"Life is to communicate?" Who's life. Sure, mine is. I'm a EFL English teacher. I am extroverted. I love to be performing and expressing and writing and reading. I love it; it's what I do in my free time. However, as of lately, that hasn't been true. Last year, I wrote this book, and the aftermath of publicly announcing it put me into a shame cave for over a year. But still, I needed to write, and time and space away from the book gave me time to come out from under the heavy blankets of writer's shame.
It was time to write again, but my travel blog just wasn't doing it for me anymore. Facebook and Instagram have pretty much eliminated any reason for me to really write about my travels anymore. Friends and family on really want to see the photos anyway. They don't want to hear all the anecdotes and travel hiccups. I know this, because none of the read my book. Some of them bought it, in solidarity, but no one actually read it.
Off tangent and back to the tea bag wisdom: Life is to communicate. Do I really believe that? No. If anything, I think to communicate is to live. I don't think that I was really fulfilling my writing potential. I don't think I was really practicing and creating or being inventive. I had no writing challenge, I had no regular writing outlet (that travel blog was kaput), and I needed something more.
Inspiration came in the form of a podcast this week. On an unexpected Monday afternoon trip to Fes, I listened t Elizabeth Gilbert's Magic Lessons podcast (episode 7: Sexy, Dirty, Nasty, Wicked), and she talked with a caller about feeling unable to explore her painting. She had a craving to paint, but she had so many other life responsibilities and felt to much pressure to sacrifice time away from her obligations to create anything. Gilbert suggested she start having an affair with her art. An affair! Just like the caller, I took a gasp of air and started to nod in agreement with everything she said. I needed a safe space, but a sexy, dark, secret space, to get into the practice of writing again. So I created this blog. It's a secret. I have no intention of telling anyone (even Greg, even Michelle) that it exists. This is my affair. I've decided to sneak away in the precious moments and come to this space and create something. I've make the choice that I need and I want to give into this craving to write, to be expressive, to get back into the flow and the rhythm and the joyful poetry of writing. I keep a pocket journal just to jot ideas and notes and stuff, but this - this will be a creative endeavor.
Honestly, even as I write all this, my heart is racing, my hands are getting clammy, the corners of my lips are upturned in a devilish little smile. I have a secret: it's not anything a scandalous as a penchant for pegging or shacking up with a new Italian lover, but it's mine and it's in the world, and it's beautiful.
I choice the title of this blog, because I wanted something that was expressed that it was an affair - a writing affair. I knew I wanted it to be a foreign language, so that people wouldn't guess it or associate it with me directly. It would not be the first choice to choose when Googling me. Instinctively, I wanted to choose Latin. It's such a serious but sultry language - to be feared, but respected. Unfortunately, "the affair" in Latin is a tawdry, silly translation: "rem." So, I went with my favorite Latin-derived language - Romanian. The blog title is "the little affair" in Romanian. Because that's exactly what I am doing - having an affair. With a Romanian (titled blog).
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