For quite some time now, I have been feeling uneasy and overwhelmed. It has kind of built up over a few weeks (maybe months) with little niggles and annoyances. Things have been slowly but surely getting on top of me. My mind has felt full and jumbled. I have been unable to think clearly and to remain present in everyday life. I have been racing ahead thinking about what needs to be done, diligently crossing things off and moving forward. All the while, standing completely still in my mind.
Finally I have realised what the problem is…………… or at least part of it.
I have stopped writing.
You see, I felt that the whole essence of my blog was supposed to be about travelling and I wasn’t able to travel. So what would I have to say? My secondary blog entitled ‘Covid Parenting’ seemed equally useless. I mean in reality I have no idea how hard it has been for many parents around the world navigating the challenges of lockdowns, I only had to do it for five weeks!! Again, what did I know, what could I say?
Yet through all this time of writing silence, people have been reading my blogs (The Travel Bee and the old ones from Stressaholics days). I had a hit today on a blog post I wrote almost 3 years ago. I was writing about happiness and satisfaction (Happiness and satisfaction – The Travel Bee). Now three things occurred to me when I saw this:
- I have been blogging for more than 3 years!!
- Random people actually read my blog (admittedly only a few!).
- I actually had a point back then and maybe it would serve me well to go back and reread my own writing! I wrote about finding sparks in everyday life. In reference to my blog I wrote; ‘What matters is that I am doing it, fuelling my spark, and that every time I do, it gives me a little more energy and makes me feel a little more alive.‘
How have I allowed myself to lose that spark?
I alluded in my blog post at the end of 2020 that changing the name of my blog from ‘Stressaholics Anonymous” to ‘The Travel Bee’ may have been a mistake. I had no idea what the world had install for us back then. I wanted to get away from calling myself a Stressaholic because I firmly believed I had moved past that and I still believe I have. However, ‘The Travel Bee’ name has rather restricted me.
Or perhaps I have been looking at this all wrong. I mean what is life, if it is not a journey? What is a journey if it is not travelling? We are all travelling every day. This realisation means I can actually write about anything!
I listened to a wonderful podcast the other day called Happy Place. Fern Cotton was interviewing Robbie Williams. We all know Robbie and his music. We all know he has been through some troubled times but what I took away from this particular interview, is that we are all human and humans have a fundamental flaw. We are never satisfied.
We keep thinking if I just get past this or I just achieve this, then everything will be alright. Of course this is not true because all that happens is we find something else we want! We are in a permanent state of dissatisfaction. To top it off, we forget things! We must constantly remind ourselves of the things that matter, what makes us tick and that we will make mistakes BECAUSE WE ARE HUMAN!
It also reminded me that whether we are famous, in high power jobs or the average person going about our day, we face many of the same challenges day in and day out. We have to find the things that are unique to us and feed them in order to make us feel alive and with direction. We also have to realise that happiness is not a constant, it is not something we can achieve and expect it to stay that way forever, we have to work constantly just to feel okay.
For me, writing is an important part of that process and not one I should sideline just because it doesn’t fit nicely in a box or blog title. It is a spark I should fuel, not for anyone else but for me. It doesn’t matter what other people think of it or whether anyone reads it. It matters only what it does for me.
TTB
The Travel Bee 