How it all began

I was trying to fall asleep for an hour or so, but deemed it impossible about 2 minutes ago. I decided to blog something. Sometimes I have this strong urge to write something, anything, just to get it out of me. If I don't write it, I feel I will lose it forever, never remember it again, and that it is something decisive, something I just ought not forget. It is similar to a pre-anxiety-attack-feeling. The feeling of something just needing to get out, and you don't know if you should scream or run, or what to do with the feeling. It's just in you, and you have to get it out, now, and quickly, otherwise you probably won't be able to breathe for very long. That's how I, more or less in periods, feel about writing.

I have so many ideas about things to write. I want to write something like a book, something to scare people, and something else more personal. Perhaps about myself, but not like an autobiography, more something semi-fiction, semi-real/self-lived. I know stuff, and I feel stuff, that I feel I need to tell others, people must know about these things. But in particular, just to get a breathing-hole for that feeling of needing to write.

I love the scientific piece of my world, I see it as a chance for myself to learn things, and in particular to write it down so others can know. Must importantly, to write it down. I can spend hours thinking and writing about things concerning my tiny little branch, or branch-ette, of knowledge. I hate how people can blow it out of propotions, and think that I am super-smart, and be scared or reluctant to talk to me, because they immediately judge that I am too smart, too good, to important, to superior to them. Which is absolutely bullocks. But this is a whole other story. Which I perhaps can write about in my thesis acknowledgements.

The thought of writing a thesis, I mean especially 'writing', is very attractive to me. To write something, about what I know. To tell others. At least to a few other people that are either forced to read it, or actually interested. But still, what I put in there is rather strict. I can't put fiction there, just facts. Or at least mainly. In the discussion you can always squeeze in some fictioneous part, about your interpetations or beliefs concerning the facts you've found. But when it comes to the acknowledgement, the word is free. I can write anything I please. I guess you are supposed to stick to thanking people that has helped you in one or another way to write/accomplish the work leading up to the thesis. But come on, people thank everybody in there; their babies, some people they've just said "hi" to in the hallways of the lab, and other random people. Now, I am absolutely not saying this is wrong. It's good, as long as you really feel those people actually made a difference. But what I really think, and what I am convinced I'll do, is to just write whatever I feel like. Perhaps a short-story, perhaps the Soup-recipe, perhaps just ignore all boundaries, and write an acknowledgement as long as the scientific part is. Who will stop me, it is MY book. Right. It is what is the most attractive about writing the thesis sometimes, that I'll be able to write down whatever I feel like I need to say there, and people will for sure read that part. Few read the scientific bit, but EVERYONE that gets a thesis in their hands, will check the acknowledgements. The personal bit, the clue to learning more about that person behind the lab coat and vials. It is the brilliant part of the thesis.

My problem is the self-esteem. I can start writing something, perhaps also finish it. But once I am done, I feel this; "I am pathetic, this is utter crap, who'd ever think THIS is good reading, why would anybody like this, who am I kidding, I can't do this". And more often than not, I cast it aside.

Like when I rode the train to Kalmar on wednesday evening. I had casually surfed the internet at the lab (after giving up work for the day), and found that a show on svt.se (swedish television) had a competition called "Slutet på historien" (the end of the story) http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=66786&a=781683. 6 more or less famous swedish writers had written a 2000-word start to a short-story, and you got to pick one of them, to write a 1200-word finish. I wrote a 2000-word finish, that I am sure I could scale down, and retouch to be a rather good piece to enter in the competition. But my self-esteem is currently in the way. I feel how I suck, how I can ever think that I can write something good, that others would like, and this inhibits myself to like the writing I've accomplished. I am trying to bring it down to reality, to how as long as I have written no more than 1200 words, it is good enough to enter in the competition. But my pressure of brilliance when performing will, I believe, stop me from even daring to enter the competition. I hope not, but that is my very real fear at least.

Hopefully, a few more rounds of argumenting in my head might make me realise and fully understand, that I can do it, I can try, and that I am no worse a writer than the next guy, and I have nothing to lose from trying. I guess we'll see. I have until the 16th of May to get my act together.

If I succeed in entering the competition, this might also give me enough 'roll' to make a schematic draft of the other writing project I have in my head. The semi-fiction/semi-self-lived thing. Perhaps. Maybe.

Writing something, anything, just to get it out. The true passion and feeling of happiness it renders me, that is what made me start blogging. I enjoy it, plenty.