Back in the seat
After a long hiatus I have decided to start up my blog again. It’s been a while… In 2016 I blogged, 5 days a week for a full year. It was a great writing practice and it taught me that:
1. I love to write
2. I have a lot of things I want to talk about (meaning I’m opinionated, for good and for bad…)
3. It was welcomed by the few readers who found me
But it got too much…to on a daily basis pressure myself to be witty, clever, and kind with my words.
I’m a little older now, and much wiser. Crossing over into your fifties will do that to you, and statements 1 and 2 are still true, but now I’m backing it by diggin’ a little deeper. I’m going to Uni and I love it!
Before dancing hijacked my heart I was meant to become an author. Astrid Lindgren was my childhood role model and Pippi Långstrump the character on whom I have modeled my life. I read and wrote continuously throughout childhood, words were like music in my mind, and the stories they wove, my most cherished songs. But then it was the issue of that ADHD like restlessness that possessed my body, together with an almost obsessive need to move whenever there was music playing, and that made the choice for me. And that choice, brought me the world.
Now I am midlife backtracking, I have moved back to Sweden to facilitate for my daughters love for music.
It’s not easy, I remember why I left.
But this regressive experience is profound. I had the privileige of being present for the death of a parent and am on location to be of full service to the fragile one that is left. I get to reconnect with old friends, family and a country that I despite my reluctance to live here, feels a bit like it’s my mother.
Although the generous socialist society that once welcomed me as a tiny infant, has changed a lot.
But so have I. And we’re building a bond again, me and Moder Svea. We’re reconnecting through talk radio, bus rides and the countless hours of administrative duties that living here entails…
The thing I am doing exclusively for me, and which instead of looking backwards has a clear and intentional arrow towards the future, is studying the craft of Creative Writing, the going back to school thing…, and boy is it different this time around. To enter into the world of academia through studying a subject that I really want to learn, with the maturity to understand the value of the process instead of just the grade…makes a world of difference. I’m reconnecting with my childhood crush in a big way and am finding it a pleasure to relate to my creativity through words. And now, with less need to continuously bounce around - and many many hours on the mat and cushion - to spend a few hours in my writing seat with only the fingers doing the dancing, is actually satisfying.
So,
I’m going to blog again.
Take Two, of exercising my voice through the written word. It’s for sure not going to be daily, more possibly weekly. But the rate with which my thoughts and their accompanying words take shape on the page, at this point, it doesn’t feel like a pressure, but a relief.
In this section you can also read my short stories. Most of them, at least in the beginning, will be Uni assignments that I am ok with presenting. It feels like a good practice to make those public, I am writing a longer, and to me, more significant piece, also for hopefully, broad public consumption, so to dip my toes with these little snippets, is a good, slightly less frightening start.
My hiatus from the author dream, more than 30 years by now, has been lived in constant motion; Dancing, traveling, meeting weirdos and doing weird things, and it has has given me a wealth of experience. The world, as I like to call it… and as a return for all the amazing I have lived, I will now attempt to bring the world back to the page, close the circle here in the land of Astrid, and I hope you, whether you feel we are similar or not, will see some of yourself in what I write.
Words were my friends when I had none, I wrote in my introduction to Uni, and I sincerely hope my words can become yours.