I don't know where my way is leading, but I’m going anyway

Over the last few weeks, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to keep my focus on the positive. Every day I catch myself slumped over my laptop, jaw tense, eyelids heavy. Every day it takes a little more effort to get my tasks done, every morning it’s a few minutes longer to get me out of bed. Plans with family and friends are constantly being pushed further into the future. My self-belief that I can ever change anything is dwindling.

Every day feels a little bleaker and more pointless. Capitalism has me firmly in its grip and, no matter how I look at it, I only see defeat.

Something inside me is resisting the life I’m currently leading, and the fact that I carry on just the same is sapping my strength. I’m in this ‘In-Between’ of knowing I’ve lived my old life long enough, but lacking a clear vision of the new one.

The only thing I’m certain about is that I want to get up in the morning with energy. Looking forward to what awaits me, to what I can create, read, learn, write and change. With the freedom to shape my day as I choose, with a walk in nature instead of switching between digital displays, with time to be creative and to bring things to life.

I admire the writers who have managed to build a community alongside their day jobs. I admire their clarity about what they can offer, what they want, and what the next right step is for them. Without wallowing in self-pity, I wish I had that clarity too. Whilst I can clearly see what the common thread is for others, all I see for myself are jumbled puzzle pieces, incoherent, completely scattered, and utterly at a loss as to how to put them together and what image it will show once it’s finished.

Perhaps I’m being too impatient. I’ve promised myself to take up one of my favourite hobbies — writing — which I’ve neglected for years, and to pursue it with dedication. I let myself get carried away too easily by the people around me in the virtual world who’ve already achieved what I might secretly wish for myself, or at least parts of it. My goal so far has not been to succeed on a virtual platform. Simply to hold myself accountable for writing more. The fact that I keep coming back to the expectation of ‘succeeding’ is perhaps a sign that there is something about it that I’d like to achieve. One day. But I know I’m not there yet. I lack clarity about what I want to create. Regularly and long term.

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.

- rumi

That’s what I had thought was my mistake. Not being disciplined enough, not trusting myself and failing to see clearly. I didn’t know what to write about anymore. And I thought the only reason was the lack of clarity. However, I have come to a different conclusion now.

I was slowly, continuously, repeatedly diverging from me.
I was getting lost in all the noise of today’s life, and pieces of information in my brain were fighting for my attention while my brain was constantly looking for solutions to solve today’s problems of the world.

Imagine. Solving today’s world problems. Me. Alone. Of course, that’s not going to work. I’d be looking for a solution for eternity! And that’s what my brain was occupied with. The relentless solution-searching for an unsolvable riddle. How would that ever lead me to clarity?

I did start on here with an intention, with ideas, with fragments of a vision. Enough fragments, that a momentum could be born which brought me here, almost three months in. At the beginning I was writing like a champion (compared to the last few years), inspired and driven. And here I am trying to convince myself, that I don’t have enough clarity to write.

Today I asked myself: What if it’s not the lack of clarity that is covering my way but the fact that I’m not trusting me? That I’m not giving space for any thoughts to emerge?

Preoccupied 24/7 by everything but the goal I set for myself. Even when I tried looking for insights, I was looking in every other person’s garden but my own. Truth is, I was closing up my headspace. Even if there had been thoughts that would have cleared up the fog, they were standing in front of closed doors, never making it out of the subconsciousness.

So instead of optimizing my process, I started to let it flow. I opened the big heavy doors and waited.

And I didn’t have to wait for long. Thoughts started forming, feelings and insights followed quietly and as I was writing them down in my journal, I felt a sigh of relief. Something in my chest was softening and getting lighter. All I had needed to do, was listen.

Clarity doesn’t come before action. It comes from action.

- rumi

And then naturally I started writing it all down. Because I gave myself the permission to write just for myself. No thoughts of publishing in the back of my head or questions about whether it was good enough. It didn’t want to be surpressed, judged or assessed, it just wanted to exist.

Every action I take, each time I go inward and listen, I’m seeing more of a path I’m willing to walk. A path that I build for myself, one I can follow, where I can feel safe. Step by step.

I don’t know where my way is leading me, that’s why I’m going anyway.