It is not so many years ago since I for the first time in my life started writing in to a private “diary”. Well, not like in a real diary on a daily basis nor regular intervals, but continuously just about my own thoughts, experiences, a bit of an history from childhood onwards, fears, accomplishments, values and so on. In the beginning it was not an easy bite to write something honestly on the paper about myself, even if it was for my eyes only. But as everyone, who has done it, knows, how eye opening and liberating it can be and how it can be one of the best ways to learn to know yourself better and to clarify your mind.
Writing in public is different from writing in to a private diary. I don´t have a lot to say about it yet, but that is an experience I wanted to have. Naturally it might not be for everyone, but I believe, that for some people it can be an opportunity to grow and learn. Creating and presenting. Giving something personal from yourself to the outside without caring, what someone might think, or might not think. If only one person finds help, encouragement, inspiration, gets pushed to think more or differently, publishing the blog has already been worthwhile.
The blog was started first only for myself. I´d create it, write a few postings and see how it feels. At some point I made it public and shared slowly one by one to a few people, who seemed to have an interest or relation to all this. Here I had emphasized, that I’d just provide the link, but it´s no one´s duty to read a single word and I expect no comment nor any feedback. However, as the topic is close to the heart, I´m naturally very open for a discussions, many of which have already taken a place!
Writing something personal in public was in the beginning as big step as was writing the first rows in to a private diary. I have wanted to remove the entire blog for a several times, when I have felt, that it is too much of whining, no-brainers and a load of crap, and I’ll be classified as a weirdo. I’ve also been afraid of endangering future career opportunities especially in a case I have to, or I want to, return to the old career path.
Publishing Kickstart My Heart to the wider audience a couple of weeks ago was a tough decision and it took time to gather the courage to do that. The blog serves as a landmark, a tool and a log for the kickstarting process. Inside I might have known since the first writings, that I should make it public, but something was hindering. Only after publishing I understood, that the issue was a fear of breaking the identity. According to logic and idea here the identity means our own inner identity and as importantly the identity and a picture we present outside. Your true self lies underneath the layers of identity and when your identity doesn´t correspond to what lies underneath, we adjust. The adjustment can happen automatically, consciously or somewhere in between and all almost at once or more gradually during the longer period. The adjustment can be done or supported in a million ways and methods, one of them being my current approach with the blog; writing and publishing unexpectedly something bit softer, philosophical, creative and even radical in order to break the old identity. Apparently braking the old identity inside-out partly through the blog was in this case one prerequisite for at some point starting to build a new one.
Why to write a blog concerning this journey? Struggles in a work life and in a wrong career paths, stress, burnouts, downshifting and all kinds of life changes seems to be slightly a hidden, but a common theme within a peoples´ lives and minds in a western world. Many talk about these things, but as far as I´ve seen not so many actually does something about it. In my case I felt I had to do in order to save myself before ending into a more severe situation. Who knows, if this jump over the edge might also interest somebody else and make even a small effect in the world.
What additionally supports writing now and from this experiment is a time resource. If I can´t find time to try blogging and write a postings right now, when in a life would that be? By the way, writing really takes more time, than you would first think and thus my appreciation towards writers is increasing. Hopefully my writing gets faster, I think it already got. One enjoyable creative aspect with the blog is also an opportunity to utilize my own photos, some new, some from the archives.
A language in the blog is English (or ”midnight-English” as I call it). It´s not a native language and I often write relatively fast at night, so the text might be far from perfect in that sense and I know it. However, by choosing English instead of Finnish I feel like getting in to a “universal” mental state, where I´m writing for the much wider audience, for half of the world, not only for the family and a few friends in Finland. Secondly, there are a bunch of people and ex-colleagues around, who have now a possibility to read the blog too. The third point is, that writing in English is a good practice and a way for maintaining the language. One thing I truly miss from my jobs was internationality and also a possibility to use a foreign language every day.
The name Kickstart My Heart came from the farewell concert of Mötley Crue, a rock band to which I never paid attention and a not very good song itself is totally about something else, i.e. girls and fast cars, than this blog. Anyway, the TV, which still worked at that time, was opened for a few minutes while writing the first posting and was trying figure out a good name to the blog. After hearing the name of the song, I realized, that I had found, what I was looking for!
Kickstart My Heart 