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Tag: advice

Writing helps me to be sane…

This is a continuation from my last post (Once I forgot the typewriter, I forgot how to live) and final part (I promise):

From those writing experiences and my relationship with my typewriter in my child years. I sadly left the writing world, and forgot about my dreams. Many years later, I started to pay attention to other things in life, and stopped writing until I was probably out of college, or even after I had finished some postgraduate studies.

I studied a career that was never meant for me, so when I read about a short-story local contest in the newspaper, I heard a voice calling me again… I didn´t win anything, but being more mature this time, I acknowledged that writing was truly a passion for me.

For many years, I had several jobs in a career that I never liked, and a life situation where I was always unhappy. Finally, I decided that I had to find what I really wanted to do in my life and shout it to the world, and I did.

Now, I´m a writer, even if I don´t write that well yet, or even when I have so much to learn, I consider myself a writer, because writing helps me to be sane, it helps me communicate with the world, and it helps me discover a life where I feel everything is possible.

Image source: archolatheatre.com

I have started writing this year, and I chose to do it in English (because all the books I read are in English and writers tend to write according to what they read) and I feel absolute and totally happy and satisfied with my life, because for the first time I´m acknowledging who I am, what I want to do for the rest of my life, and I´m totally confident that I´m working hard on it.

September 25, 2014
Once I forgot the typewriter I forgot how to live…

(This is a continuation of the previous post: How to make your kid an avid reader/writer)

I still remember when I was little, no computer yet in my house (I got my first computer when I started University) but we used to have a typewriter (well, we still do, it´s there forgotten somewhere in a dark place of my house). I had read in the newspaper about a writing contest, sponsored by the government in my city, and I thought it was a hell of opportunity for me. I was no more than eight years old, and decided to enter this contest for ‘novel writers’. I´m convinced that it was just for adults but I didn´t pay attention to it. I just wrote with my typewriter a wonderful story (that shamefully I never kept a copy) of a fantasy world. Since typewriters didn´t allow you to make mistakes, my presentation was extremely awful. Being a kid, I wasn´t conscious yet about having to redo a whole page whenever I had a mistake on the typewriter, I would just use an eraser and type over the mistake.

Image source: site.xavier.edu

When I was done, I begged my Aunt Nancy, who used to live near the post office, to put the papers in an envelope and submit it to the P.O. box of the contest. Of course, I never won or anything and the writing must had been really embarrassing, but I was just eight years old! Nevertheless, having such a wonderful imagination (that I still have fortunately), the story in itself must had been a lot of fun.

At that age, I felt there was no limit for me and no barriers to achieve whatever I wanted. What a shame, I was never encouraged to follow these dreams. I wrote short stories for my mom and some members of my family before I was 10. I have a couple of them stored in a box, and of course the writing is terrible but the stories, the creativity, the characters were great. But what I remember the most is that I always felt fulfilled whenever I wrote those stories.That sense of fulfilment shouldn´t be forgotten, we should live our lives with the intention of feeling always like that.

However, I did forget it… and it was shameful because it led me to years and years of an unsatisfied and unhappy life….

P.S. will continue…

September 23, 2014
How to make your kid an avid reader/writer

I never post advice for parents, but I thought this title was actually the objective of this post.

“This is your vacation homework.” my mom would say. When I was a kid, my mother used to prepare vacation homework for me. I was the only kid in the family and didn´t have many friends, so on school vacation, I actually got bored watching TV. Since I was an obedient kid, I would think of my mom´s “vacation homework” as something I had comply with or I would be facing some severe scolding. Most of this homework was reading, and that is the best gift that my mom ever gave me.

Image source: www.elizabethstreet.com

I was born, grew up, and still live in Bolivia, a country where if you say you´re a writer, people would look at you with disbelief and even pity. Writers don´t make any decent earnings here, and of course it´s never a good career choice. So as a normal young girl, with very good grades, I went for what I thought was an excellent career choice for me and for everybody else in my family: “Industrial Engineering”. Just the name sounded good, hard, complicated, and something that everybody else could be proud of, with lots of job´s opportunities, good salaries, and all the things that people advised you when you graduate from high school.

I´ve never received the advice “do you what you love to do, what you´re passionate about” and I wish I had.

story will continue…

P.S. I came up to the conclusion, that in our current lives where we get tons of emails, blog posts, and so on… the shorter the better, so I decided to write short posts from now on…but I will try to make them to sound as complete as possible on their own…

September 22, 2014
10 things you should know about loners
1. We don´t care what people say
2. We are tired of listening to people saying: “you should meet/date somebody …”
3. We are masters of our own destiny since we are alone we don’t need to consult/ask for anybody’s opinion.
4. We have plenty energy to do whatever dream/goal that comes to our mind without having to ask the other…
5. Maybe it is our purpose in life, maybe we are other type of generation with other ideals…
6. It is better to be on our own than have bad company
7. We don’t understand conflicts between couples, so much drama for our kind… better avoid the trouble
8. Being loners doesn’t mean we don’t have friends, they are everywhere and sometimes we perceive some healthy envy from them….
9. We have extra time to do everything that we want…
10. We are happy the way we are….
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May 26, 2013