4 years since starting this blog ... starting creating my life ...

Four years ago last Saturday was the day I started my blog.

It looked terrible (and I knew it, but I'd never blogged before, never tried to do this, and I couldn't make it look how I wanted. So I let that go).

It was called Racey's Thai Cooking (Racey's a family nickname).

And this was a year and a bit on! I kept adding content, even though I was stuck on how to make it look good.

It was the first time I'd written something that wasn't an email or report or a presentation in YEARS (and years and years).

And it was the start of a total passion - sharing recipes, food, writing, that has lead to so many other things - including creating The Tiniest Thai supperclub and the Thai Diet ... and lead to meeting so many new friends.

It was terrifying pressing publish that first time.

My writing didn't flow.

I honestly worried people would laugh at me.

I thought maybe I should have posted a few recipes/posts/blogs before announcing I was doing this - not 'launch' it with just that one post.

But what felt right to me then - and has done ever since - is to SAY you're doing something .... and then you kinda have to DO IT.

I'm better with a deadline and/or some accountability!

It was also a time in my life where I'd made a huge decision to focus on creating space to find what I loved doing.

At the same time, it was in many ways one of the loneliest times in my life - where I realised that it was down to ME and only me - to create what I wanted, to create my life.

And. THANK YOU.

Thank you to everyone for not only not laughing (why do we even have those stupid thoughts?) but for supporting and encouraging and even - a million more THANK YOUs - trying my recipes and commenting and sharing - and coming to my supperclub.

To celebrate four years, I'm going to be doing a couple of celebration supperclub/parties - on me of course - so comment or message me if you'd like to come (and if you've been before I'll be messaging you to invite you. Soon as I've worked out what dates I can actually do).

It's been a truly transformational four years.

When I started blogging it was about something much bigger than blogging.

It was starting again - choosing to do something just because I wanted to and wanted to do something creative.

Something that was in me but hadn't had any outlet at all.

And it has been - and IS - something much bigger than that for me.

It's truly been life changing to see what happens when you choose what you really want to do and make time and space for that - and then see all the opportunities and connections and things you couldn't even see or think would happen... come from that.

Just start. Totally imperfect and scared.

Whatever it is that's calling you, nagging inside you.

---

---

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE ...

All the blog posts ... (that I didn't write)

You know how it is.  Ideas just come. All the time, but sometimes insistently. Like it wants YOU to do something with it.

And when an idea grabs me and asks to be written - sometimes although love the idea I don't have time or inclination, or it's not possible right then.  Sometimes I walk round the park with the dog whilst saying the whole post out loud just exactly as it in that moment comes into my head.

And sometimes I get home and write it.

And other times I write down a quick heading in my draft blogs to remind me what it was and so I can go back to it later.

I've just checked and there's over 20 headings in that draft folder including .... this very one ... 

And actually, for me - and for most of us, I believe, it's quite unusual to come back to an idea.

So often we have an idea, leave it for later and life and stuff gets in the way and we don't do it.

When we come back to it - MUCH later - the moment's passed and the inspiration's gone.  Yes, the idea's still good, but that free-flowing oh-I-can-hardly-type-fast-enough-to-get-my-thoughts-out has kind of gone.

When I read Big Magic (and saw Liz GIlbert speak on her Big Magic speaking tour last November), this was one of my favourite ideas - that ideas themselves are sort of alive and flying around looking for someone to bring them to life.  

And they settle on you, and you're all, 'YEAH this is a FAB idea', ... but if you don't do it, don't write it or sing it or whatever it is you wanted to do with it ... then the idea's going to fly off and find someone else as its vehicle for expression.

I really liked this! It gave an explanation to what happens to me all the time.

Personally, I have lots and lots of ideas every single day.  And the reason my tally of unwritten blogs hasn't actually increased since I first had the idea to write about it is because I now know I'm not going to 'run out' of ideas.

Ideas come every day. Some I'll jump on and I just can't NOT write them.  

Others I love but ... honestly, I know I'm not going to do.

And now, instead of writing them down as draft blog headings - and adding sub-consciously to that never-done 'to do' list - I let them go. (So much more freeing for us both).

They might come back. Our timings might coincide and collide again. 

But I don't try and keep them as 'mine', mine to come back to another time.  Usually both my energy and the idea itself are feeling stale and like a chore by then.

I let them go. 

I have no concerns at all that I won't have a million more live ideas tomorrow, and the next day.

And sometimes, well, infrequently, but like right now ... this idea came back to me and said, very loudly, 'GET OFF THE SOFA, PUT YOUR GLASS OF WINE ON THE TABLE, GET THE LAPTOP OUT, AND WRITE ME. NOW'.

And so I did.

And here this idea is - wanting to be seen and heard. 

Use them, lose them, let them go. They need to be heard but not always through you.

And you, you will ALWAYS have more ideas.

---

PS. Every time I thought, 'All the blog posts', I sing it in my head to Kylie's 'All the Lovers'.

And I love that song, so hey :) 

PPS. That happens to me a LOT. Like, when I'm on a bus and it goes round Marble Arch and I think, 'Rach, just ONCE, just once DON'T think 'Cumberland Sausage Gate' and THEN I see the road sign and it says 'Cumberland Gate' - and too late; I've already thought NOT to think about it again ... 

---

---

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE ...