This is a blog.

A re-introduction by way of an underwhelming yet transformational discovery

About seven months ago, I found myself obsessed with the world of #VanLife on YouTube. The interest weighed heavily for about four months, with me at one point, driving into Hertfordshire to go and view a micro camper.

Part of me thinks that was about escapism. Wanting to escape my own life, attempt to get away from my sadness and outrun the rat race. I felt the idealistic pull of well-edited together video clips.

But more than the trips these vloggers took, there was something else that kept drawing me back in. It was them. It was their stories and their relationships with each other woven amidst the travel that got me. I could have bought a micro camper and gone off in search of coastlines, solace and beautiful views most weekends, but I would have had to do so alone most of the time. And to revisit the healing from heartbreak diaries, that has proven to be the hardest thing to deal with in being single at this point in time. It’s the fact that I can do anything I want, and I am living the life I want to live. And while I can do all of this on my own… I don’t want to.

Anyway, truthful admission and digression aside, with any of the vlogs I‘ve watched over the years, it’s always been the person’s life that has interested me. Watching time pass, and seeing them figure things out, make decisions and press on with them in episodic chapters.

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

For a while, I’ve struggled with not wanting what I write to come across as self-indulgent. Always wondering if the words I put together, offer you enough value or thought takeaways for your own life. But I think the best way that I can convey general life lessons and remindhers is by living life, taking notes and then attempting to put all of that into sentences and paragraphs that might make you nod along or feel less alone on your own road.

I genuinely sat at my desk for an hour one day and thought, “I guess I want to create the written version of a vlog.” So, a blog, Sasha. You want to write a blog. Slow clap of realisation for me.

The immediate afterthought was “well, why would anyone be interested in that from me?” Posed in that very typical way that what we consume from others, we think would be met with zero interest if we created it ourselves.

---

Yesterday, I went to the cinema to watch Good Luck to you, Leo Grande.

Emma Thompson is a magnificent storyteller. I felt so moved by tiny flickers of facial expressions, hand gestures and silent purposeful pauses that told stories in themselves. That story, being delivered by that woman, in the way that only she could. And though it is not my own, I could relate to it and learn from it.

So this is a blog, and I am a storyteller.

This is my story - my life of words that I hope offers you honesty, inspiration, expression, reframe and life in progress. I wanted to name this thing that probably isn’t a change at all to you, out loud. While doing so may only matter to me, usually our own acknowledgement is the most important. It’s clarity via my own permission and admission.

I used to write about self-doubt and self-trust. I think most of what I write will track that journey without speaking to those themes specifically. So welcome or maybe it’s welcome back to this open in-the-moment journal that I call A Life of Words.