Seize the day

This blog post by Susannah Conway has been on my mind for over a week now… It is, I guess, some ‘notes to self’ about the book she is writing. Here’s a tiny snippet:

Sometimes i write a whole page and every sentence is accompanied by the ‘who’s going to want to read this crap?’ song. Sometimes I write something and i know it’s not the whole truth, i know i’m holding back for fear of being judged. Sometimes I have to let that fear go and write what is really in my heart. 

Actually, saying that it has been on my mind is an understatement.. more like, it’s been bothering me! In a good way. Anything that makes you think is pretty good in my book. :-)

You see… I sometimes don’t write posts because of that fear of being judged. Which is silly. I know it’s silly. But fear doesn’t care about silly, does it? I guess that’s the funny thing about this: I fear sounding or looking silly, but fear itself could care less about itself being silly.

Erm. So as I was saying..

Words go unused, as do sentences and expressions and whole blog posts, just because I am afraid to seem stupid or silly or whatever the heck it is.

I guess maybe I can excuse some of the unused words and expressions with English not being my first language. I get confused! I don’t like mis-spelling words. And I don’t like looking silly if I get some expression wrong.. I can’t think of any right now, of course. Typical!

It doesn’t help that some words sound the same, but are spelled very differently, so I can’t even look it up!

One example: Seize the day.. Is it seize, sieze, sees, cease.. could even be sis… You see what I mean? Confusion.

Sure, yes, the same sort of thing happens in Danish and every other language as well. I have no doubt about that. But I’m not writing  in Danish, so that argument doesn’t really help me shut up my inner critic. But I’m going to start giving myself credit, kudos, bonus points, for writing in another language. Most people don’t do that. So there! ;-)

So. I have to put up with my inner critic. That’s bad enough. But I also have to put up with you criticising me and laughing at me. Well, not you, of course. You would never do that. But in my imagination there is a whole host of readers who will just sit there laughing at me. I just can’t catch a break, huh? ;-)

Of course, spelling and getting phrases wrong… I also hesitate when it comes to laying bare my soul, as it were. For fear of being judged. Writing this post goes into that category for me. Like, who’s going to want to read this drivel? Who cares? Who does she think she is? Ugh.

So dumb, right? I don’t like listening to those voices in my head! I want to shut them up. I hope this post will do that. Or help do that, at least. Liberate my thoughts. Set them free… To hell with what others might think! And I mean that in the nicest way possible. You know? :-)

I don’t know if I have actually succeeded in expressing what I set out to do with this post. That’s another worry: will people get it? Does it make sense? Is it good enough? (By extension, am I good enough?)

But I’m not going to worry about that, this is the year of ‘Do It’ after all, and by George, I’m just going to press that ‘publish’ button in a minute and that’s that. No backsies! I’m not even allowed to edit it.

So here goes. Thank you for reading. You don’t know how much it means to me. :-)