Musings about body and mind over a nice cup of coffee
Weekly conversations over a cup of coffee (edition #2)
Hey there!
Here’s the second email from my new experiment, the coffee break emails, where I try to bring you a few topics that have been on my mind lately. I’m not trying to sell you anything, it’s about having a connection through time and space - and what would be better for that than sharing a (virtual) coffee?
Losing weight is hard, being fat is hard. Choose your hard.
I find this sentence slightly offensive and an oversimplified cliché to solve any weight-related problems. It suggests that being fat is a choice and if you are fat, you have obviously made the wrong choice. It also suggests that weight loss is nothing but a choice, and it’s your fault of you don’t choose it.
This past year, since the pandemic forced us into social isolation, I lost a lot of weight, 70+ lbs (33kgs) up to this point. It was my choice. And it was EXTREMELY hard. It wasn’t a joyride and I had really a lot of difficult days and weeks - sometimes even months.
I wrote about the difficulties of becoming skinny after decades of being fat.
And I also gathered a few thoughts on why the whole weight loss journey is a tough one.
Everything you want is on the other side of fear
It would be foolish not to be afraid. Fear is the thing that has saved us and ensured our survival. Fear was the very thing that made us create societies, made us stick together, and that stopped us from jumping off a cliff when we don’t have wings.
I found out recently that secretly, I am always afraid of something. I am afraid of screwing up my kids as a parent, I am afraid of disappointing my family, I am afraid that I will lose my job - the list is endless.
I still try to do my best at parenting, I am still trying to be the best possible daughter to my mum, I am doing my best to not lose my job - and the fear I have actually inspired me. For me, fear is the opposite of apathy. I am scared only when I care. And I started to perceive fear as a great indicator to improve and be better.
The point is to not let fear stop me. I mustn’t allow it to overwhelm me and sabotage my efforts. I use it to fuel me, and it has been working great.
My friend, Amar, wrote a really great piece about reducing your fear of failure, and it spoke to me in so many ways, I highly recommend reading it.
I am a writer, but what kind of writer?
These days, I have been facing yet another internal struggle. I am trying to figure out what kind of writer I would like to be.
I used to imagine my days — as a writer — in a rather glorified, sunshiny way. I thought it would be sitting in coffee shops, typing long pages of drafts, coming up with ideas and finding the best constellation of words to express what I feel. I thought I would be earning my living as a self-help writer, an article a day to provide the consistent flow of writing (and income) and it would still leave me enough time to nurture my ideas, to work on a longer project, short stories, novels.
I overestimated my inspiration and underestimated the time it would take to produce quality content. And I had to realise that writing self-help annoys me more than I thought. I come from a European culture, where self-help is not as glorified as it is in the US. It is regarded as a regurgitation of others’ thoughts in the hope of sounding original. Everything has been said and done, and we don’t need another guru to tell us how to make money, how to get up at ungodly hours to be more productive, how to be happy and satisfied, how to use ancient philosophy adapted to modern struggles. And to add to this, European culture slightly looks down on the relentless stream of self-improvement coming from a culture that is perceived as more broken than ours. Haha, and I still do it, right?
Now, I just don’t know. I am reading books from writers as Neil Gaiman, Richard Powers, Khaled Hosseini, Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Jorge Semprún, and I know what I want. I want to write fiction; beautiful, mesmerising, overwhelming stories that take your breath away, that change how you look at life. I mean have you read The Kite Runner? The Shadow of the Wind? The Long Voyage? Man… You should! This is what I want to write! But it’s scary. It’s too much. It’s difficult to do in any language, let alone in a second language. And it’s a huge step away from 2000-word articles.
But I have to try because this is what I really want. I am not sure when and how will I get there, but I have to try. I just hope there will be someone to read.
I wrote about this here. What Kind of Writer Do You Want to Become?
This is all for this week. Hope you enjoyed our coffee together. I surely did. If you want to buy me a virtual coffee, please go ahead and do it: here.
I’m ever so grateful that you are still here, reading me.
Much love,
Zita