Here it is! My first ever blog post. I’m writing this past my bedtime and probably should be getting off a screen before bed, but hey ho, it’s the weekend. I started this blog after following the advice of Youtuber Ali Abdaal on ‘showing your work’. I don’t really have that much work to show, nor feel the need to niche this blog too much (although on books is a start!). I just want to focus on the enjoyment of writing and learning my way around wordpress. WordPress has been a lot more difficult to get around than I first thought, mostly because I thought there would be more flexibility with the themes. Ah well, I can survive with the aesthetics.
I realised after I read books that I really wanted to talk to someone about them. Whether they liked it or not, or whether I did or not didn’t really matter. I love bookclub discussions because I feel like I get a lot more out of the book and the experience from hearing other people’s interpretations and points of view. It also means that I can get recommendations on similar books, or ask for explanations on parts that I didn’t quite understand what they meant (non-fiction) or why it happened (fiction). There’s nothing like getting completely absorbed in a novel or non-fiction book and wanting to tell the world about it, and that’s basically what I wanted to do with all my books. It would also make me pay more attention and see what I can get out of every book I read (if I manage to finish it, and if not, it is interesting to analyse why not). I want to become a better and more efficient reader. My reading habits have changed dramatically over time and I hope to evolve them further, maybe more thanks to this blog!
I consume a lot of podcast episodes as well, since I live alone and like to always have something on in the background whether an audiobook (if I’m really into one), a podcast or music, especially whilst doing boring chores to take my mind off the tasks. I think I do this a little too much, to the point where I can’t go anywhere without having my brain stimulated by something…that’s for another post. The podcasts I listen to are mostly around health & wellbeing, or mostly interview based with guests that have ran their own business and have a lot to teach. A few are: Feel Better Live More, The High Performance Podcast and a Diary of a CEO. They get me thinking a lot about work and my career. I don’t really have a set career path, which is simultaneously exciting and terrifying. This is also something I will blog about, and would love to have other people’s comments on this.
I have a lot of hobbies, but my favourite has to be connecting with new people. As said in my mini bio, everyone has something to offer. We all lead such different lives, and we only show such a small amount to everyone else. Everyone else does not know our constant internal monologue, whether you really struggled to get out of bed this morning or whether you’re having the best day of your life. I’m hoping this blog will create more serendipitous connections from whoever reads this. I encourage anyone to contact me via the email [email protected] or follow me on my socials if you’d every like to discuss anything I write or just have a general chat.
I’m going to admit, I’ve procrastinated on this blog for a very long time. I set up the wordpress site whilst I had covid in April 2022. It is now…end of September 2022, and I’ve barely written a post. This summer was a busy one (more on which I’ll write about later), so I now want to sit down and dedicate the time to this. Again, I don’t know where this will go, or whether it will go anywhere at all, I just want to enjoy the process of writing and getting my thoughts down somewhere and hopefully spark some conversations on this. Some reflections on why I was procrastinating
- I don’t have the time to write a post
- What will my friends/family/strangers that I shouldn’t care about the opinion of think
- What if this goes nowhere and is a complete waste of time
- What if my boss finds this and thinks I’m weird and fires me
- What if I get cyber bullied
- I can’t be bothered
- I don’t want to sit looking at a screen anymore than I normally do
These are all, let’s face it, excuses. I do have time, I just chose not to prioritise this. I don’t need to look at a screen all the time if I manage my screentime well (such as…not now at 10:36pm). It’s always been at the back of my mind for months on end, but I just need to start that momentum. When I start on a new knitting or crochet project (again, more on this later), I need to get started on the pattern to really want to go back to it. That initial activation energy is always the hardest part. As for caring what other people think, I don’t see what good that’s ever going to do to me. I won’t put every secretive part of my life online, as I enjoy my privacy, but we also live in an age where everyone is open to sharing ideas and becoming YouTubers doing whatever they want for the fun of it. I want to have that confidence of not caring what others think that read this, and most importantly, hope they take something valuable away such as a thought nugget that they can mull over. Anyway, enough rambling for this post, first one down!
