling. All of this counts as part of the writing process.

I choose to play with the animal deck card. The card pulling idea I have picked up from . I think of the fertile void in my life and pull three cards to see what support they might offer.

The first card asks to activate the inner cosmos. I shrug because it sounds so woo-woo. Reminding myself to be open-minded and curious, I read on. Phrases like “explore the layers of consciousness within yourself”, “your ability to evolve is infinite”, “look at your experience as an ongoing adventure”, “embrace experiences with curiosity and positivity”, “be willing to keep moving forward calmly and confidently”, “you have within you all you need to succeed” suddenly sound perfect for the time being.

Now the other two cards I read with enthusiasm. They bring to me the idea of laughter and joy and the reminder of abundance. Not words that would first come to mind with ‘fertile void’ during an uncertain future.

I’d say that about a week ago these affirmative cards may have created an urge to grind my teeth and roll my eyes because denial and fear were prominent states of mind, then now, with a name for the life period, I have relaxed and randomly pulled cards with their words sound encouraging. Even empowering.

Today I have several hours just for myself before a common dinner. I feel calm and happy. This again is proof that even during challenging times it is possible to find happiness. I am curious to see what the day will bring. Both in terms of writing and also for life.

(I took the photo yesterday. I love the sea in all its moods.)

The wind makes an attempt with the bushes. The lilac seems to only encourage the wind to try harder, so the sweet scent of lilac blossoms carries as far as possible. I wish I were more like a lilac. Unbothered, confident in my value.

I try to let the wind empty my mind. Unsuccessfully. Thoughts of a vague future, the mixture of unfelt emotions and dreams not yet visible in sight mingle with the mundane to do task list of inbox to be sorted, hallways to be swept, grocery list to be written, lunch to be prepared and a pile of clothes to be ironed.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a mind as clear as the sky and only sunny thoughts spreading light within me? My head is filled with fog and my internal compass is out of order. I’m stuck, circling in the same place, even when my feet carry me forward. I feel like I’m shrinking. My smallness speaks of my insignificance.

“Silly, silly, silly,” the sparrows comment in the nearby bushes.

“Reframe, reframe, reframe,” croak the crows flying above my head.

The swans gliding on the smooth surface of a river hold their heads high and choose silence as their message for me.

Pardon me, you royal white beauties. Your attitude is not helpful. Neither is the judgement of sparrows. I’ll go with the advice of the crows. They were high above, seeing the big picture.

“Live like a bird” won’t be an option.

Starting from Monday I’ll be a freelancer searching for my place in the universe. So the whole idea that after fifty you start ticking towards retirement is not happening in my world.

I don’t know what the future holds. There are dreams that may come true or not. There are dreams I don’t know about that might come true. There are fears that might become true or not, and there are fears that I don’t even know to worry about.

A friend asked about my June and I said I have a hundred things to do. From all the musts, shoulds, woulds, cans, coulds, mights, wants, needs I’ll make choices, and with each choice made another choice will be discarded.

The only constant within all of this, as the future unfolds in front of me, is me. The question I can ask is, “How do I want to show up no matter what will happen?” and keep in mind that “Who I am?” is not defined by a role or a position.

Returning home, I feel that the walk in nature has somewhat brought calm and clarity. I know it would be in the benefit of the future me to talk with a coach. Instead, I take one easy action and turn to ChatGpt.

I feed it my LinkedIn and Substack writing from the past months and questions about my interest clusters, strengths, and what to do with my future. Even when cognitively I understand that the language models operate based on the human input and patterns, lacking real emotional contact, the response has a soothing and encouraging effect on me. The machine provides me the kind of selftalk I haven’t been able to access from my mind lately because it has been buried under worries and blinded by self-pity and unhelpful comparisons.

The machine produced text reminds me that I won’t start from a blank page, that I always have all the accumulated knowledge, understanding, skills and experiences with me. It reminds me that I don’t need to jump into grand dreams and elaborate actions straight away. It reminds me of what I know deep down. Small steps, little experiments, staying in the moment help to move forward. Feeding my heart and mind with reading, art, nature, walks, conversations and pauses feeds the ground for dreams. And of course, writing. I should keep writing.

Writing is so much more than putting words on a paper. Writing as thinking, writing as reflection, writing as sense-making, writing as emotion regulation, writing as healing, writing as noticing, writing as mindfulness, writing as compassion, writing as gratitude, writing as self-creation, writing as dreaming, writing as playfulness, writing as self-care.

Let the wind blow. I’ll write. If I don’t know what to do, I’ll be.

(I did not use AI help to write this post. The writing is my own.)

It was like yesterday that the snowdrops announced the arrival of spring, the blue anemone promised warmth, the cherry blossoms brought lightness. Now the lilacs speak of summer and the white blossoms of a rosebush break free, let go, twirl to the ground and remind about the essence of impermanence.

We have the capacity to slow down time, to escape the centrifugal motion of the outer and inner world. Only when we slow down purposefully, we can notice the lights and colors around us and understand that we exist on the same timeline with the specks of stardust. We are the specks of stardust.

We can make time, take time, find time, create time to be with friends and family, with self, in nature, in culture. We can stand completely still and create stillness in the mind and heart, at least for a moment to be smooth like a sea without a ripple, the sky reflecting back from it.

This is the time you can get to know yourself. What do you see when you look at yourself like a stranger, at the same time with compassion and curiosity? What do your movements, eyes and voice speak about? What message do your yellow socks and the toes inside them send? What story do your wrinkled thin fingers, nails clipped short, tell? What extra do you carry besides the weight, the hair, the cracked skin of heels? What’s hidden in the folds of the heart or forehead furrows? What stays in the shadows and reveals itself only during patience, presence and listening? What are you holding onto? What do you need to let go?

The “who I am” question has decided to revisit me over and over. So now again, I am looking at the possible selves, the opportunity of reimagining and reinventing my identity to become yet another version of me. At the same time the new version is the collection of bits from my older versions, like a mosaic with new combinations of the colors I have collected over the years.

I have been reading how it’s good to stay in the disorientation of transition, even though it would be a natural human response to feel resistance and to rush to solutions. The place is uncomfortable, even painful at times. Taking time for exploration and experimentation allows us to dig deeper and rise stronger with clarity and confidence.

While I may know what to do, I am not always the best example of following it through. I know I should sit with my feelings, allow them to be, let them express through my body. What do I do instead? I push them aside and keep myself busy with other activities. I know I would benefit from writing and coaching. What do I do instead? I coach others. I write about all that’s around and avoid looking inside. Aren’t we all like this sometimes, the knowledge bigger than the action?

In times of uncertainty I sometimes turn to motivational quotes. Some of them make me shrug my shoulders, some speak directly to my needs. Like the latest: “This is your reminder to let go of urgency. You don’t need to rush. Keep trusting the natural unfolding of life and allow things to happen in their own time.”

In the midst of all the confusion and hurry and self-talk and promises, a lovely surprise arrived on Friday morning. A friend from Vienna sent me a little art piece, saying it reminded her of me. My one eye cries because it touches me deeply, another eye smiles because I know somebody cares.

All is good here and now. I am who I am even if not able to fully voice it yet.

With this picture in front of me, I think of the ways I can speak love language to myself. So I slow down, stop berating myself for not doing what I know I should do. I promise myself to take the time, and I know I will. With the slowing I return to myself.

Between my train’s arrival to the city and the agreed upon meeting I have twenty-five minutes. Between the train station and my next destination stands a small photo gallery. Without weighing between different options on how to fill my time I head directly to a photo exhibition. An artist date.

On Wednesday afternoon I am the only visitor. The story of the exhibition intrigues me. Claus Rohland visited middle eastern countries (Egypt, Iran, Syria etc.) in the seventies, taking lots of photos for diapositives. Now, decades later, he brought up the slides from a basement, discovered that the slides were damaged, scanned them in and turned them into large canvas art.

Knowing what’s happening to some of these countries, the damage and destruction that people are causing, the future conjures dark, grey and smoke filled images. In contrast the damage on the slides brings out vibrant colors, creating an almost fairy-tale-like atmosphere. The oriental rugs on the floor of the gallery accentuate warmth and softness and a sense of history.

After walking through the gallery I choose one picture to slow view. Through the splotches in various shades of purple I see a figure that looks like a small barefoot girl looking at pyramids. I am moved and feel a lump in my throat.

I have never seen the pyramids, so it’s not the setting I connect to, but I feel as if I am looking at the small version of me from behind. If at first I don’t understand why this colourful picture, that could be one of hope and joy, creates sadness in me. Then the acknowledgement arrives. What I feel is a sense of loss.

The little girl is full of wonder and innocence, so wholly present in the now, experiencing everything thoroughly with body and allowing all emotions to surface without reservation. She doesn’t dream of what might come nor does she fear what hasn’t arrived yet. Little is needed to be happy.

Then the girl grows. She is directed and controlled, moulded and bent, pruned and chiseled by parental and societal expectations and rules to fit in, to follow a proper path, to navigate what’s right and wrong. Life speeds up and the pressure to perform increases. There are standards to meet and successes to achieve. As her self-consciousness grows, she becomes vigilant in monitoring her behaviour and emotions, trying to contain all neatly in, ever so cautious to make the correct steps. The easy wonder, joy and presence disappear.

The girl has to make choices and many of the choices determine what happens next, what becomes of her and her life. We may think that we are free in making choices but in reality all our choices are influenced by the context and by our past. And while as adults we may carry some seeds of hope and dreams, the fears tend to ruthlessly reign the terrain of the human mind. We keep going on. Bravely.

I know it is my mind that has taken the dark and gloomy lens to interpret the picture. Maybe on a different day, under different circumstances, I would have seen fairy dust and dancing elves, magic portals and spirit animals. If granted one wish I’d ask for curiosity, ease and playfulness as my magic powers to face challenges and unexpected obstacles of life.

I could use this picture to tell a story of a little girl in a fairyland, going on adventures, finding new friends, learning new skills, making discoveries. Then again I could also use this picture inspiration to write my own story, to be the heroine setting out on an adventure, making new discoveries, being brave, not giving up, being creative in finding solutions.

Shaking myself off the viewing emotions, I wonder whether the gallery has a postcard of this photo art. They do. I buy it and stick it in between the pages of a book.

Later the same day, when an opportunity rose, I shared the story of the picture viewing. I am sharing it with you. The stories we tell and write don’t have to be grand and long and complicated. We can find them everywhere. A short visit to a photo gallery and one picture can give already plenty to think and feel and write about.

Your turn. What story would you like to share? What do you think and feel when you see this picture?

The only lesson to share is that the new anniversary will come only if you keep writing and posting. The anniversary day will come and go, and life will continue as usual. Continue writing even if you don’t know your ideal reader or haven’t chosen a particular niche, write for yourself first, it’s good for you.

The Substackversary was four days ago. The day came and passed. Without a cake. In case you wondered. It’s only now that I have arrived at my writing spot on my living room sofa, laptop open in front of me, my head thick from a runny nose and despite it, I’m determined to write this post. As I said, for myself mostly.

My friend said that my runny nose is a sign of suppressed emotions, that I am processing some unspoken truths and my body does what I haven’t done myself. This friend didn’t know that on the Substack’s birthday I had been to a bookclub discussing owning the feelings, connecting them to the body and vocalising them.

A group of women sat around a conference table and took turns explaining what the chapter about emotions made them think about. The first four shared how during their upbringing emotions were controlled and excluded, the emotional vocabulary limited, listening to the body was never mentioned and the idea of using vocalisation in emotion regulation was a rather novel concept for them. When it was the last woman’s turn to speak, she looked at the rest of us with puzzlement. She said that she came from a completely different background, from a family of competitive sportsmen, her whole life was about listening to the body, expressing all range of emotions and vocalising was a regular part of life. We all looked at her with some envy.

I realised that I’m filled with unexpressed sounds. Even now, when some exercises require a collective humming or playing with a volume of continuous vowel sounds, I have a hard time joining in, occasionally avoiding participation altogether. I’m also filled with unsaid words, having learned to have one-sided silent conversations in my head without expressing a word of what emotions I experience, how I feel or what I need.

Maybe this is why I write. It’s a form of silent expression. The reader does not hear a sound from me. My body has no significance in my texts. Yet the words give me some power over the interpretation of what’s happening, what I am experiencing, thinking, feeling.

In the bookclub we also talked about listening to the head, heart and gut. If anyone had mentioned this kind of listening in my childhood, they would have been considered a person with mental health issues. Or maybe a witch. When I first encountered this idea during my coaching studies, I did not understand what was expected from me. It is even worse after learning about this. If at first I saw that the heart could not be trusted, being naive and making silly decisions, the gut being unreliable from processed foods and attachment to cookies, then now I see that the brain is equally faulty, shaded with biases, riddled with blind spots and thought holes, and easily manipulated.

As humans we go through life trying our best, living in our truth that is simultaneously partially wrong, making mistakes and discovering our imperfections, most likely denying them at first, and hopefully accepting the world as it is and ourselves as we are and not giving up in face of challenges. Nobody said that it’s easy nor that we’ll ever figure out how to best do it or that we’ll ever reach some all encompassing common page. What you once believed to be true is not true anymore and what you thought was the right thing to do turns out to be misleading. Relearning takes time. Especially in the more mature age range.

When I called the same friend later, telling her that I had listened to my body and didn’t attend a day-long conference, she congratulated me. What I haven’t told her is that I was not as successful three days later and went to a birthday party. I needed to see my friends. I needed some laughter. This is what I told myself, when what I probably need is to cry and maybe growl or even scream against the wind. A change in life gives a cause for it but I am not ready to process any of it yet.

Even though in theory I have become better in understanding the need to acknowledge and accept all emotions, in practice I obviously still tend to default to old habits of emotional avoidance and ignoring my body.

But I have my writing to help me make sense of what’s happening and somewhat shape my thoughts and feelings. Hopefully I’ll find a way to face my emotions and release them before they bury too deep in me and create issues worse than a runny nose.

Now I am going to drink some tea. I hope you are doing well.

Happy Substackversary!

!

In the evenings I pop up pillows on my bed to make a comfortable reading spot for myself. Next to my bed, on a small bedside table, I have three small towers of books. Two to three books that I am currently reading, several books waiting to be read, some that I have started but other books took priority, and some that I have read but haven’t put on the bookshelf yet. My bedside table sets a good example of book diversity. Books by male authors and female authors, in Estonian and in English, poetry, fiction, non-fiction and self-help books, printed by big publishers and self-published.

Lately I have started setting myself ready for bed early to extend my reading time.

I am still reading Margaret Atwood’s Book of Lives. A memoir of Sorts. It’s a thick and heavy hardcover book that I take in small doses, savoring how she describes and reflects on her life, the bigger historical picture, her relationships, experiences and thoughts, and connects them to the poems, stories and books she has written. She started writing when Canadian literature was hardly recognized and a female poet was an anomaly.

The other book is one of Elif Shafak’s older books The Forty Rules of Love: a novel of Rumi. Somehow I had missed it when it was published more than a decade ago. I discovered it recently when one workshop participant showed it to her coursemates. I ordered the book the same day. After reading the mixture of stories, love and religion layered in time it’s good to let the feelings and thoughts linger.

Under the bedside table is a woven basket with some of my journals. Like the books, the journals have different purposes, have been started at different times and some get used regularly, some occasionally and some are already filled and wait to be taken to a cupboard next to other older journals. The gratitude journal is the one that gets daily attention. The other journals…not so much.

For the whole month of March, I wrote and published daily. Small snippets, but nevertheless, I did the work of writing. Ideas arrived, words lined up, and pressing publish was an easy action. Before that, I wrote weekly on Substack and regularly published on LinkedIn. Producing posts provided a pleasurable challenge that I gladly met. My morning pages journal was well used and I often pulled out the writer’s journal in the middle of the day and sometimes in the middle of the night even. Now I have hit a point where I think my writing-well has dried up.

I’d like to start with finger pointing first at my muse, who clearly has more important people to take care of. I’d like to follow this up with excuses about my time used up for creative work of workshop preparation. Third, I’d cry over algorithms whose recent choices have pulled down my motivation to share.

Now that I’m masterfully taken on the roles of the prosecutor and victim and told a story of my unfortunate circumstances, it might be wise to look in the mirror, not to blame myself, but rather to ask whether what I think about the dried up well of words has any truth in it or perhaps there are other reasons why the writing hasn’t happened. Do I dare to question the assumption that my writing has draught periods or does overturning this assumption rob me of yet another way to explain not writing, as it happened when I discovered that writing blocks don’t exist?

I’ve heard that instead of a scarcity mindset (the empty well being a perfect example of this) we benefit from an abundance mindset. While true in many cases, I’d challenge the notion that when it comes to cognitive work, thinking and problem-solving, that there is truth to running out of certain things. When the mind is already filled with several things, there simply isn’t space and memory for additional information. Cognitive capacity is limited. Add to this decision fatigue and by the end of the day you have run out of steam and will to write. No one can deny that writing, though partially art and magic, is a cognitive exercise that requires lots of decisions.Therefore it’s fair to conclude that under certain conditions the writerly well can be empty indeed. All the words have been used up elsewhere. Excuses, excuses.

Maybe it’s not such a good idea to read Elif Shafak’s novel and Margaret Atwood‘s memoir at the same time. Between the two writing giants, whom I greatly admire, I feel tiny. They never run out of words, they don’t find excuses, blame the circumstances nor finger point at the muse. They take full responsibility for their writing life and what they write.

I’m tempted to plead for forgiveness from the imaginary panel of writing judges for daring to wear the “writer“ label and fully understand if they take the badge back when surely I don’t measure up to real writers and to what true writing looks and feels like.

The advice “don’t compare yourself to others” and the statement “every master was a beginner” sound rudely mocking. I’ve been writing for 15 years, surely I should’ve made more progress, produced more text, grown more masterful in craft. From “everybody can learn to write” I revert back to believing that people come in two categories: “writers” and “not writers”. As hard as I want to believe and belong in the first, I see how well I blend into the second.

Whose voice is speaking so loudly in my head? Not my inner critic because we have come to perfectly amicable terms, and when he arrives, he does so with flair and confidence and there is no doubt about his presence.

This voice is more secretive, more convincing, hard to argue with. I suspect it’s my saboteur. One who cares about me strongly and protects me fiercely from putting all of me into writing.

At any point when I say, “Maybe I’m a writer after all” and “Maybe I could write something substantial, worthy and notable”, the saboteur shows up and quickly pulls me back from these thoughts, saves me from the possibility of being ridiculed, judged, mocked, getting hurt from comments.

Or it could be that it’s not so much the other people‘s opinions it protects me from, but from the shards of shattered dreams, the blows of reality when I discover that my belief in my own writing skills was one bubblethin illusion.

The reasons for such dedicated protection are obscure to me. Could it be because of all the fairy tales I grew up with? In those modesty, patience and kindness were rewarded and wanting good things too much and too quickly were punished with freezing to death, covered in tar or marriage to the devil’s son in the underworld. No surprise that I don’t dare to dream big and my saboteur, perhaps I should rename it a guard, is committed to showing up consistently.

Thinking of the members of my inner team working hard to run my life is a fun literary exercise that in many ways serves a bigger purpose, directing me to understand the complexities of the human mind and searching for different perspectives in order to solve problems. Unfortunately none of the right team members have shown up recently to help me with the current issue of not writing.

Then I wonder what those two women who have kept the company on many evenings would say to me. Not that either has the slightest knowledge of my existence nor in the big scheme of things would care one way or the other about my writing life, the imaginary exercise provides options.

I imagine Margaret Atwood saying something like this, “If you want to write, then write. If you don’t want to write, then don’t write. Write when you feel you need to, when you can’t live without it. Whether you write or don’t write is your choice. Making a choice is a power you have. Use it wisely.”

Somehow I believe Elif Shafak would say, “Stories connect us. Stories keep the heart strong. Stories save humanity. Keep writing your story. Keep sharing your story.”

Maybe instead of my inner team I could have more imaginary conversations with the wise women who have shared their writing with the world and changed the world through this.

And the panel of writerly judges, I withdraw my plea to revoke my writer’s badge.

Dear reader, where are you currently with your reading and writing? How are you managing your inner team? Do you sometimes have imaginary conversations with writers?

I’d love to say that I am writing myself into getting bolder. By now I should have reached the age of not giving a f* about other people’s opinions. Still working on it. Decades of human pleasing takes time to root out.

As a writer I could write anything.

In many ways we are all fiction writers in our lives. Jon Kabat-Zin says “We construct identities, agendas, and futures for ourselves in our minds, and then lose ourselves in those constructs, in our models of reality, and in our thoughts, which, even if they are true, are only true to a degree, definitely not entirely true, and usually not true enough.”

All the stories we tell ourselves about the events, experiences and people in our lives take a good deal of imagination. The interesting thing is that if we take the stories constructed in our heads and put them on paper we have a chance to rewrite them. We can take the most challenging things and by writing them down move our thoughts, emotions and conclusions in a way that allows us to be learners and self-care guardians, find meaning in situations that might not make sense at first, and through this become stronger and more resilient.

This is if we want to. We might as well go the other way and use the writing as a way to dump on paper any ugly, stinky, mushy thoughts and reactions, wallow in self-pity, let the anger boil or conclude how meaningless everything is. This kind of writing can be considered as the manure for fertilising the ground and making space for hopefully more creative and productive ideas to grow and flourish. At least the mush is out of the system.

I spent a whole month writing daily, sharing slices of life with other writers.

I was mostly on my own, an independent woman writing, an independent writer, an independent female writer with a room of my own, or rather with a sofa of my own.

A squirrel, my cheerleader, crossed my path only once. She was still disoriented after a long winter, confused as to where to go or what to do with the newly appeared light, too busy to take care of herself, not having any extra energy to cheer me on. Seeing her climbing up a pine had to suffice. The inner critic had escaped to the southern hemisphere, most likely to New Zealand in search of hobbits. My muse visited me a few times, always at night, making me infer that her permanent location was in a different time zone.

What I wrote was true and at the same time, making a choice of what to write already curated my life so others saw just a glimpse of who I was. I could say they saw the authentic true me, but the whole concept of knowing the “true self” poses a challenge. The true self is not something concrete you can chisel out of a marble block and place on a pedestal. Your “self” is not a standalone entity in a vacuum. You always exist in and are influenced by the context. The view of the self and the world depends on the brain chemistry.

To add to the confusion, some people suggest that within you are nested the various selves, the past and the present and the future you, and the various archetypes and your inner team, including saboteurs, each trying to protect you and guide you to make good choices but the criteria for “good” often remaining unclear or changing. It might get crowded and confusing within oneself. I’ve read that it’s the inner child that we need to take care of to keep the creativity alive.

The above view suggests that we always have plenty of characters to stir a plot.

My current life narrative includes the educator, coach and writerly self working together when giving workshops. In one workshop about self-care for school leaders I chose to use the writerly approach, including poetry reading, some metaphorical thinking and several writing exercises, also daring to share some of my own stories, successes, shortcomings, and lessons learned. I felt that I dared to be who I am even if wording it still remains a work in progress.

As if sorting out who you are wasn’t challenging enough, Jon Kabat-Zin invites to “hold what’s unfolding without judgement, without creating a narrative that you are going to believe.”

To even try to not name whether something or someone is good or bad, pleasing or annoying, agreeable or disagreeable, friendly or hostile, generous or selfish, confident or arrogant, fair or unfair seems to go against being human. We are so conditioned to evaluate and judge both people and situations. Including ourselves and what we do.

Not to worry though about being part of this mission impossible. If you are already aware and notice what you think, how you judge, you are on the path of a more mindful life. This is when you have a choice. You can choose your attitude, your words, your reaction, your actions.

Reading my own text I catch myself judging the writing being mumbo-jumbo, starting to worry whether I should share, catching the fear of what others might think, especially the friends who happen to read or even worse, the people I work with.

What a perfect place to practice accepting that this is what I have to offer for now and not to let the fear of other people’s opinion stop me from sharing. I choose to accept and share what I have written today.

It might be that if I read this in the future I could nod in understanding and it’s equally possible that I might have a good laugh because my understanding of what it means to be me, what it means to be human, has grown significantly.

For now, I also use my writerly imagination to picture a lovely person reading my text and feeling as if I spoke to them directly, and they say to themselves, I too have been thinking about these things and it feels good that I am not alone in this thinking.

My favourite spring flowers. I picked these for my birthday.

The past two months have been challenging to keep up with my intention to write and post weekly. The writing routines, plans and systems have surrendered to other tasks, duties and experiences. First it meant posting a day or two late. Last week it meant that I didn’t write and post at all. This week too, the evenings for writing passed, the snippets intended to build the post remained in the journal, the morning for posting passed and now it’s Saturday morning when I am sitting on my living room sofa, feverishly clicking on the keyboard hoping to organize the pieces into a coherent text.

When you have been consistent for more than ninety weeks and then that one week when you don’t post arrives, an inner disaster may strike. If being late with publishing was bad then skipping it all together feels awful. It’s a dangerous thing to break a streak in any kind of habit building. It’s dangerous because in some bizarre way, not doing it once after having done it for a long period feels like a massive failure. The disappointment in oneself for not being able to keep it up hits hard at first.

I once broke the streak of morning yoga after 993 days, just seven days short from 1000. More than nine hundred days of yoga is an amazing accomplishment. Did I celebrate it? No. I saw the one day that I missed and considered this the end of all. I stopped. It took me abnormally long time to get back. (So it’s not necessarily true that if you keep it up for 64 days, you have built a habit for life.) Having set the goal for yourself to be consistent and then not being able to keep it for whatever reason, even if it’s not dependent on you, you still can stop the practice.

In my head I also manage to equate skipping a regular routine with being a liar. When you speak to people and say that you publish once a week or go to gym twice a week or walk thousand steps a day or do morning yoga or use the morning pages every day and then you skip or stop, you aren’t telling the truth.

The more I think of what happened, or rather of what didn’t happen, and point a finger at myself with blame and shame, growing the guilt and embarrassment, the more I start feeling like falling apart, limbs dismantling from the body, head rolling down the hallway, emotions spilling over the floor, thoughts splatter on the walls. The best version of me that I proudly shared with the world doesn’t exist anymore.

Incapable of distinguishing fact from a story I’d like to find excuses for myself, to blame the circumstances, the world and the mercury retrograde, wallow in the victim role, but it’s all my doing. I need to take responsibility for my choices. Self-direct myself out of this pity party.

I am still learning that consistency doesn’t mean that you do something regularly like clockwork for a certain amount every week. It may include periods when you might skip, and it’s OK. It does not make you a failure, but you have to look at the consistency over a longer period of time. Even when there are gaps in between, the total sum of posts written, steps walked, down dogs performed, weights lifted adds up to quite a lot.

Like many of the obstacles and sabotages in life, it may be some sort of hidden belief that guides the kind of thinking and reprogramming one’s mind requires effort. Practicing the “I do what I can when I can, and forgive when I can’t” needs continuous support to replace all the should-s and must-s. Self-compassion is a skill and here too it’s impossible to keep the streak going forever. Days differ.

The funny side of all this is that in reality nobody else cares how many days in a row or weeks in a row you kept up with your intended routine. You won’t get a letter of complaint, a written warning of poor performance, a ticket for breaking rules or notice of being excluded from a circle of habit upholders. Others were probably busy managing their own life and didn’t even notice one less letter in their inbox.

How does one reframe a situation like this, to step out of the rumination and vicious emotional response? The resistance to take this as yet another learning experience strongly pushes back the idea of acceptance of your own limited self and the life as “it is what it is.” To see it as a challenge to overcome and opportunity to grow invites even more protests.

Perhaps the way to move forward for me is to redefine success. The greatest success would be to break free from the need of counting and collecting green dots, red hearts, blue stars or tally marks as proof of impeccable character, superb time-management and organisational skills and excellent discipline, motivation, willpower and self-control. Perhaps it’s time to let go of habit-tracking as the easy pathway for dopamine reward. Maybe this is an invitation to allow more flexibility and compassion to my life. Maybe it’s a reminder to live with ease and playfulness.

In the spirit of the last remark, I wish to be Margaret Atwood, for a day of writing at least. Ain’t gonna happen. I’m stuck with the current version of me. Admittedly still a lovely company even if I miss a week of writing or break a daily yoga streak.

I discovered that exactly a year ago I had a similar struggle with keeping my writing routine and publishing regularly. My thoughts circled around choices and I wrote a post about how inconsequential not writing is. Maybe this is how March is or maybe I need some lessons over and over. I am curious how you are doing and wonder how you manage your emotions when you don’t meet your own expectations.

Maarja Leola’s tapestry “Less Talk, More Action!”

Who in their right mind would accept a challenge to write and publish a blog post daily?

The question contains additional questions.

Who determines what the “right mind” means? “Right” is debatable and depends on the perspective. We all have our quirks. For someone, ice-swimming is the best challenge ever. In their right mind there are benefits for the body and soul. Who’s there to question their choices even if you don’t agree with them?

If you think of this, then writing is so much easier, to be done in the comfort of home and requires physical effort only from the fingers and wrists. It can be done at any time, in any place, in any form, in any clothes, and requires little equipment, usually the kind that you have already, a journal and a pen and a device for typing up and sharing.

For writing daily, the challenge stems from finding the time and the mind playing tricks with getting started and listening to the inner critic. These are all figureoutable and overcomable. The experience yields many beneficial results, especially when done more than once and in the company of kind fellow writers.

I’d say that someone writing for a month has the “rightest” mind. This is my way of cheering to myself as I accept the invitation and join a group of lovely educators collecting slices of life, practicing the writing craft and connecting through our words.

Accepting the challenge for the sixteenth year feels special. It’s like a reunion. I know the people, I think I know what I am doing and I have established my way of getting writing done.

Sharing “learn from my experience” may sound arrogant and have minimal impact, because the best lessons are the ones people learn from their own experience and what works for one person might not be suitable for another. At the same time, maybe hearing what works for someone makes life easier for others. I’d rather go with generosity of sharing than “figure it out on your own” approach.

First of all, reframing the challenge is helpful. Instead of seeing daily writing as a challenge that implies hardship, obstacles, test of skills, endurance and call for strength, calling this an experiment adds curiosity and playfulness and changes from did/failed mindset to learning attitude. Calling it an experiment also moves from trying to reach the finish line, which brings pictures of exhausted skiers and runners who fall over, to the idea that for a time being I’ll focus on one thing and the time will pass. Writing just for a month sounds lighter than I must write daily for thirty one days in a row.

A month-long daily writing is a perfect way to practice the lesson of accepting that there’s limited time and the number of choices is always bigger than you can fit in the time. (Thank you, Oliver Burkeman!) Whenever you choose one activity, you say no to something else. When I choose writing and commenting, I know that reading books and listening to podcasts gets less attention, sometimes also the domestic duties or morning exercise. I don’t recommend writing at the expense of sleep. Surprisingly walking doesn’t have to be shortened either because this can be used as writing time also, for playing with ideas and words in the head. I jokingly say, that’s where my writing office is.

This kind of writing experiment is powerful in moving from the need to perform perfectly and spending too much time on worrying about the quality to being humble and forgiving,showing self-compassion to allow oneself to write short or to write good-enough-for-now texts. When the inner critic shows up, you say, “Sorry, I don’t have time to listen to you.” Or you stick the critic into the text. You do the same when you face a writing block. You don’t give up but instead write about the “I don’t know what to write about” and the blocks turn into game pieces to play with. The value is in the process and the success is not in delivering a polished product but in showing up.

Seeing the challenge as an experiment and focusing on the process rather than the perfect text opens up head space for taking risks. You are not worrying about failing. Every idea is the right idea, you can try various formats, and trial different styles. Through this you learn about yourself and find your voice. All of the above is beneficial for other situations in life too.

Even though I said the quality of the final product is not the success criteria for a daily goal , the result of participating in the monthly writing challenge is a gift to yourself. When you read what others write, it broadens your topics and tools of writing. When you share your writing with others, the feedback allows you to feel compassion and appreciation. When you look back at the collection of slices you have collected over the years, it’s almost as if meeting with the younger self. We know that the memory fades, and having these slices preserves snippets of your life story.

The strangest and most magical thing has been that especially during the busy and tough times, when the daily writing seems too much to add to a day, the writing has been the most beneficial. Almost a saviour of head and heart. Because of writing I have been intentional to look for moments to write about, I have paid more attention to what is around and inside me, and thus becoming more mindful, noticing more beauty, collecting gratitude - the things that help to build resilience and increase happiness.

I questioned whether to share one more lesson, one that seems so overly obvious, and decided that as a reminder it’s worth sharing even when everyone reads and responds “Duh” in chorus.

You get better at writing by regular writing.

Happy writing!

The thought entered my mind abruptly while I was reading a leadership book on a Saturday morning on my living room sofa. It wasn’t the first time I read a personal story of achievement and perseverance. Yes, anyone climbing a mountain, running or skiing a marathon, or rowing over an ocean deserves admiration for doing the hard work. Yes, there’s a lot to learn as a leader. As a person.

But does it have to be so hard?

What about living with ease?

Sometimes I am tempted to imagine that it would be possible to have a month-long slow Saturday morning. Would I get more reading done? More writing?

It seems that the speed of new books appearing on the to-be-read list pile is much faster than my speed of reading. It feels as if I have become slower in reading than earlier, making me wonder whether this might be an age related occurrence as getting slower in walking has been. Or it could be that my stamina for reading is decreasing and acceptance for distractions is increasing, spending more time behind the screen that I’d be willing to admit even with hard data of weekly screen time looking back at me from my phone.

I got to comment about knowing how to live an analog life and yes, it’s true. I read and write, go for daily walks, visit theatres, museums and exhibitions, and yet I am easily lured into the digital world. My phone data ruthlessly shows me how much I have left the present moment and entered the binary system. Some of the time for reading, researching, scrolling, connecting, some for sharing on LinkedIn and Substack.

At moments I think of a children’s book character Kunksmoor, a kind wild witch living on an island, creating remedies and giving advice to people who write to her, who at some point ends up in a city and gets publicity and gets full of herself, completely lost in vanity. When she realises it, she returns to her peaceful island. I wonder whether this is what is happening to me when I publish and write on LinkedIn or Substack and speak about the courage to be seen in a podcast. The vanity blinds me.

What would happen if I stopped writing? Disconnected myself from all of this? Unsubscribed from everything? Deleted apps? Threw the phone out of the window? Lived a slow life in my own little world doing what I please?

I hear a voice saying Why don’t you try it? and I know deep down that I wouldn’t have the courage for it. Nor am I entirely sure whether this is what I truly want.

Whenever you dream of something, It’s probably impossible to imagine the full picture. You see some details that you think you desire and you’re oblivious or your imagination is limited to what else might arrive, what’s hidden, what’s in the shadows.

You might also question where the dream is coming from. Is it really yours or someone else’s? Is the painted possibility of your own making or curated by some bits and pieces of stories that you’ve heard selectively?

Fully aware that a life with all the books and cafés and leisurely strolls down the beach would be too hedonistic to make happiness last. We need to have a meaningful life with goals and some achievements and contributions. Plus you have to earn a living to stay alive, eat and have shelter.

Radical disconnect is too much for me. The word radical associates it with extreme and harsh actions. This is why I probably struggle with fully accepting the word ‘radical’ in front of words like “listening”, “candor” and “humility’. The word goes well with ultra marathons, climbing mountains and bungee jumping, none of which make my list of things to try. Ever. I congratulate myself for showing up in the gym.

I’ll go with the small steps. A little less screen. A little more reading. A little less worrying. A little more flow. A little less comparison. A little more of accepting myself. A little less seriousness. A little more playfulness. The little may eventually add up to a lot.

A little less “ego” points to me that the visibility that I imagine having is probably much less in reality. Thinking of the saying about the big fish, small fish, ponds and the sea, speaking of the biggest scale we can think of oceans and whales, and in the small scale it might be tadpoles in a puddle. On a radical scale, zooming in from space, I’m not even a speck of dust. But we’re not going radical.

What I have now is my living room sofa, this slow Saturday morning, a cup of tea to drink, this post to finish and a day ahead where I can put my phone away and continue reading the book about leadership. With a few more pages to read I’ll be ready for a book club on Wednesday. An analogue version, person to person, in a cafe.

I don’t want to climb mountains. I don’t have to. You can, if you want to.