What do you want to be when you grow up

I’m still in that process. Well, I mean I am still learning, still developing my skills.

Can you honestly say that you’ve covered everything on your favorite subject of interest?

Well, I haven’t. And it’s totally fine. I love exploring, learning new things (it also goes for domains I had no interference with before), trying my limits.

I do not know – or maybe I have so many people to mention that I must dedicate an entire article in their honor – what made me like this. But I have always tried more, being curious, asking questions, and giving things a try just to see the outcome.

Speaking of I don’t know… well, that cup I received from a former student is always something that takes me back to my first ‘what ifs’, every time I look at it.

I guess it's all a matter of skills. Developing some old skills and acquiring new ones, that is. I never knew I had it in me to be a teacher. It's just that it happened and I enjoyed it, being around children, teaching them, playing with them (playing and learning, quoting here Ross on his childhood and playing with dinosaurs figures), and having fun. It was a skill that brought me to being a teacher, and so another one developed.

Years later, another skill brought me to the position of proofreader, and here a couple of skills emerged. It was not seeing my name on the cover of a book that made me think I want to be a writer; it was actually that great feeling one gets when one creates something, and releases it and sees afterwards that it brings joy and excitement to others. 

A writer needs to know that what she/ he writes is read. Whether it causes positive or negative reactions, it does not matter. The only fact that the written word is read and gets a reaction is what makes the writer believe that the creative process was not in vain and keeps her/ him writing (although the advice is to write, to send it to be published, to forget about it being read or not, being appreciated or not, and to write some more). 

I never knew I could sew. I saw it all the time in my home, my mom was doing it, my sister was doing it, even my father did it. I guess thread and needle were a thing back then. I wonder how many of us still use the thread in order to sew a button on a shirt, and not throw the shirt away and buy a new one (I guess that was the main subject of a play called 'Should we wash the kid or do we make another one?!'; I wouldn't know, I've never seen it). I guess it all started with an old pair of jeans that I could not afford to throw away. I made embroideries on it, and so I started making DIY projects (which I had no idea they were called like that back then). Afterwards, I started blogging, and one of them is dedicated to my DIY projects. 

The idea of this article was not to brag about the wonderful skills I possess, though you might be under that impression. I reckon that what I wanted to convey was the simple message that we should not limit ourselves. Skills may be acquired, and perfection does not exist. Or if you're clinging to that, each project can be perfect and thus it cannot be compared to others. 

So take this gift of time that we're given nowadays to think about your skills, about the things you once wished you did but just never got quite around to doing it, about what you can do, but most of it, about what you always thought you were incapable of doing and give it a mere try.