Hey there,

This is the last post on this website. It has been a blessing and an honor to explore both my inner-landscape and my talents as a writer with you in this beautiful corner of the interweb. I want to thank you for your continuous support, and hope to welcome you in my new virtual home!

I have created a website that is more becoming of who I am today. I not only share my articles (old and new) there, I also share videos and art, and whatever will emerge through me.  Curious? Take a peek HERE.

You can also find me on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Hoping to meet you on hermienvos.com,

with Love, Hermien

photo by Carlo Lazzeri

Most of us feel not enough as we are, we feel we need to do the next thing to become better, and somehow that next thing doesn’t fill the void, because somehow we still don’t feel enough. There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve things, as long as we’re not trying to fix ourselves. All we really want and need is to feel loved, to feel enough in this moment as we are, to feel supported and cared for.

What I have learned over the past years is that we can give ourselves what we want most, by being that to ourselves. We can love ourselves, be proud of ourselves, treat ourselves with generosity, we can be enough to ourselves. And if that feels like a stretch, you can love the part of yourself that feels the lack. You can say: I love the part of myself that feels unloved, that feels unworthy, that feels unsuccessful, that feels undeserving, that wants to eat that muffin for all the wrong reasons, or that wants to scream Get lost! And then love what comes up in that moment, don’t push it away as stupid or unworthy or whiny or scary, just allow it and hold it as you would a child that just hurt its knee, knowing that it hurts and that it will be okay, and when the crying stops you give it a kiss and let it run free again. And then you cherish the gift you have just given yourself, don’t brush it aside as if it was nothing, acknowledge the courage it took, be proud of your success. This is an ongoing practice, it’s like learning to play the piano: you practice, you practice, you practice. Not because one day you will play in Carnegie Hall, although if that is your dream by all means, pursue it with all you heart, but because you have come to the conclusion that it feels really good to play the piano and it would give you great joy to be able to play that piece by Rachmaninov, and you have decided to make it a reality, even if that seems completely unattainable at the moment. The same goes for loving yourself: you practice self-love because you have come to the conclusion that it feels great to be loved, to be enough as you are, and there would be nothing better than to give that to yourself, and you decide to practice loving yourself as long as it takes to feel loved and supported by yourself.

Love is the gift you give yourself. You love yourself by allowing yourself to be who you truly are, by not forcing yourself to be someone else or live up to someone else’s expectations. You love yourself by allowing yourself to be enough as you are, by not trying to fix yourself, because you aren’t broken. You love yourself by focusing on your capacity to love, tapping into your true nature, letting your inherent goodness emerge, not holding it back. By loving yourself, you allow Love to fill you, until it breaks through the surface and ripples outward. There is no greater gift you can give yourself and the world than to be loved by yourself. All you have to do is stop hiding your inherent goodness. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to give yourself what you are longing for the most? Yes? Then how about a love challenge? Thirty days in which you intend to love yourself as you are. Thirty days in which you are kind to yourself, and patient with yourself. Thirty days in which you focus to your inherent goodness and allow it to flow. Are you in? Great! Let’s get started!

Photo by Boris Benko

Love is like a great parent, (s)he will address you at your own level, speak to you in a way that you will understand. And when you fall, (s)he will assess your resilience and give you the help you need to get in the game again. (S)he will never tell you that you are stupid, or no good, but will emphasize how much you have learned already, and that you will do great things one day. And when you are hurting, (s)he will not belittle the cause of your pain no matter how small, because (s)he knows that pain is a gas that fills the heart, and (s)he will hold you tenderly, rock you lightly and know that all is well, because (s)he knows that you can handle anything that comes your way. Faith transpires in everything (s)he does.

All Love asks is that we do the same to ourselves, and others. We think of Love, capital L, as this big, unreachable concept. It isn’t. It’s in the smallest of ways we treat ourselves and others. The great parent image helps me do that to myself. (If you haven’t met my inner-cast yet, you might want to read The Hermien Show first.) Suppose I am making breakfast: Mother Superior thinks card board has enough flavor of its own, Miss Piggy wants a Sunday breakfast every morning, Ieniemienie will throw a tantrum if she doesn’t get a slice of white bread with chocolate sprinkles in the shape of an ape head, the Artist wants a pretty breakfast with lots of colors, the guru wants it to align with its teachings and all the mystic is interested in is if it will align her with Source. Self-Love acknowledges all of these needs AND my body’s needs, loves them equally and makes something that is appealing to all – oatmeal with raspberries and fragrant coconut oil is high on my list at the moment, as is fresh fruit topped with roasted almonds. Self-Love is inclusive. It is a conversation we have with ourselves, in which we are willing to listen to what every part of our being is trying to convey. It leaves no one out, hears everyone, acknowledges all needs and comes up with a solution that aligns our needs with our values, that reflects our commitment to love all of ourselves, that allows us to thrive.

Love wants to be allowed to move through us. It wants to move through us and work through us. It wants to be heard and acted upon. Love allowed to ripple through our bodies manifests as health. Love allowed to flood our thoughts creates peace. Love allowed to ripple outward without hindrance is what we call success. Last week, I said that to love is to allow without judging negatively. That is the beginning. This week, I learned that to love is to know in my heart of hearts that all is becoming perfectly, to expect success without manipulating, to listen without preconceptions and obey a holistic impulse to act. It seems the Beatles were right: “Love is all you need.” My question to you is: How can you be a better parent to yourself? What parts of yourself do you need to include in the conversation? How can you acknowledge them as part of yourself? What are they trying to tell you? How will their presence enrich your experience? Because they will. They are part of your becoming, a process that may have flaws from a human perspective, but that is perfect from Love’s point of view. All is well.

picture by Mike Swope

Okay, I’m just gonna say it: unconditional love really is the most ridiculous term ever invented. I mean, really, as if there is something called ‘conditional love’. There isn’t, because then by definition, it isn’t love anymore. Love is inclusive. There are no exceptions. I’ve been practicing this concept for quite some time now. I’m not fluent in it yet, and most of the time I f*ck up big time, but as it is a life-long practice in love, that just extra practice. This week, I realized that I have mostly focused on loving that which is outside of myself as perfect as it is, that as much as I am compassionate towards myself, I don’t love myself unconditionally. I don’t include all of myself. There are things about myself that I have real issues with. nothing new there, but the realization that this habit of judging parts of myself as not up to standard has contributed nothing to my life is. So I have decided to throw it out of the window and do something radically different; I have decided to love all of myself. All. Of. Myself. Everything. Every habit. Every thought. Every emotion. Every quirk. Every square millimeter of my body. Everything I create. Everything I don’t create. Everything I say. Everything I don’t say. Everything that I regard as brilliant, and everything I judge as unworthy. Everything. Including the things I have up to now not been able to accept about myself at all, the things I keep actively resisting. Even the feelings of resistance themselves. I will just love.

Part of loving is allowing. I will allow everything to be as it is in this moment. I will allow it to feel as it feels. I will allow it to change when it does, because it will. I will not judge any of it, because I am deciding upfront that it is worthy of love, no matter how it feels or what it looks like. This is an inside job. Imagine that I am feeling very angry. Instead of suppressing that anger, or judging it as not good or unhealthy, or being angry at myself for feeling angry, I am simply going to allow myself to feel angry. I am not going to act out my anger, not towards myself or any other living being, but I am going to allow myself to feel angry. And I am going to love it. I am going to allow it to be without judging it. And I am going to allow myself to feel it until it subsides. Because it will. That I know for sure. Every part of me is worth of this loving attention, even or maybe especially the parts of myself that I feel aren’t worthy of love. In a weird way, this is the only thing that makes sense, because not loving has proven not to be effective

I am going to practice radical self-love, and I would love for you to join me. What would it feel like if you loved every square millimeter of your body? If you allowed every emotion and thought to just be, and love them as they are. “Yeah, but…,” I hear you think, “this thought / emotion / body / habit is really ugly! Loving it would be condoning it.” Not necessarily, loving simply means being present without judging negatively. So while thinking the so-called ugly thought without judging it, you may become aware of the feeling that is beneath it, and allowing that feeling to be felt without judgment, it may simply dissolve. Or it may not, there’s no way to tell. But I can tell you this, you will feel better for it. Not because facing the shadow parts of ourselves is a breeze, but at least we are loving ourselves to the best of our abilities. And tell me, how would that feel? To just love yourself for no other reason than that you decided that you are worthy of love! Pretty amazing, huh?

If I were a sitcom, it would be hysterical! Imagine a zealous Mother Superior, a pretentious artist, a wannabe guru, a mysterious mystic, the glamorous yet capricious Miss Piggy, and an assertive six-year old Mouse named Ieniemienie all living together in one house in the Big Apple.

This week I met up with the characters. Here’s the cast:

Mother Superior
is everything you expect from an abbess. Think Sound of Music and then make worse: super strict, extremely organized, highly efficient, goal-oriented, task-focused, and no fun. She was in charge, leading all the other characters as if they were nuns in her abbey Needless to say, everyone suffered. When Mother Superior is out of control, she is like a tyrant who expects everyone to be just as disciplined and austere as she is, which is basically impossible. All she really cares about is the well-being of the whole system and what she wants most is for the system to thrive.

The pretentious Artist
is kind of a drama queen, who is never satisfied with what he creates. And yet, he believes he is above all others, destined to make Art, capital A of course. To do that he needs freedom to explore and create, something he doesn’t get from Mother Superior, who believes he should get a job and do something useful with his life. All he really cares about it is inspiration, and what he wants most is to create a sublime piece of Art.

The wannabe Guru
is an autodidact with confidence issues who doesn’t know if he’s got enough credentials to tell other people what to do. All he wants is an audience of eager learners with whom he can share all the lessons he has learned himself in order to create a better world. He never is convinced his ideas will help others, and usually abandons his projects before he is well under way.

The mysterious Mystic
doesn’t care about outside validation. All she is interested is uncovering the truth, get to the heart of things. She needs the freedom to explore the inner-world, and only wants to understand the Meaning of Life, or God, or the Universe, and be it.

Ieniemienie and Miss Piggy
really are the same, with Ieniemienie wanting to play in the sandpit and catch frogs, and Miss Piggy being the adult version, wanting to play with one particular Frog. They both have a certain need for attention, most of all want to feel good, love flirting, one innocently and the other not so, and can throw a power tantrum when they do not get what they want.

No, I’m not schizophrenic, not more than most of you at least, but yes I do have voices in my head. We all have. I just decided I wanted to get to know them. So I befriended them and hung out with them, I found out what they love, what they want in life and what they need most. To fully function as a human being, I need to understand their personal dynamic, the function they hold within the group and the group dynamic, because as successful as this combination may be for a sitcom, for a successful life it can be a total disaster.

In order to make things work, I have assigned myself the role of leader. I have put up some new guidelines and function descriptions. For now, it will be great if Mother Superior can support the artist, the teacher and the mystic, help them organize the practical side of their life and motivate them to get the best out of themselves, without interfering with their creative expression, if Ieniemienie can help them access their inner-child and miss Piggy can help them access their own pizzazz. Later on, it would be great if the artist, the teacher and the mystic could work together on a project, and if Ieniemienie and Miss Piggy can not only respect Mother Superior and vice versa, but truly understand each other’s value. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One step at a time.

So here’s my question for you: what does your personal sitcom look like? Who’s your cast? What are the characters? What are their names? Where do they live? And how are they making each other’s lives miserable? Just listen for their voices. If you have trouble distinguishing, look into archetypes and see of there are types that resonate particularly with you, then just see if you can hear what they are saying as you go through a typical day, make notes, finetune, and most of all have fun! And then, when you have a cast, just see how they treat each other, what they say to each other. Don’t judge, just observe. Make notes. Until you can clearly see the characters and how they relate to each other. Find their strong points and their weak points, and imagine how they could work together more cooperatively. And then find ways to make that work. Break a leg!

I love journaling. To me journaling is different from writing in a diary. Writing in a diary is a form of recording. Journaling is a way to plug into the subconscious mind and giving it a voice. I have found it to be an amazing tool to find answers that are not as straightforward as one might expect. Let’s give an example: For over a week now, I have a muscular contraction between my shoulder blades. Af first I did not give it much attention, I had a stressful the day I got it, finding my daughter walking on ice that was not safe yet, and I figured I just may have contracted physically. But the longer it lasted the more unlikely that got. So yesterday morning, while writing in my journal, I focused on what the pain in my shoulders was about.

What I did was write down anything that could be related. In this case: the panic I felt finding my daughter in a very dangerous situation, a photo on FB pinpointing the metaphysical cause of high back pain as lack of support, taking part in a stressful and emotional family constellation, the subject of last week’s blog, and sitting in an unhealthy pose for a prolonged period of time reading a book and working at the dinner table. What I look for while writing is resonance. Which statement, however illogical, resonates most? In this case, apart from the last one, they all resonated. Usually, it is one or two, but occasionally they all do. What I did next was look for a pattern, how are they related? In this case it was easy: lack of support. In each and every case there was a definite case of experiencing lack of support or fear of it. When I reviewed the subject of last week’s blog, I just knew I had to look deeper into that. Journaling is very much about following hunches and trusting that they will lead you in the right direction like a breadcrumb trail would. Having journaled for quite some time now, I trust completely in the process, I know that there are treasures to be found.

Last week, I discovered that I was keeping the people around me emotionally hostage and I decided to set them free. It appeared that being without my tribe made me feel extremely unsafe. Who will support me when no one’s around? Even though, I know that I can support myself, I must convince momma Fear who will do anything to keep me safe. So I asked: ‘What do you fear most, momma Fear?’ – ‘That the child in you will die.’ That was an answer I did not see coming. WHAM! A completely bizar answer, but it felt VERY right. Looking at my list again, everything added up: my daughter on the ice, the lack of support, the family constellation, allowing my tribe to leave – my inner-child felt unsupported. So I asked: How can I support my inner-child? How can I make her feel supported? How can I make her feel safe? What does my inner-child need most? What does Ieniemienie need most? (Huh? Apparently, my inner-child has a name and it has been staring me in the face for the past seven years. Pronounce: Eeneemeenee, a Dutch Sesame Street character, my twitter name since 2008, translates to ‘very tiny’). The answer was so obvious that my husband was rolling his eyes while thinking to him self: You are so smart! How can you be so stupid when it comes to this subject!

Ieniemienie wants to play! With me! She wants my eyes to light up when she enters my awareness, she wants me to see her and acknowledge her for the free spirit she is. She wants me to praise her artwork, not because it is a work of art, but because she made it and she loves it. She wants me to mirror her own pride in her accomplishments. She wants me to take time to play with her and immerse myself in her world. She wants to be in control when we play, boss me around like a kindergartner who will tell you exactly how you need to act and what you need to say when you are playing with them. She doesn’t mind that I have other stuff to attend to, grown-up stuff, she understands. She even is okay with setting a timer to limit our time together as long as I am fully present in that time. She wants me to listen when she asks for my attention, she wants me to acknowledge her need to spend time with me, she wants to be reassured that I will take the time to play with her later when I am too busy to play with her right that moment, not just brush her off. She wants to know that she is important enough to me that I will carve out special time for her, a time when all the other important, grown-up stuff can wait while I play with her. Not just once a month or once a week, no every day, several times. Honestly, she doesn’t trust that I will. And rightfully so, because until now I have tolerated her in the margin of my life, enjoyed her company only occasionally, at my terms, and pushed her out of the way with ease when ‘more important stuff’ came up. My christian reformed socialized left-brain self neglected her most of the time, because Ieniemienie just doesn’t fit the preferred profile. She is way too light-hearted, whimsical, sexy, carefree, unpremeditated, sassy and funny for my socialized calvinistic, heavy-hearted and solemn self. Me, I adore Ieniemienie, always have. I want to be like Ieniemienie! I yearn for this lighter part of me to come out and play. So from this day on, next to my grownup I-have-important-stuff-to-do-list, I will have an Ieniemienie-will-you-come-out-and-playlist, and I will make it equally important. Big breakthrough!

To me, journaling resembles an adventure quest. Do you remember Police Quest, or Myst, or more recently The Room? Adventure games where you wander around a virtual space, looking for clues, picking up things, or touching them in the hope that they will tell you something and lead you somewhere. To me this is the same. I feel around for answers, and one clue will lead to the other. The only difference is that the feedback is internal instead of external. You need to be willing to trust your hunches, and follow clues that seem illogical and even absurd. For that to work, all you have to do is gag your critical voice and stuff it in the closet when you are journaling. Just don’t forget to take it out after you have unearthed something worthwhile, and show it explicitly, at some point in time, it will stop nagging and even start to cooperate. So go out, buy a journal that speaks to your soul, grab a pen, any pen as long as it glides easily over paper, and start asking questions. Don’t give up when it doesn’t seem to work at first, when your critical voice all of a sudden appears to have an evil twin that ruins your adventure quest, just gag him or her too; that closet is big enough to hold the lot of them. Just keep writing and writing and writing. At some point they will fall asleep, I promise.

Pot 'o gold by Crissy Pauly

Two weeks ago, I stumbled across a rather intriguing conversation that eventually led me to have an energy reading. Apart from it being an incredibly resonant experience, a few things stood out. “Do you like yourself? Do you think you’re fun to hang out with? Do you think you’re likable?”, the lady asked. I was kind of lost for words. “I love myself,” I said: “but I never thought about whether I like myself or not. I don’t know if I’m fun to hang out with, to be honest.” Somewhere during the reading, she felt an intense contraction in my throat area. I found that to be intriguing. “Yes,” she said: “You are holding back, not revealing everything that you are thinking and feeling.” She was right, I don’t. I started asking myself why I am cautious and when, because I don’t always hold back. I discovered I am mostly cautious sharing my beliefs, especially with people who I feel will not welcome them. The why remained a mystery. The rest of the week, I’ve been pondering those two things: Do I think I’m fun to be with and why am I holding back? The easiest and most logical conclusion would be that I don’t express myself fully in the fear that people will not like me, which most likely would be right but I knew there was more to it than that. So I kept digging, and I unearthed some interesting finds.

“Don’t rock the boat”, momma Fear told me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the others might fall out.”

That was not the answer I had expected.

“Why are we in this boat in the first place?”

“So people cannot leave you.”

Huh? Come again. This reeks of kidnapping. I found it to be disconcerting to say the least.

“Why would people leave me?”

“Because they will not like you when you make them feel unsafe.”

Uh, okay…

“What would happen if they left me.”

“You would be alone, it would kill you.”

A completely non-sensical and at the same time enlightening conversation. Apparently, I am scripted to believe that people will not like me when I make them feel unsafe; when they don’t like me they will leave me, and when they leave me I will die. Better not rock the boat then, better not say or do anything that might make them feel unsafe. The thing is I know for a fact that I will not die when I am alone; I went through the horrible pain of aloneness, it did not kill me and ever since I do not resonate with it anymore. Yet somehow momma Fear still felt the need to protect me from it, and she did so by cunningly using another fear that apparently still lingered beneath the surface.
Fortunately, fear of fear, however powerful, is easy to let go. The tricky part is recognizing it for what it is. After that, all we have to do is start doing what we’re afraid of and let momma Fear realize the so-called pain she is protecting us from isn’t there anymore, in the way you would open the valve of a tire and let it deflate gently. And as to whether I like myself or not, I have come to the heartwarming conclusion that I do actually like myself, in fact I really like hanging out with myself, I have a lot of fun with myself. It is true that I have no clue who will stay in my boat once I moor it in the harbor and set them free, and I am okay with that. Even if it is just me in that boat, talking to myself and rocking the boat just for the fun of it, I’ll be having a great time, and there’ll bound to be other people who like hanging out with me as much as I do.

Ready To Slide by Janis Gonser

Last week, in a letter, I told Fear that she was no longer in command. She did not take it lightly. She shut herself in the basement and had a terrible fit. When I don’t obey Fear, I get ‘punished’. Or better, my body will create such a state of havoc that continuing seems like a really bad idea. For as long as I can remember whenever Fear gets activated, my intestines stop doing their job, resulting in a severe condition of what is commonly called IBS. Very painful and completely draining. Not funny. At all. As a result I was not feeling too peachy this past week. To be honest, I would have loved to stay in bed and throw the cover over my head, but I didn’t. I have decided that I will go forward. Not ‘no matter what’, because that would not work; I have tried that before and it got very nasty. No, this time, I decided to listen to Fear, really listen; Why are you (Fear) so determined to stop me in my tracks? What I learned is too beautiful not to share.

Far from being the bully I imagined her to be making my life miserable, Fear has been a loving mother figure who has tried to keep me as safe as possible from the moment I got separated from my mom right after birth to this day. I am afraid that when I stop interfering and allow your power to flow freely, you won’t need me any longer, I will be redundant and you will forget about me. - I soothed her worries, reassuring her that she would be teaming up with the Universe to keep me save, that this Force will guide us both every step of the way, helping us to maximize our potential. I told her that in order for that to happen she would need to let me go. I could feel her anxiety, I could feel that she was not as ready as I was. And then I remembered what it felt like to let my daughter step into that beautiful world on her own. She was only two-and-a-half when she declared that she was ready to go to the playground alone. I was not! Yet I could not deny her unmistaken readiness, her need for personal freedom and exploration. So we set up rules and boundaries, we practiced and practiced and practiced until I knew we both were as ready as we were ever going to be. I can still see her walking to the playground, an extra bounce to her step, proudness radiating from every pore, as I was peeking past the hedge at the end of our garden path. The same spot I would be dashing to every five minutes to see if she was allright while she was playing carefree, empowered by her mother’s trust in her ability to choose what is right for her. So I chose to write another letter:

Dearest Momma Fear,

Do not worry that I will go off the highest slide the moment you let go of me, for I will not. I understand that we will both need to adjust to this new situation. Allow me to go just a few feet ahead of you and trust that you have done an excellent job at instilling carefulness. Please trust me to pick the slide that I know is best suited for me, and allow me to go down alone. I would love for you to watch me do it, again, and again, and again, until it has lost its thrill and I want to try a higher slide. I know that letting go of my hand is one of the scariest things you will ever do, but it will also be the most rewarding. From it will grow a trusting relationship in which you will know without a doubt that I will always be careful with this one wild and precious life and in which I will know that you will always have my back, enabling me to conquer the Universe safely, no matter what.

All my love,

Hermien

It’s a new year. 360 more days full of potential before we look back on 2016. The question is how do we want to feel looking back. I have decided that I want to feel proud of myself. Yesterday, I wrote down the one thing that would make me proudest of myself. Then I decided on how I wanted to make it happen and wrote out a goal per month. Then terror hit, fear running through my body, paralyzing me, disabling rational thought, reducing me to a shivering and sobbing little girl. It was that moment that it finally hit me: fear will be my forever companion. What is different this time is that I will not let it stop me: it can tag along, if needed I will drag it along, but I am not going to let it hold me back. My fears, as many and as strong as they may be, will not prevent me from living my dreams. I will not procrastinate any longer with the false assumption that one day I will be fearless.

Dear Fear,

you will no longer be the commander-in-chief. I know this may come as a shock to you, having been the supreme commander for over four decades, but you have been in power for so long that you have lost touch with reality. You no longer have what it takes to lead us in the right direction. You will be a trusted adviser, but you will not be allowed anywhere near the control panel. You will be a valued member of my team, but you will not have any special rights. We will find you tasks that allow you to use your talents appropriately. Every morning, for a specified time only, I will listen to you and what you have to say, and together we will work on putting your worries at ease. Then I will give you a new and important task to keep you occupied while I work on executing my dreams. I will see you tomorrow morning in my office immediately after we finish our daily team meeting with our Awesome Anthem. If needed, I will allow you five minutes at the end of every day before singing We Fucking Did It.

Best regards,
your new Commander-In-Chief

This will be the year I will feel the fear and move forward anyway. I am not going to pretend that will be easy, but I am not going to pretend that will be impossible either. I am embracing my fears. I am going to stop fighting them; they are not abnormal, they are part of me. I am going to assume my fears are part of my emotional make-up for a reason, that they’re here to help me do whatever I need to do in this lifetime. So…

PS Dearest Fear, thank you for being in my life, thank you for caring so deeply, thank you for always trying to keep me safe. I love you. XOXO Hermien

Alladin's Lamp by Dan Colcer

By giving up on ‘the big plan’, my life has shifted big time. For one, I don’t find it hard anymore to figure out what I want to do. It’s not a big thing anymore either. I don’t feel overwhelmed anymore. And I have lost the need to figure it all out before I start.

For years, I have felt intimidated by this idea that I should follow my passion. There was this implicit notion that we all have one unique talent, one thing that would set our heart aflame and that doing this would be fulfilling our purpose. Mind you, I did not come up with this idea by myself, but I was desperate enough to fall for it. This ‘passion’ would save me. That is, once I found it, or better if I found it at all, because, to be honest, I had no clue as to what my passion was. Yes, I loved writing, and drawing, and painting, and being on this path of transformation, and learning, and reading fantasy, and teaching, and singing, and public speaking, and baking, and cooking, I could go on and on and on. And I am pretty much good at everything I try my hands on, and I do feel excitement for all of those things too. Yet, I felt I needed to make a choice, I needed to commit to one of those loves. And I couldn’t. It was kind of frustrating. And in the meantime, feeling torn between all these choices, overwhelmed by my own potential, most of the time I felt so frustrated I was completely blocking the flow of inspiration, unable to create anything.

All of that is gone. Gone! I kid you not. To hell with passion. I don’t even consider it interesting anymore. Overnight, it has become devoid of all meaning. Gone is the frustration, not even a hint left. Gone the sense that I have been waisting my time. All I want to do now is crack on and create as much as possible in the rest of my life.

I am one of the most curious people I know. Always have been. I love a very broad spectrum of things. Honestly, I think I could feel excitement for just about anything, except perhaps for Excel sheets (sorry, Bas). I can totally immerse myself in something, simply to satisfy my curiosity. Yet up until now I would feel terribly guilty about it, because somehow it felt whimsical, a distraction from the big plan, which involved one passion, and certainly not the broad array of my interests and talents. Actually, one of the things I have always resented about myself was being blessed with so many talents. As I am typing these words, I am just shaking my head in disbelief; how can one be so thoroughly misguided? I find it comical, hilarious even. The paradox in that sentence is just too obvious not to see it, and yet I was blind to it.

From now on, I pledge to go wherever my curiosity leads me. I will regard curiosity as inspiration incarnated, my genius guiding me, showing me the next stepping stones on my journey. If one day, I find myself aflame with a passion so blazingly hot that it (temporarily) burns all other interests, I will welcome it, but I will not wait for it, nor will I let it define the rest of my life. I will be open to all inspiration, honor my curiosity, celebrate the uncertainty that tags along, and praise the possibility of all things ready to be born through me.