Personal essay
From time to time a book written by me comes up in my head or in conversations with others. Sometimes I want to write a book. Sometimes someone says you could write a book! Sometimes I say – of course I will, when I am 60. Sometimes I definitely know I won't.
Essentially there are three absolutely opposite views on writing a book inside me. One is that every person has something in their life worth sharing. The second one is that you can always write just anything and it doesn't matter much if it's really interesting or readable or important; you don't have to aim very high, you don't have to aim to be a prize winner. You can write on the level of a cheap Mexican soap opera. And be fine with it. And someone might even read it. And someone might actually even like it. And third one is – yes, I might have something worth sharing, but since everyone does, why do I decide that my thing is worth sharing and theirs isn't, or how worthwhile it really is to share it? I don't want to write a Mexican soap opera, so I'd rather not write at all.
So, um, this is something that's like, I guess, stopping me also, especially since there are so many ways to share information at the moment that I can always say, like, if I just want to say something, I can say it on YouTube, I can say it on Instagram, I can write a blog, I can have a website, whatever, but to actually put it on paper and publish it and make a book out of it, it has to be something really significant.
I saw a meme once that said: An expert is anybody who knows something about something and speaks about it. And unfortunately like in every joke there is a grain of truth there. I have always been bored at trainings and professional events, and I never really realized why. Till one day I went to Washington and took part in a training, which for me was absolutely magnificent. You could see that essentially every word that came out of that trainer’s mouth was worth saying. It meant something, it had some weight. I feel like it's one of the first times I've heard real experts talking about a real thing that they really know, saying just enough not to just pour water from one glass to the other, but at the same time joking and keeping us engaged. So I guess I wouldn’t want to be the first and (in my opinion) most common type of speaker (writer). I would much rather be the second. And this level is hard to reach, and it's hard to identify when you have reached that point that you kind of “deserve” to share. Especially hard for a perfectionist with high standards and a high level of self criticism.
I guess that last point is the main reason I am putting off writing a book (or doing anything that I am putting off doing for that matter). I was putting off writing, I was putting off publishing it in any way for people to see. I got past that recently just because I wanted my writing to have a place to live and I didn’t care much anymore if it was any good or not. I didn’t care if anyone saw it.
I hated how my creativity was restricted by that and I hated how oftentimes I didn’t just not publish, I actually didn’t even write. Maybe it's my inner critic, maybe it's perfectionism, maybe it's a bit of both and something else, but it is what it is.
This post came out of a piece I wrote in February 2025 and 80% of it had to be rewritten. Not because it was bad – it wasn’t even a piece, it was a dictated spoken note, but also because at that point I was still hiding. I was still sitting on the writing and not letting myself put it out there. I am extremely glad that that had changed over this last year and a half and I really hope that one day I will go even further and I will put together a book, regardless of whether it will be read, regardless of whether anyone or my most critical critic living inside me feels it is good enough to be published, I hope I will.