.SOMETIMES RAW.

You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth. – William W. Purkey

I am here at my desk, the cursor patiently blinking while I stare at the screen. Hey, now, after I typed a couple of words, it is a slightly less blank page in front of me. Scrolling through my website after almost three years of initial daily then once/twice -a -week-blogging I find it still amazing how much fun I have with it all. Sometimes, it takes me a while to get started even though I have the concept all laid out in my head. Even the most mangled piece of writing if less intimidating than the empty sheet, right? In these moments when I type, the possibilities are infinite, and that is scary. Writing for me is not easy. First of all, English is not my first language and even though I have a plethora of idea, it takes time to type it all out to make sense. Publishing my book was also a struggle and for some reason, I thought that writing would get easier over time. But it has not and this is what I really want to write about. What I want to say here is that I am not a great writer and I am fine writing or saying this.

Know that it is not out of self-deprecation that I suggest this. You may have come to this conclusion on your own already, in which case, I am glad we are on the same page. I am also not saying this out of a lack of positive affirmation, or a fake-it-til-you-make-it attitude. I got all this down. I am an overall positive person who feels incredibly blessed in so many ways.

My readers have to understand that when I started writing in English and in a formalized educational setting, I found it incredibly frustrating to craft sentences and paragraphs that properly reflected my feelings towards what I wanted to say in German but that needed to be translated in my head into English. Small inflections and emotions were completely lost on my attempt at a long-form written piece. It sort of almost always fell flat. I felt like my essays would miss an entire element of what I am actually trying to say (in German). I have known this all along, but what has me in a strange conundrum is that my book is selling like crazy after just two months of publication which makes me so happy. People love to read what I have to say, even if English is not my first language.

When I started blogging in 2015, I thought the idea was to write a lot, consistently improve my writing as time continued, and then success. I thought I would eventually get better at sharing ideas and thoughts while giving the reader an inside perspective on my experience, all while at the same time crafting beautifully languaged (sp? or did I just create a new word?) word art. Maybe I have gotten better at writing over the last two years or so, but what really ended up happening was that I started comparing my writing to other writers who I deeply respected. Following my blog for some time, you may know by now that I am an avid reader. What I came to view as great writing, was not what I had been doing. I was what they had been doing and continue to do. I do not consider myself to be a competitive person, however, I have continually tried to fit my writing style into what I thought good writing was supposed to be. Hypothetically sort of like, I am the “New Nora Ephron” in some way.

The funny thing is that some of my most popular posts came from a time when I could not have cared less about writing well at all but simply just had this idea to communicate ideas and tell stories without a concept. Initially and back when I did not think anyone was actually reading my writings I was the freest and perhaps that is what mattered most. That is the thing for me when I write. I want you (the reader) on this journey with me and somebody is reading all this, but at the same time, I want to write in a way that is still my speaking voice. I want to reach through this screen and hug your brain with my feelings, thoughts, learnings, and failures while really opening up in a way that should help all of us.

Whenever I am writing, I want to give you the real Daniela, not good-writer Daniela, but just, writer Daniela. So I think that is what this is now, a return to origins, perhaps, a more casual writing style, and more direct access to what I believe is the real me. Authenticity is scary as hell but it is the only way forward. I am authentic and I put myself on the line. Why is it scary? Because as a writer, I have to face the fact that my true self might not be enough to get the job done. That is a risk that I am willing to take though.

I have to keep in mind that expectations and competition can help, but it may be destructive, too. It is great to seek inspiration from those I admire, but I should never let it prevent myself from sharing my own perspective in a way that makes sense to me. The good thing is, everyone is different and that is what makes us great. Realizing all this is incredibly freeing. It releases me from the boundaries of my own expectations. Maybe this little essay encourages you to let go of what you may expect of yourself so you can simply be what you are. You may be surprised by the result. I am far from perfect, and most likely always will be – like everybody and everything.

I overheard this conversation the other day at a coffee shop:

-Tell me about us!

-About us?

-Tell me as if I would be a person you have never met.

– Well, we were lovers at first, then got married, then had a child, then another.

– And then? Did we take care of each other?

– What do you mean? Yes, we did. I provided for this family.

– But then one day….

– Then one day what?

– Can you tell me what happened so I can understand?

– I don’t think I can. No, I don’t want to.

– Do you want me to tell it instead? Then I most certainly will.

The couple started to fight and left shortly after. I love to listen to people’s conversations. Occasionally at the playground, I hear stories about seemingly harmonious and conflict-free marriages and how everything is so “wonderful all the time”. Part of me cannot help it but be suspicious of such accounts, trying to figure out if they are curated or selective images. What I have seen so far and experienced with either marriages or relationships is that both are most certainly not always easy, harmonious and conflict-free. Just think about it: How can it ever be? Two completely separate people with different personalities, preferences, sometimes nationalities, family backgrounds are forming a life together where things need to be negotiated on a daily basis. This person next to me is supposed to be my partner in crime, my lover, my personal chef, my mentor, my best friend, best listener and vice versa. I think it is impossible for one person to fulfill all these tasks.

These days I believe that the happiest and strongest relationships are not those conflict-free-perfect-look-how-much-in-love-we-are-ones. I reckon those relationships are the ones where partners have the most struggles and drama and cannot work through an argument or conflict at all since it is just a show. What I learned is that good relationships or marriages are created and nurtured and not automatic. Good things take time, long good conversations and by giving it this important time, things will nourish. Like raising anything that is alive – form a child to a pet to a plant, we must tend to it constantly.

Whenever there is a conflict, it is the working and tending through it that trip most people up. Tending and conflict resolution? Tending and conflict resolution comes in the form of spending quality time together, being honest and empathetic, communication, playfulness, independent inner growth, philosophizing, support, self-awareness and this sweet extending forgiveness for little things that either of the partners does wrong. In any case, communication is key, silence is not. In addition to these somewhat basic relationship hacks of tending and conflict resolution, I have discovered some ways that turn out pretty helpful when I am at my limit.

We all know these moments when fair-arguing or reasoning is just not possible with the partner. I want to share what came in handy for me in those last couple of weeks of insanity, what I learned, what saved my day(s), what kept me sane and how I have been able to defuse my piercing anger and somehow infuse me with a sweet spirit of generosity in the midst of an emotional nuclear meltdown.

Making a Positive/Negative List. Making a list of all the moments in your relationship that confirmed for you that you wanted to be in all this and how much you loved the person for certain qualities. This list obviously can include a wide range of things such as first love letters, first dates, conversations that were special, movies watched together, food shared, restaurants, concerts, trips. Then write or think about what happened along the way that started to change things. Maybe your partner has entitlement issues that exude a delusional degree of self-confidence which can be alluring to you or others at least for a little while. Mark Manson said that “in some instances, the entitled person’s delusional level of confidence can become contagious and help the people around the entitled person feel more confident in themselves too. Any attempt to reason with them is seen as simply another ‘threat’ to their superiority by another person who ‘can’t handle’ how smart/talented/good-looking/successful they are'”. Mark Manson adds that “Entitlement is impervious. People who feel entitled view every occurrence in their life as either an affirmation of or a threat to, their own greatness. If something good happens to them, it’s because of some amazing feat they accomplished. They keep their mental façade standing at all costs, even if it sometimes requires being physically or emotionally abusive to those around them”. But guess what? Entitlement is a failed strategy. It is just another high but it is not happiness. Entitled people are incapable of improving their lives in any lasting or meaningful way because all they have to do is “chasing high after high and accumulating greater and greater levels of denial”.

What I learned is that entitled people hide from their problems by making up imagined successes for themselves at every turn. And because they cannot face their problems, no matter how good they feel about themselves, they are weak. A person who actually has a high self-worth is able to look at the negative parts of their life and admit, “Yes, I messed up here”, or “Yes, I cheated”, and “Yes, sometimes I exaggerate my own success and what I have achieved or what I can do”. Guess what? Eventually, reality hits.

Remember, these items on your lists can be as dumb or meaningful as you want them to be. These are the things you write; things that only matter to you. They are reminders of why you love or don’t love this person, or why you chose to leave him or her. Once the lists are written, they are great tools to question things or to be reminded how much you love your partner and appreciate all those times he/she can still give you butterflies when thinking of them.

One more relationship hack I would like to share is to let go of “your victim story”. We all have been through some rough times. We all have a story. But many times it is the same story that repeats itself. He is late again, she ignores me, he cheated again. Each time your partner does whatever it is that you are super sensitive to, your brain goes on auto-pilot and endorses that narrative you initially created about the person. To constantly tell an “entitled person” for example what they did wrong leads nowhere. Constantly telling your partner that they are this or that, they may even start acting in ways that confirm your ideas of them because of the things you are saying. Lastly, always telling your partner they did X, Y and Z wrong are usually self-created narratives that don’t usually have anything to do with your partner. It has to do with you and your own fears and insecurities that are magnified as you misinterpret your spouses’ behavior and actions. Isn’t it that oftentimes, you are the one who has issues and you subconsciously choose external evidence to prove what you are afraid of rather than looking inward and critically examining those fears and insecurities.

Always keep in mind that these strategies or tips don’t mean you won’t get hurt. For as long as you are together with someone, from time to time, they will disappoint, hurt and enrage you. It is important to feel those emotions, talk about it and accept the pain in the situation. Just drop the bullshit. Feel the feelings, drop the story and deal with the actual issue at hand rather than going down a rabbit hole of imaginative narratives and paranoia.

I never really knew what I wanted to be. Well, maybe when I was six. I am pretty sure I wanted to be a garbage collector but maybe it was only because I really liked how the garbage men ride the trucks standing on these little boards on the side. I also know that I always loved books and writing and my biggest dream was to publish my own book. It is human nature to focus on the future. We think about who we are going to be maybe once we graduate, once we paid that debt off for good or when we finally get that promotion at work because then things will get better. Or we think about what will happen if we get a job in the first place. We feel like life is usually somewhere over there – metaphorically speaking.

Fortunately, we all have the ability to bring that future into today. A quote by Annie Dillard comes to my mind: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives”. It truly is the small things that we do each day that become the blur of a life well lived. For example, reading for just five minutes today might not seem like all that much but it is this act repeated that becomes a lifetime of self-directed education and enjoyment. Doing one sit-up might now seem like that much – but one becomes two. Realistically, we just need to do as many as we are willing to do repeatedly over a long period of time. So what’s the rush to do so many all at once? I want to share a couple of tips how I implement some of these things mentioned and how I make them work for me.

Start small. Small actions each day might not seem that much but it all matters over the long-term. Here is what I learned for example from a friend about meditation. We sat at a café and talked about this yoga retreat he went to. Out of a sudden, he looked at me and said, “All you have to do is sit still. Now breathe in and think I am alive. Breathe out and think I am home. I just mediated. See, it is that simple”. It really is all about this moment even if it is small. It is that small action repeated over time that makes a massive difference.

Instead of setting a particular goal just choose a new way to live. It is the small actions that make the biggest impact. Just choose something you want to do over and over that reflects the goal that you eventually have and you are more likely to get there. This was my approach with my first book. I just kept writing, editing and collecting stories that eventually ended at my publisher’s desk. And finally, I learned that I have to let go of the past.  Until someone invents a time machine there is nothing we can do to change it. All I can do is focus on the present and move forward. That is the beauty about the quote “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives”. We really just need to focus on who we are right now and by doing what we want to do at this moment, those small actions that help change our lives in the long term, we fundamentally become a new person. It is that opportunity that we have every single day. And it is a beautiful one.