This year I haven’t celebrated Euforilla’s birthday.
This blog has been running, more or less consistently, for five years. For five years I’ve been posting and translating.
I’ll confess: translating is the most boring part, from any language (well yes, it happened that I wrote in english first and then translated to italian), sometimes it feels like a useless rewriting.
But I keep doing it, because I like it

I look back, re-read old post, get chills of horror down my spine for how badly some were written. But that’s allright.

I think this is the point. Doing something because you enjoy it, even though it might not be perfect. Wouldn’t be a “hobby” otherwise.

Yeah, sure, my topics have changed a lot, I’m writing more about books, cooking, diy, creative writing, everyday stuff. Or at least this is my goal (they say it’s better to declare a goal in public, so peer pressure will keep you up with it :P).
They say a successful blog needs a key topic and a target audience… But what if I do not want a successful blog? I mean, I write because I like it to be read, and when views peak I’m happy. But I do not want to put boundaries for myself, on something I am doing for my enjoyment.
People would get confused in a log that deals with recipes, philosophy and personal cat posts! Would they? Too bad, see ya.
I know it works like that, I’m the first to look for info online and, when landing on a random blog, just skips everything with a helpful ctrl+F to what I was looking for.
But some other times I read a blogpost, an article, and I stay for the personality shining through.

There, that’s it, personality.

I opened a blog, back then, because I felt like the web needed a self help blog in italian, one just like the english ones I was reading. And they have been useful to me, I don’t deny it (it feels like I’ve already said these words here…).
But now, if I happen to find one, I just smile. I’m not smirking because, again, finding people who’s dealing with what you’re dealing with it’s always useful (big or small of an issue, mine was pretty small, now that I think about it, nothing but a classic “Who am I? What do I really want?”).
But nowadays they all feel the same to me. Neutral, cheery tone, generic you, same old same old.

Now, I’m not saying I’m done with self help because I have found the answer to the fundamental question of life (Which, by the way, is 42).
But I’ve accepted the fact (or I’m trying to) that things change, they keep changing, that holding onto ideas or expectations about yourself or anything, is useless.
That all sayings of “positive thinking” and “law of attraction” are but that: sayings. They may have some truth to them: if I expect to always suck at, I don’t know, running, no matter how much I’ll train and get objectively better, I’ll keep on noticing only the bad parts of it, thus reassuring my belief that I will always suck at running.
That’s the point: objectivity.

But in the end, “the secret” (and not a secret at all) is that it’s important, indeed, to think positive, to have a positive self confidence… but there is no “life guru”, “life coach”, “personal trainer”, “personal shopper”, “personal coach”, god on earth or whatever, that can help us.

It is all upon ourselves. Nike is right: JUST DO IT. Just get down and do your thing.

Get working, get going. Keeping busy has a double benefit: you’ll have less time to whine about yourselves (god I know about this) and at the end of the day you can look back and think of all the things you’ve done. At the end of the month you’ll be counting your results. At the end of the year you’ll have quite a portfolio of “done things”.

I’ll leave you with a comic that I found by chance this winter, a comic that put down in words, drawings and colours what I was already feeling: on Zenpencils, by Shonda Rimes

Now, please excuse me, I have things to DO 😉

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