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Censoring Myself While I Write

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Censoring Myself While I Write

Photo Attributed to Thenix

I am working on a second book at the moment, writing about yoga and other tenets of it, minor things that I have learned about in the past few years of my yogic journey. It is not a bestseller in my mind, because I am way too critical of anything and everything I do. Even if it helps a few more people to initiate yoga, I believe that the book will have served its purpose. But the reason I write this post today is to talk about the voice in our heads that censors us while we do anything creative.

It might be writing, painting, or playing music. Anything to do with the creative genius that is inside all of us, and this mini-critic comes piping up. You have heard the speech as much as I have, I’m sure. Things like, ‘You will never be a great writer’, ‘Everything you write is crap’, ‘Why do you even bother with this’, ‘You should give up right now, before you waste too much of your time’. I have included the less graphic ones in order to not disturb the audience, but you know what I’m talking about. You can substitute writing with anything else that you might be doing in your life, that requires you to put a little bit of yourself out there in front of an audience.

Even if the audience just includes your family or friends, there is always the fear of judgement and the inner critic comes censoring. I find that I usually write my best pieces after I wake up and meditate. After a good meditation, my mind has been given a good scrub. It is clear of doubts and anxiety at least for a few hours. I can sit down and write a good, first draft without any censorship or back-tracking. I have learnt that after a whole day of telling myself off in my head, my writing is at its worst. I second-guess every word I write, and I second-guess the reason I write.

I sometimes let the voice convince met that there are others out there who are sharing the messages of yoga, spirituality, meditation, minimalism and travel much better than I am. I should get away from blogging altogether. At that point, the loving, kind words of my readers, the likes and comments, come into play. I see that people like what I write and they are sincerely using it to better their thoughts and lives. That prods me to share more and go deeper to come with better blog posts. Thanking my readers, I quell my inner critic and continue writing.

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Being Creative

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

I feel like I am not being creative enough in the new year. I am going through the motions, but in the past few days I haven’t really done anything creative. I blog which is creative enough, but for some reason I feel like it isn’t enough. I need more. The problem is that I have to be cognizant that there are a limited number of hours in the day and I need to take care of myself and my health in addition to piling stuff on in the day. Working a full day and then coming home, doing some yoga, cooking, eating and spending time with Thenix leaves very little time in the day.

Especially if you ‘waste’ that time playing games on the iPad. I put waste in quotation marks, because the joy that I get from playing the game, spending time with Thenix while I play it, should be worth the time put into it. Not everything I do in life has to be productive, and resulting in something. Some things you do just for the hell of it, because they are fun and because you can.

The year has just begun so I am not going to start it off with negative thoughts. I do know that the year began with a really honest conversation between Thenix and I, and therefore, the theme of this year should be honesty. Something I have an issue with. As in, I am not very good at it. A horrible thing for sure, I agree, but in my poor defence, I have good intentions. I always have good intentions, but sometimes they go astray, people don’t actually see it as I do.

Let’s start off with the good intention of being creative, writing more, reading more, creating more. Let’s see where positivity gets us.

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The days I don’t Blog

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Photo attributed to flickr user mikebaird

Why do I blog? This question has come up again and again in my head. The minute I start thinking that I am doing this bloggin’ thang for my readers, I start feeling the pressure to get more readers, more likes, more subscriptions, more of everything.

That is why I have decided and I have to keep on realizing this again and again, that I am doing this for myself. Myself and myself alone. The readers are lovely and welcome, but the real reason I keep on going, the real reason, I keep on writing, the real reason, I haven’t missed a day of writing in 3 months, is because I need it, like I need water. I feel incomplete without it.

It is not the same feeling as when I miss yoga or meditation, or if I miss food or water. It’s definitely not the same feeling as when I miss Thenix or my siblings, my parents or my friends.

But it is the kind of thing, that festers deep in your subconscious, and after a while, you start noticing the void, as the void starts getting bigger and bigger. And then a day comes, where you cannot avoid it anymore. You have to write, just so you can get that outpouring of words and emotions out of paper, before it threatens to overwhelm and drown you. A lot of blog readers are themselves writers. And I feel that they would appreciate the words above, because they themselves probably have felt the utmost pressure to write, write anything, when they haven’t written a word in a few days.

During this ‘need to write’ time, I usually end up writing at least a 1000-2000 words without very much effort. It is as if the words are just sitting inside of me, waiting to come out, and like a pressure cooker, they just need the release, to be poured out on any surface, a piece of paper, or a computer screen.

Sometimes I wonder if it is just the universe writing out through me, I’m just an instrument, but then, I tell myself to start being practical and think like the others do. But that thought never really disappears.

What does freedom mean to me?

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Photo attributed to flickr user cuellar

If someone spoke to me today and asked me where I see my life going in the next 5-10 years, I definitely do not list a promotion or leading a  team of 10-15 people as one of the major tenets.

I see a few things in my dreams. The freedom to do what I want with my time and energy. The idea of doing things because they are fun, not because I HAVE to do them. Removing all the unnecessary items from my life. Having only the stuff I absolutely need. Minimalism is key. Spending time with family and friends. Being content in the moment. Including lots of yoga, reading and writing in my life.

The question I ask myself quite often is why can I not start this life right now? What am I waiting for? What are these freedoms waiting for? Why cannot I begin today?

I have a lot of excuses in my head. My blog isn’t making money for me. My yoga teaching isn’t making enough money for me yet. I still have student loan debt. I still have a mortgage (which doesn’t count as it is rented out). The excuses go on, but the truth of the matter is, I am afraid. Fear is holding me back.

I do not know what awaits me on the other side of unemployment, of quitting the 9-5 rat race. What would I do with my time? What would I do with the removal of a steady income? What would I tell my parents? My friends? I wouldn’t be able to go out as often with them. I wouldn’t be able to own a car, as that is freaking expensive.

How will I live? The truth of the matter is, that I have no idea how I will pay for minimal expenses if I do not have a job. I do not have a way of supporting myself without a job yet. And, I haven’t looked into it very much, because I haven’t really needed to yet.

The big reason I want to go on this trip is because Thenix and I are going to look into becoming self-sufficient and digital nomads. Working on our own time and energy, doing what we like with our time and energy, making enough money to pay for travel and life.

Maybe my thoughts seem a little scrambled, that is because in reality, I haven’t figured myself out yet.

My Ideal Life

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Photo attributed to flickr user Zanthia

I have thought about this topic for a while now, ever since, I left Thailand after the Full Moon party over last New Years. I looked around at all the people, who had retired on the beautiful island of Koh-Phangan, or in Thailand in general. Or all of those people who had quit their jobs, or semi-retired from a profitable venture, strapped on a really expensive backpack and are now strutting around the Earth, collecting stamps on their passports. Or whatever the story might be of the loads of people I met on that island and during the quiet hours of the Full Moon madness.

I have been trying to imagine what my ideal life would look like. Would I work from home? Would I be a Professional Travel Blogger, travelling and writing, and making money at the same time to support a life-time of travel with T? Would I be a Professional Yogi, doing yoga at retreats all around the world, getting paid for helping people, and travelling at the same time, my two loves? Would I travel for six months of the year, and work at home for the other 6 months as a yoga teacher and server, saving up as much as I can from my work, fulfilling my nomadic nature?

The main themes in my dream life are travel, yoga, lots of amazing authentic international foods, and writing. These are the four things I need to have in my ideal life – in varying quantities. The big question now is – how to create a life from these four ingredients? What should the quantities be and how should they mixed together?

Some things I definitely do not want in my ideal life are a 9-5 job, restrictions to my time and freedom in anyway, restrictions to the place I live in, restrictions in finances due to debt or inability to earn, restrictions in my physical body in any shape or form.

I want to continue learning, and growing on this spiritual journey that I have chosen to be my path, with lots of travel, yoga, food and writing. How do I create from this? I am going to let this percolate a bit more in my head and then go from them. Let me know if you see anything striking that I have missed.

What do you think is missing?

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Photo attributed to flickr user LaPrimaDonna

Sometimes I talk to my friends about life and if we are going in the general direction of where we wish to go.  Why does that matter? Why do I ask myself that question every day?

Because I have this incessant need to make sure I don’t waste my time on Earth. I have been given this very precious gift, Life. It is in one of easiest countries in the world to live in, Canada. I am born into a reasonably well-off family who take care of me, who love me, who care about me. I am surrounded by amazing friends, people, and situations. I can travel. I have opportunity. I have freedom. I am lucky. Luckier than 90% of the world’s population. I feel like I have an obligation to this planet, to this life, to the world, to give back and to live a worthy life.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to find the cure to cancer or remove world hunger. It doesn’t mean anything big. It just means that I have to be the best that I can be.

What does that mean? That is the question isn’t it. I mean, doesn’t it feel like there’s something missing from that statement. How do I know what is my best? There’s always improvements to be made. Today’s best could be tomorrow’s worst.

It is like the quote says, “ Today is the oldest you’ve been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.”

I know I am my best when I do a few things that I am doing everyday now, meditating, yoga, spending time with family and friends, saving up money to travel, travelling, and writing.

Is this all, I wonder? I mean, this is all I have to do? What is missing? How do I figure it out? Maybe nothing’s missing…. Maybe this is all I need to do to be the best I can be in this moment here. It might change in a year, but right now, I am good?

What do you think of being the best you are?

Priming the writing pump

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Photo attributed to flickr user Rietje Swart

I find that I love to write. Even if no one on this planet appreciates the writing that I do, and for the longest time, when I journaled three or four pages a day in my youth, no one really did, I still loved to write. I like the idea of leaving behind your thoughts, for the next generations to read. Because I love to read, and I love to see how life was like in the past, by reading books from the past, I know the future generations will appreciate the same.

At least I hope they do.

I have noticed two things about writing that I wanted to share with you, which might help you if you write or are aspiring to write. Firstly, Writing begets more writing. It doesn’t necessarily beget good writing or exceptional writing. But the more you write, the more you want to write. I find that when I start writing one blog post, I usually write two or three in a row that day, because I am just used to the idea of writing, or maybe the ideas keep on flowing from inside of me, once I release the stop-cock.

I find also, that when I do not censor myself, when I write basically without much ‘thinking’, much ‘left-side brain thinking’, I am able to write better. I write poetically almost. When I think too much about writing, the writing comes out stinted and blocked. It isn’t beautiful and lovely, but hard, and solid.

Secondly, I love reading other people’s writing, because I find that unconsciously, I take in their writing style, and that day, if I write, I incorporate that into my own writing. It’s really subtle, but it is noticeable if I am looking for it myself. It isn’t plagiarism or anything blatant like that. It is just the subtle nature of it. For example, if a person writes poetically, I start writing poetically, if a person writes in a story-manner, I start doing the same, at least for a day or two, until it fades away. Until I read another person’s writing and that gets incorporated into mine.

Let me know what writing tips you have.

Professional food taster, perhaps?

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They say that you should look at the people’s lives you envy to figure out what would your ideal life be. I have always envied the lives of Professional Travel Bloggers and Professional Yogis (a contradiction in itself).

I envy people who can travel around the world and get paid for it. I also envy those people who go around the world eating different foods and getting paid for it as well. I envy people who get to go around the world and teach yoga and get paid for it.

I am just building a draft of my ideal life – I’m sure the draft will evolve as time goes on.

Some things that have been coagulating in my head are as follows –

I want to have lots of travel, yoga, and food in my ideal life.

I want to meditate every day for an hour or two.

I want to do yoga for two to three hours.

I want to dance in different places around the world.

I want to have no set hours when I have to get up and go to work.

I want to get paid for writing out my thoughts in a blog. I earn enough money from my blog to sustain my lifestyle of travel.

I want to have lots of reading in my life, reading amazing books from all around the world.

I want to spend time on self-improvement, learning new languages and skills, and exploring the inner crevices of my mind.

That’s just what is in my head right now. Let me know what you think below.

I feel like writing

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I feel like writing something. You know how you sometimes get those urges. They come upon you suddenly and you cannot resist. So yesterday was a bad day for me. I felt really down for some reason. Maybe it was hormones, maybe it was just despair, but suddenly, after doing a lot of good, figuring out I would be able to leave in an year, it seemed too much. An year seemed too much! That is so stupid, because for the longest time I thought I wouldn’t be able to leave for two years, so this is a pretty good upgrade. I felt pressure, unmounted pressure from my parents, who, poor things, aren’t even putting any pressure on me. I invented random pressure from my parents in my head and mounted it upon myself. Brilliant imagination that I have, works out well in that way.

Why do I imagine that I’m being persecuted when I am really not being at all? I was invited to go to a birthday party, but I was in that slump mood, where I didn’t want to read my books or write, I just wanted to be brain dead in front of random TV shows. So stupid! I felt at six pm that enough is enough. I have watched TV for the past six hours, I’m sure I have lost a significant portion of my brain, let us do something. Let us get moving. I changed, and left for the real world outside. Instantly, the minute I breathed in the fresh air, I felt refreshed, calm, happier. And then my friend called from San Franciso, a real treat. It was great to hear her voice, and I outlined all my crazy thoughts to her and we chatted for an hour, while I walked to the bus stop and while I was in the bus to the subway station. Amazing hour, I felt rejuvenated by it all.

I got to the girl’s house, she’s planning to leave to Australia in a few weeks, and I felt really jealous of course that she was leaving, the lonely planet guide books, the backpack sprawling filled with random girl things, the decisions on which shoes to take and which dresses to leave, the anticipation of the trip, the fear and resulting nausea that you are actually leaving your job to go for a year abroad with no guarantees of anything when you come back, all of the above made me miss it even more. But it increased my resolve that as soon as I am done paying off my loan, and not a minute sooner, I am leaving for a year. There is no question about it in my head, nothing will stop me, I am going. But this time around, I shall not put the burden on my parents and leave. I will make sure the condo is rented out and my loans paid off, before anything. I want to make sure there is nothing holding me back, that if I want to stay another year, I would be able to, without worrying about what’s happening back home.

Technology and loneliness part 2

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As a blogger, whenever you write something, you hope that it will be received well. I usually write random topics ranging from what happened during the day to world events. All my blogs are based on my powers of observation. I love people watching and my job as a server allows me to do that on a daily basis, which is a total bonus. I am sometimes surprised by what topic suddenly takes hold and the public seems to like. It is usually the blog that I wasn’t really interested in, I just wrote it because I thought it was something to write about, that a lot of times garners a lot of interest.

I find that technology and loneliness, despair in the old age, surviving the end of the world, are common topics that people search for and come by to my blog. Looking at topics, either I am writing a really dire, unhappy blog, or a lot of people out there are really dire and unhappy. Whatever it is, I have also found that people search a lot for happiness online. I can understand lonely people searching online for companionship, to relieve themselves of their loneliness, the only way people really know now, after being shielded by technology all their lives. But I cannot understand people searching for happiness online. How can you find happiness online? That is something incomprehensible to me. I find distraction online very easily, through the various blogs that make fun of awkward family photos or fail blogs.

I wonder about the future generations. My generation, who are in their twenties now, has had the internet in their life only for about ten years, so half their lives. Maybe that has caused the internet not to be such an influence on their life as much as the next generation. The generation born in 2000 or later, who has been the internet generation. They were born into the privilege and with it comes great responsibility. They have no other way of communicating with others. They do not know what letter-writing and mail is all about. It would be really interesting to see how these people delineate loneliness and technology, or despair in old age. Will they be searching for such terms? Maybe they are so used to the notion of being separated by technology that they will not even think of it as anything different?

Technology isn’t all bad, of course. It was able to prevent the loss of thousands of lives in Japan, by forewarning the people about the earthquake to come. When you consider the devastation that could’ve happened, a thousand lives lost is pretty discerning.

 

On writing

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This is basically a journaling/asking for forgiveness post. I find that once I start writing, whatever it is, I cannot stop writing. I really have a hard time stopping. I will keep on writing, until either I have to go somewhere, or my fingers are cramped from being held in the same position on the computer keyboard for hours. That is when I stop due to technical difficulties. It is the only way. But I find that once I do not write for one or two days, that magic in my head or fingers is gone. And I find it extremely hard to get back to writing. I will procrastinate like a crazy person. I will find any excuse not to write. I will start blaming myself for being a horrible creative person, who is not even very right-brained. I really truly am left-brained, which is why I wonder how I love doing all of these creative right-brained activities. I am great at maths, I love calculations and organization, and I love investing and learning about money, all very left-brained activities. Maybe I am lucky that I can balance the two. Anyway, as I was saying, I get removed from writing, I really get removed. I stop writing, for days, weeks. And then suddenly, one day, the urge to write gets too strong, after all I can only make lists for a week or two, before wanting to really write a story or journal, or blog, in the new age. And then I start writing, I write one post, and then another, and another. The words keep pouring out, like milk. It is amazing. I love it. I feel on top of the world, like I am capable of doing anything. I can do anything, I can write anything.

I am in that mode right now. I cannot stop writing. I am planning my next post as I write this one. It is as if there is a backlog of writing in my head, that I have to get out, and I cannot stop until and unless I get it all out. It is all just waiting to be written.

There are two blog posts that I was lucky to discover, one was recommended by a reader of my blog, and the other was recommended by the blog post writer. They are Currie Rose and Hyena in Petticoats. Check them out! I really love their writing, their freshness, their honesty, their efforts at living an alternative lifestyle, their spirituality. It makes me feel alive, just being around that kind of energy. It also makes me realize that there are hundreds of people like us who are trying to make a difference, who are trying to follow a different energy and lifestyle, who do not want to be sheep and follow the herd. It is difficult, extremely difficult, but reading someone else’s struggles makes me realize that I dont have it that bad. I actually am living a life of luxury while transitioning due to the generosity of my parents, letting me live with them for free.

Thank you to all for reading my blog and Thank you to the universe for letting me share my thoughts. Light to everyone.